She is assessing the Waynesville bryozoans. Daniele Davies is a junior geology major from Centreville, Virginia. Her duties include the Waynesville orthid brachiopods. This is an excellent internal mold of one of our many gastropod specimens. The distribution of bivalves in our fauna, Waynesville formation, was generally rare.
Bivalves are typically epifaunal and infaunal filter feeders.
One feature that separates bivalves from other similar organisms like brachiopods is their innate ability to dig and become infaunal, but this is not terribly important until the Mesozoic time period because of the Mesozoic Marine Revolution. Bivalves posses a two-valved shell that is an aragonitic concretion and bilaterally symmetrical. Bivalves are dorsally hinged with a hatchet shaped foot and lack a head and radula. Bivalves are much less abundant than many other organisms in the fauna we collected, particularly brachiopods. It was difficult to classify this specimen beyond the large classification Class Bivavlvia.