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Description: | Specimen of a fossil coral, Labechia conferta Lonsdale, collected from the Much Wenlock Limestone Formation (?) of Silurian, Wenlock, Homerian age from Dudley, West Midlands (Midland England).
This is the bottom view of a fossilised colonial coral and shows how the colony grew. A single coral animal (polyp) would have settled on the seabed and formed a tiny tube of calcium carbonate in which to live. This forms the pointed part in the middle of the photograph. The animal would have reproduced by a process of budding so that two tubes would have formed. Each of these would have budded again to form four. This process would have been repeated many times over and over again so that eventually a cushion-shaped skeleton consisting of thousands of tubes was formed. When the coral polyps died, the hard calcium carbonate skeleton remained and became part of the limestone rock forming on the seabed. These Silurian limestones underly much of Dudley. They are a rich source of fossil corals and other animals that lived and died in the sunlit tropical Silurian sea.
The specimen was found in West Midlands.
It is from the Silurian period (443 - 418 million years ago) | Publisher: | Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums | Subjects: | Anthozoa Coelenterata Classification: Animalia Invertebrata | Temporal: | Silurian period (443 - 418 million years ago) | Source: | Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums | Identifier: | http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/geofinder/se... | Go to resource |
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