Fossilized Coral

[White Feather]

My Coral: both sides, found many years ago hunting in Florida 

 

Corals (or more formally, Zoantharia) have mobile larvae that become sessile (fixed to one place) after a few days. They are marine animals related to jelly fish and sea anemones, but lacking a free-swimming (medusoid) stage.

They may have first evolved during the Precambrian and are still found living today. Some, like octocorals (the polyp has eight arms), are soft bodied and rarely preserved as fossils, but others secrete a hard calcarous skeleton and are thus important rock-forming organisms. We focus here on the three groups (or orders) of corals that are most frequently found as fossils — Rugosa, Tabulata and Scleractinia.

[Tidgy's Dad]

Nice coral.

But the Zoantharia is not synonymous with coral, it is an order of corals (i think; anthozoan classification is a twisty-turny thing). I'm surprised this British Geological Society website has this confused, unless it's changed again. But as this website still has Charnia listed as an octocoral, I'm doubtful. I understand that Charnia is now considered to be a rangeomorph or, more recently, possibly a petalonomid, a proposed sister group to the sponges. 

[FossilNerd]

Beautiful specimen!