What is a geopetal?

When a clam loves the dirt very very much, and then dies, it can become a geopetal. Well, so can snails and any other fossil, but my logo is a clam shell so I'm gonna focus on that.

Anyhow, when clams die, sometimes they don't get filled in all the way. They'll have some dirt down below, but since nobody's going around with a turkey baster trying to smoosh dirt into them, there's often a little void at the top of the shell. As the clam fossilizes, minerals will precipitate in from above and fill in that void, forming geodes.

Geopetal structure in Platystrophia ponderosa brachiopod in limestone (Corryville Member, McMillan Formation, Upper Ordovician; Flemingsburg South roadcut, Fleming County, Kentucky, USA) 2

These little half-geode fossils are pretty, but they're also really useful - they tell you which direction was up when the clam originally died because the sediment-filled side was the bottom and the crystal-filled side is the top. So "petal" here is from the latin word petere which means to "seek" or to "aim", because they help you figure out which way is up.

logo of the store brand is a clam shell viewed from the side with blue calcite and sparkles at the top and the words geopetal fabric in the bottom

Geopetals can be very abundant, and sometimes very small. In geology, a slice of rock with a particular texture is called a fabric - therefore, a geopetal fabric is a bunch of pretty half-filled fossils which help you to figure out which way is up. 

Beautiful, nerdy, and useful - which is basically what I'm aiming for with this brand!

 

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