George P. Hansen, author of Trilobites of Black Cat Mountain has
a PhD in chemical physics from Rice University. His lifetime hobby has
been geology and paleontology, collecting fossils and reading both
popular and professional literature from these fields. He has spent
over 15 years studying and collecting the fossils of Black Cat Mountain
and over 5 years writing the book. Here he sits photographing and
inspecting fossils preserved in the solidified Devonian seafloor, now
compacted into limestone.
Below is a photograph of skeletal debris
taken directly on the surface of a quarry floor in the Haragan
formation at Black Cat Mountain. "A" is a nearly complete, enrolled
phacopid; "B" is part of the tail of a dalmanitid, flipped upside down;
"C" is the free cheek from a Kettneraspis; and "D" is a brachiopod.
The next image below is another Paciphacops species
whose exoskeletal components were separated from one another after the
animal "shed its skin," a process known as ecdesis or exuviation. The
red arrows indicate the three major parts of the cuticle; the blue
arrow points to an eye, which is partially peeking above the rock
surface at the bottom of the image.
