On the University of Southampton’s FutureLearn course Beneath the Blue: The Importance of Marine Sediments, we’ve been asked to draw our favourite marine invertebrate, using the techniques of scientific illustration. My favourite would have been the octopus but, as I didn’t have one available, I’ve opted for my favourite fossil marine invertebrate, a rugose coral, Zaphrentis phyrgia. I found it in a patch of crushed limestone on a forest track in the Dales. It dates from the Early Carboniferous.
We were asked to make a measured drawing but I needed to scale it up to fill 75% of the page, leaving room for captions. Using a pair of compasses, I measured the fossil in centimetres, doubled that length then converted to inches for the drawing, so the 5cm height of the actual fossil becomes 10 inches on the drawing.
The scientific method of drawing stipulates line only with no shading, which is very different to my usual pen and wash technique. I drew the fossil for the August edition of The Dalesman.
Final Version
In Photoshop, I converted the pencil to black and white and replaced my hand-lettering with a similar-looking font.
Solitary rugose corals were common throughout the Carboniferous Period and some survived until the late Permian. There were four main radial septa which divided the coral so that it was bilaterally symmetrical. Present-day hard corals are sometimes referred to as hexacorals because they have six main divisions.
As I wrote in The Dalesman:
Zaphrentis phrygia was given its species name because of its resemblance to the Phrygian cap of ancient times: a tall, pointed felt cap, which was worn with the point tilting forwards. The living coral stood the other way up, with its pointed end in the seabed.
Richard Bell’s ‘Wild Yorkshire’ nature diary, ‘The Dalesman’, August 2019
Link
University of Southampton FutureLearn course Beneath the Blue: The Importance of Marine Sediments
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