Pugnoides pleurodon (Phillips)

Lower Carboniferous, Carboniferous Limestone, Asbian

Cashel Hill, Belcoo, Co. Fermanagh

K24465

largest 18 mm across

Pugnoides is a fairly typical, coarsely-ribbed, rhynchonellid, one of the most distinctive brachiopod groups. Rhynchonellids first appeared in the early Ordovician (more than 470 million years ago) and are still one of the two dominant groups alive today, the other group being the smooth-shelled terebratulids.