Abstract

Located in the Manzanita Mountains of central New Mexico, USA, the Kinney Brick Quarry exposes a fossil Lagerstätte of Late Pennsylvanian age that produces diverse fossils, including small subspherical structures previously interpreted as fish eggs. We re-evaluate these eggs, which are spherical rings of carbon around host-sediment-filled cavities or carbon-film-coated spheres up to 2 mm in diameter. Attached to pteridosperm foliage, these eggs display definite evidence of desiccation, indicating that they were almost certainly laid subaerially and thus not by fishes. The Kinney eggs are remarkably similar to eggs of Devonian, Jurassic and Cretaceous age attributed to gastropods, and also fit well within the range of modern gastropod egg morphology. Thus, gastropods, not fishes, likely produced the Kinney eggs.