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A Clam Bake From The Late Cretaceous of California

Inyo

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Finally got back to my sweet spot in the late Cretaceous section of California's upper Cretaceous to Paleocene Moreno Formation not so long ago and loaded up big-time for a Mesozoic Era clam bake, as it were.

My so-called sweet spot is a specific locality that produces beaucoup bivalve pelecypodal molluscan clams of the Glycymeridae family variety--AKA, the bittersweet clam.

The Moreno of course produces California's official State Dinosaur--a hadrosaur duckbilled fellow called Augustynolophus morrisi. In life, it would have weighed some three tons, with a 26-foot length; a hadrosaur that occurs only in the late Cretaceous portions of the Moreno Formation.

Here are six bivalve pelecypod mollusks of the family Glycymeridae (genera Glycymeris and Glycimerita, if I'm not mistaken) that I personally collected and photographed--all from the upper Cretaceous portions of the Moreno Formation, in strata approximately 70 million years old. The actual original shell material has been preserved in all examples, by the way--these are not casts.

Sizes of the Glycymeridae clam specimens--top to bottom: 50mm across (1.97 inches); 35mm across (1.38 inches); 45mm across (1.77 inches); 50mm long (1.97 inches); 40mm long (1.57 inches); and 40mm long (1.57 inches):

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Spectacular coloration on these.
Ain't nature grand?

Bone2stone
 
Do these still have the nacre? Would like to see the inside.
 

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