please help ID. Fossil?

[wildcatman71]

I found this is the field we arrowhead hunt in yesterday. It is pretty neat....the pics dont show it but it has tiny sparkles in it too. Kinda looks like a spiderweb in it. Is it a fossil? Or just some sort of geofact?? Thanks for looking.....

 

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[Harry Pristis]

I found this is the field we arrowhead hunt in yesterday. It is pretty neat....the pics dont show it but it has tiny sparkles in it too. Kinda looks like a spiderweb in it. Is it a fossil? Or just some sort of geofact?? Thanks for looking.....

It appears to be a fragment of a colonial coral. Sometimes these living chambers fill in solid, sometimes they get lined with drusy quartz. The coral lived somewhere between 350 and 400+ million years ago.

 

[wildcatman71]

I found this is the field we arrowhead hunt in yesterday. It is pretty neat....the pics dont show it but it has tiny sparkles in it too. Kinda looks like a spiderweb in it. Is it a fossil? Or just some sort of geofact?? Thanks for looking.....

It appears to be a fragment of a colonial coral. Sometimes these living chambers fill in solid, sometimes they get lined with drusy quartz. The coral lived somewhere between 350 and 400+ million years ago.

Cool, thanks. I find a lot of crinoids and stuff like that...but this is a first. Is this a hard to find item? Is it collector worthy? thanks!

 

[Harry Pristis]

Corals are fairly common finds in southern Indiana. They are often battered by the stream that eroded them from the limestone. If that is your only example, keep it until you find a better specimen.

Here's one I collected, probably near Richmond, Indiana, when I lived up that way. I kept it because it was an interesting longitudinal section of the coral head. It has some glitter in the chambers.

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