This is the “Fossil Friday” post #172.  Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website.  We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com.  Please include a short description or story.  Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world!

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Centipedes are one of the rarest of Mazon Creek animals, with about 1 in 100,000 concretions expected to have a centipede.  Gordon C. Baird and John L. Anderson found just 3 in 287,000 concretions in their paper “Relative Abundance of Different Mazon Creek Organisms”, which was published in the “Richardson’s Guide to The Fossil Fauna of Mazon Creek”.  For comparison, they found 13 spiders, 66 fish, and 107 horseshoe crabs in their survey.

Well… earlier this week, Caroline Davis sent us photos of a Mazoscolopendra richardsoni (Richardson’s Mazonian centipede, see Mazon Monday #169) that just opened for her.  She collected the concretion sometime back in 2021 from Pit 11, and opened it via freeze/thaw.  It’s a gorgeous specimen with great color!

Thanks for sharing this extremely rare, beautiful fossil, Caroline!