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BRACHIOPODS: SEASHELLS OF THE ANCIENT SEA FLOOR
Rock&Gem Magazine
|May 2023
Brachiopods are one of the most common and recognizable fossils found around the world.
Brachiopods are exclusively marine, living in the prehistoric saltwater seas. There have been about 30,000 fossil species described to this date. There still are around 385 brachiopod species in the oceans today occupying the deep oceans and oceans near the polar regions.
The word brachiopod comes from the ancient Greek - brachion means "arm" and podos means "foot."
ABOUT BIVALVES
Mollusks are a large group of invertebrate creatures and include animals such as snails, slugs, squids and clams. Brachiopods have a soft body inside a hard calcium carbonate shell. It is because of this shell that we can find so many brachiopod fossils. The hard shell rarely decays away before fossilization.
This story is from the May 2023 edition of Rock&Gem Magazine.
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