Description

Late Mississippian
Bear Gulch Limestone
Fergus County, Montana, USA
Very fine 20mm annelid worm on 84mm shale. Rare.

Worm.  Carboniferous. Soft-bodied.

Here is an ancient, unidentified marine worm from a famous deposit.  Bear Gulch is famous for its fishes and shelled invertebrates but it also sometimes preserves soft anatomy of those and other animals.

Across geologic time, worms have been quite diverse and we will never know about all the forms that have existed since at least the Early Cambrian.  Not all the ones that paleontologists have studied belong to the same group.  Many are distantly related or even unrelated.