Need help with Orthocone sculpture

Not sure if it is blend-able to smash green plants with coral, but this picture might give an idea.
Oh and maybe some shells? It's up to you.

 

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Thanks, CC,

I've had that picture for years now. Some of those details are a little hard to reproduce in 35th scale. I can do the brain coral. The cone anemones are too small though. I have no idea how I might model crinoids that small. I though about gluing tiny flowers on top of dressed wire but I don't know if that will work. The thought of doing teeny tiny bivalves --- ? It gives me the shakes just thinking about it. :goofysca:

What I need to know are specifically what type of coral existed in the Ordovician and Silurian ages. Then I could ease my mind on that detail anyway.

- Leelan
 

This is another good one.

The thing is that the base shouldn't be so busy as to attract attention away from the Orthocone. It is a delicate balance. I am trying for verisimilitude, truth in my display.

- Leelan
 

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Surely horn coral is not all that there was? Many of these period displays or dioramas show something that looks like brain coral. Maybe the formations don't have the "brain" convolutions but they look to be the same size and shape.

Can you say that there was no table coral then? I can't find anything that says what variety of coral existed then. Except the horn coral you mentioned.

- Leelan
 


OK. Here is CC's picture with labels.

Taking Endoceras for our scale I can estimate apparent sizes. If this Endoceras is 13 feet long then it is about 2 feet in girth.

The "brain" corals look to be almost 4 feet in diameter. And the horn corals appear to have foot-long horns. The crinoids look to be between 3 and 4 feet tall. And the brachiopods (clams) seem to be about a foot in length.

In 35th scale that translates to 0.87cm for the horn coral, 3.5cm for the "brain" coral, 2.5 to 4cm for the sea weeds and crinoids. 1cm for the bivalves (this seems a bit large to me.)

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But how big were horn corals???

"Some solitary rugosans reached nearly a meter in length. " Rugosa - Wikipedia (That would be about 3cm in 35th scale.)

"The largest colonial rugose coral on the Indiana shore (directly below the Interpretive Center) is a Prismatophyllum colony 11 feet (3.3 m) across. A 30 foot (10 m) colony is reported on the Kentucky side!" Falls of the Ohio State Park | Indoor and Outdoor Activities | Fossils, Wildlife, History % (Hmmm. That would be 8.6 to 28.6cm across!)

GOOD NEWS! According to this article table corals existed! I don't have to remove what is there already.

According to Ordovician - Wikipedia though solitary corals were common, reef colonies developed during the Ordovician. And there are images available through this same site of the types of algae that existed at the time.

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Why didn't my earlier searches come up with this stuff ??? :mad:

Oh well. Back to the Man Cave!

- Leelan
 

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I like this one. It isn't too busy. I will try to capture the feel of it for my base.

- Leelan
 

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Coral is first seen in Cambrian rocks, however it is uncommon until the later part of the Ordovician (Evo of Coral on Wiki). Where I find Enocerids, in the Lower and Lower Middle Ordovician rocks, I don't find any coral at all. There is coral in rocks above those I find them in, but not down where all the cephs are. Terri finds Horn Coral and a few small pieces of Tabulate Coral in her Upper Middle and Lower Upper Ordovician rocks in Tennessee. These are the rocks that Cameroceras is found in, so I would say there are very few corals. :sad:
Most reefs in these rocks were formed of sponges, stromatoporoids, and a sponge/algal critter Calathium (a fairly fruitless image search), however finding reconstructions of these may prove difficult.

Maybe I am seeing too much of my own collections in your model, but that is my :twocents:.
 
Thanks, AT,

I will bear that in mind. I hadn't planned on building a teeming coral reef. That would be too busy. Just a little more and I will cry "Enough!"

- Leelan
 
HornCoral.jpg


Here is my attempt at horn coral.

I cut quarter-size circles out of index card and rolled them into cones. Then I filled the cones with putty, cut little bits of floral wire, ten per coral, and, one by one, stuck the arms in. Talk about fiddly. :shock:

I will see what they look like with paint tomorrow afternoon. Then all the base will need is a sprinkling of algae and it will be done.

- Leelan
 

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