Delaware State Fossil – Belemnite

Belemnite was named as the official fossil of Delaware on July 2, 1996. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School (Wilmington) third grade Quest students of Kathy Tidball suggested honoring the ancient and noble belemnite as our State fossil. Belemnite fossils can be easily found along the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, which is where the Quest Students collected specimens during a field trip.
Delaware Code Title 29 § 314

 

 

According to the Delaware Geological Survey:

Belemnite is the common name applied to an extinct order (Belemnoida) of mollusks belonging to the cephalopod class. Modern cephalopods include the squid, octopus, and pearly Nautilus. The belemnoid animal was most closely related to the squid as it had an internal shell covered by a leathery skin, tentacles that pointed forward, and a siphon that expelled water forward thus moving the animal backward by jet propulsion. The internal shell of the belemnoid was cone-shaped and divided into chambers that were gas-filled for maintaining buoyancy in the sea.

Belemnite - After Moore, Lalicker, and Fisher, 1952, Invertebrate Fossils: New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company.

The chambered shell had a blade-like forward extension that is seldom preserved as a fossil. The most common fossilized part of the internal shell is called the “guard” or “cigar” consisting of a massive, generally brown-colored, subcylindrical structure called the rostrum that encloses the chambered shell and extends to the rear where it tapers to a conical apex. The rostrum served as a counter-weight to the buoyancy provided by the chambered shell and also for protection of that delicate shell. Belemnoids reached their greatest abundance and diversity during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

 

 

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Learning Links for Belemnite, the Delaware State Fossil

Delaware State Fossil
This site has everything you could possibly want to know about Belemnite fossils. The page has everything from the elementry school class that suggested it as the state fossil, to the best places to look for Belemnite fossils in Delaware.
Source: Delaware Geological Survey