Invertebrates RULE!

I get E-mails accusing me of ignoring the "Invertebrates". So this ones for you spineless, good for nothing $^#@!* invertebrate lovers. I've spent a lot of time collecting in the Santee Limestone. This is a hard limestone consisting of mostly marine invertebrate macro fossils. Occasionally I come across nautiluses. Some are complete. Most are not. When they use explosives to mine, the individual chambers will be blown apart and scattered. The largest ones I've found have been at quarries located at Jamestown, South Carolina. The largest was a complete one 27 inches in diameter. It still had most of the original calcified shell. Most are just the internal cast. The largest nautilus I know of from South Carolina came from the Georgetown Martin Marietta Aggregates mine in Georgetown County, SC. It was a little over three feet in diameter. It rested against the wall at the entrance to the office. When the mine closed down it was donated to a school in Charleston, SC. I tried to track it down a few years ago but the school had moved into a new facility and the nautilus was "misplaced". So how do you misplace a 300 pound doorstop? Most likely it was used to fill in one of the thousands of huge potholes in downtown Charleston. Perhaps It'll resurface when the next big earthquake strikes! Are you happy now?