Gastropods from Lake Grapevine, Denton Co., TX

Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Mollusca, Class: Gastropoda, Family: Turritellidae

While hiking along the spillway at Lake Grapevine, in Denton County, TX, I came upon the following mortality bed of turritellas.  There were literally hundreds of bolders with these gastropods that made up the sea bed.  Mixed in with the turritellas were a few oyster shells, but the majority of fossils were these beautiful orange colored turritellas. A geologist that was with us said that he thought a catastrophic event caused the shells to wash up on the shore and then were fossilized because of the enormous volume of turritellas in one place.

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