1.5" Ecphora Gardnerae Gastropod Fossil Shell Lee Creek Miocene Epoch North Carolina
Location: Lee Creek, North Carolina
Weight: 0.4 Ounces
Dimensions: 1.5 Inches Long, 1.4 Inches Wide, 1.1 Inches Thick
The item pictured is the one you will receive.
Miocene Epoch, 5.3 million to 23.3 million years old.
Ecphora gardnerae is an extinct species of predatory sea snail in the family Muricidae and is the official state fossil of Maryland, designated in 1994. These snails were carnivorous, using their radula to bore holes into the shells of bivalves to feed on the soft tissue inside.
E. gardnerae lived during the Miocene epoch (approximately 23 to 5.3 million years ago), with fossils found in Miocene marine strata along the East Coast of the United States.
The taxonomic history of Ecphora is complex. Maryland specimens were initially misidentified as Ecphora quadricostata, a species now recognized only in Pliocene strata from Virginia to Florida. In 1987, Druid Wilson correctly reclassified the Maryland fossils as E. gardnerae, and they were later subdivided into subspecies by Ward and Gilinsky in 1988.
