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Description: | This well-preserved graptolite fossil looks like a miniature saw blade. In fact it is the skeleton of a colonial animal called a graptolite. Each 'tooth' is a flattened tube. A tiny animal once lived in each tube, using small tentacles to capture particles of food in the sea water. Graptolites floated near the surface of the sea where there was lots of food available in the warm, sunlit water. After death, the animals decayed away but the skeletons sank to the seabed. There they became buried in mud and fossilised. The 'brassy' colour of the skeleton is due to partial replacement by the mineral Pyrite. Pyrite is also known as 'Fool's Gold'. | License: | http://www.imagine.org.uk/about/copyright/ | Rights holder: | Tyne & Wear Museums | Subjects: | fossils natural world | Source: | Tyne and Wear Imagine | Identifier: | http://www.imagine.org.uk/details/index.... | Go to resource |
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Graptolite
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