The fossil we found earlier this week seemed so impressive, it deserved a post all of it's own. With a little help from the Natural History Museum's ID Fossils and Rocks forum, we have discovered that the beautiful creatures in this stone are ancient pieces of Rugose coral, presumably from the local limestones of the Devonian period (Middle or Upper) - making them a whopping 416 to 358 million years old.
The Horn Coral or Rugosa, (Rugose means wrinkled) are an extinct order of corals that were abundant in seas during the 'Ordovician' period, before a Great Permian Extinction Ice Age likely wiped them out.
They had many tentacles sticking out to gather for which gave them a flower-like appearance. Unlike modern corals which are all colonial, these horn corals could be colonial or solitary animals. In fact, the animals that lived within the coral had such a specific mode of growth that they are employed as biological clocks to determine the length of day and year in the distant geologic past.
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