fossilhoe
Why is fossilized coral so fun to flip?? 😂 Love the contrast of the rough and polished side. 😍
__k.e.y.s__
Lately my attention has been fixed on (Fossils). The age/mineral replacement are both fascinating to me. I can’t tell you the exact agate of this coral but I can say it’s very old. Let the research begin!
Fossil coral is a natural gemstone that is created when prehistoric coral is gradually replaced with minerals. Corals are marine animals and it is their skeletons that are fossilized and preserved.
Corals are made up of small invertebrate animals, known as zooids, that look like tiny sea anemones. They feed on small food particles they find in the water around them.
Together, many zooids form colonies, many colonies form reefs. Coral reefs can be massive structures, stretching hundreds of miles. .
Fossil corals also tell us about the past. Since many corals live in warm, shallow sea water, their fossils are good indicators of environmental conditions. Fossil corals found in England tell us that it must have had a much warmer, tropical environment at certain periods in its history.
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astoneforeveryhome
Fossil Friday ~ This fossil tabulate coral has a surprise on the back. You can see a bivalve bored into the coral and got fossilized right along with it! Tabulate coral form hexagonal cells out of calcium carbonate (calcite). This was a colonial variety of coral, with tiny coral polyps all growing together. It’s unclear if this bivalve was using the coral reef as an anchor point to protect itself against tidal forces, or if it was nibbling on the coral polyps themselves. Either way they are now locked together in time. Kyle found this piece while rockhounding in Barbados💎
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- Fossil Friday - This is a fossil of a tabulate coral that Kyle collected for me before we even started dating (he clearly knew the way to my 💜). Tabulate coral is an extinct variety of coral that formed hexagonal cells of calcium carbonate (calcite) in a cool honeycomb pattern. While living, this type of coral actually grew as a colony with many tiny coral polyps growing together.
astoneforeveryhome
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udavjaah It looks like when you increase the twig of horny coral or gorgonian. Surprisingly, outgrowths similar to tree branches are not a single organism. In fact, this is a whole colony of polyps, tiny animals resembling a freshwater hydra, known to all from textbooks of zoology. The branch itself is just a support, the skeleton that polyps build together and use as a large hostel. Small architects did not accidentally give their house this form: the sea fan usually grows across the stream, so it is more convenient for polyps to catch their tentacles with prey, edible particles passing by and ocean inhabitants, plankton.
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Chain coral This hand sample is a really spectacular example of a fossil type known as a Chain Coral from the Silurian.
Each cell, or each link in this chain, was the home of a different individual organism or polyp. The proper name of this genus is Halcyites. They were generally small corals; this sample is only about 10 cm across. These lines evolved during the Ordovician and went extinct at the end of the Permian.
This sample was found at the Wrens Nest site, Dudley, West Midlands, UK. The location actually became Great Britain’s first National Nature Reserve site due in part to the quality of the fossils at that location. The sample is owned by the Black Country Museums.
-JBB
Read more: http://www.thinktank.ac/page.asp?section=478
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Down the axis of an ancient coral
Today we’re familiar with the types of coral that build coral reefs; most of them fall into an order of life known as scleractinia and build solid, interlinked skeletons with different chambers holding separate organisms.
This is a different type of coral. You’re looking down the axis of a fossil coral found in Devonian-aged rocks of Ontario, Canada. I’m almost certain that this is a type known as a Rugose coral or a Horn Coral. The image is about 8 cm wide.
These types of coral grow out radially from the central axis that you see here, forming a horn shape. Along with a couple of other species, rugose corals were some of the earliest reef-building organisms on Earth, creating environments in which other species could flourish hundreds of millions of years ago just as modern coral do today.
The modern day reef-builders are descended from some variety of these ancient corals. The Rugose corals declined in abundance after their early peak and the last fossils of them are found in rocks leading up to the end-Permian Mass Extinction which wiped the last members off the face of the Earth.
-JBB
Image credit: Mike Beauregard (Creative Commons license) https://www.flickr.com/photos/31856336@N03/4142384806
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Petoskey Pile We’ve covered a few Petoskey stones recently (http://tinyurl.com/o4a75km, http://tinyurl.com/oxeynff) – the stones are limestones, made of fossilized corals from the Paleozoic era. This pile of them demonstrates nicely the variety of hexagon sizes found in the rocks – each hexagon was the home of a part of the coral colony. These stones also are a testament to the work of water – they were found on the shores of Lake Michigan and have been rounded into elongate cobbles by the waves in the lake. -JBB Image credit: Beth (Creative commons license) http://www.flickr.com/photos/33049952@N08/3926823992
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Petosky stone close up In a recent post (http://tinyurl.com/oxeynff) we shared the Michigan state stone, a fossilised coral limestone found by the lake's shores. Here is a close up image of the structure, with each 'cell' being the dwelling place of a single polyp within the colony. Loz Image credit: Cobalt123
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Petosky Stone
Michigan's stage stone is a lovely fossil coral dating from the late Devonian to early Carboniferous that was spread around parts of the state much more recently by grinding ice sheets during the recent ice ages, often as eroded rounded pebbles. Hexagonaria percarinata (named for the hexagonal patterns) belongs to an extinct group of corals called rugose that characterise reef building organisms of the Paleozoic. In those days what is now Michigan was the floor of a shallow equatorial sea filled with coral reefs.
In some areas then entire head of fossilised colonies transformed into limestone can be discovered in the Traverse group strata, though most are recovered on the beaches of Lake Michigan, where annual frosts heave and turn stones each winter revealing new specimens. A polish on the lapidary's bench is necessary to reveal the patterns in their full glory. Each hexagon was the home of a polyp that lived within the colony, who then fed via the tentacles that emerged from the central mouth. A small number of specimens have a rosy hue due traces of iron that infiltrated during the process of the reef turning into rock (called lithification or diagenesis).
The common name comes from that of an Ottawa chief called Pet O Saga (meaning rising sun), reputedly half French, who established himself as a fur trader in the last quarter of the 19th century. The stone has been a popular souvenir of the area since the Victorian era.
Loz
Image credit: Cobalt 123
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One more awesome coral shot from these folks, watch a few times and keep an eye out for the polyps that close or twitch!
Floating Portugese Man of War, or according to Wikipedia also called blue bottle, or floating terror. The stings from those tentacles can be extremely painful even lethal.
Timelapse of Goniopora coral swaying in the current
Time lapse of subtle movements of coral flowers