Fossil or artifact?

[Sinestia]

Very new to the forum so my apologies if I am incorrectly posting or otherwise.  I am an avid meteorite hunter and have been for over 30 years so I do run into many fossils and artifacts so with that said I have many to show and many questions to ask . I'll start with this one and would appreciate your input on what this might be. 

[Lone Hunter]

Looks like a Petoskey stone which is coral, but wait for more experienced opinion.

[fossilhunter21]

This looks like coral.

[fossilhunter21]

Ha ha I did not see your text "Lone Hunter." Petoskey stones are not found in New Mexico, or at least not supposed to be.

[Rockwood]

26 minutes ago, Lone Hunter said:

Looks like a Petoskey stone which is coral, but wait for more experienced opinion.

Sure does.

A colonial rugose coral by any name. 

[Thomas.Dodson]

29 minutes ago, fossilhunter21 said:

Ha ha I did not see your text "Lone Hunter." Petoskey stones are not found in New Mexico, or at least not supposed to be.

Hexagonaria (the coral that makes a Petoskey stone) is found in New Mexico. See here: https://www.mindat.org/paleo_loc.php?id=6032

 

Corals from the Sly Gap Formation mentioned in "Devonian of New Mexico" (Stevenson 1945) have also been assigned to Hexagonaria. JSTOR Link

 

 

[fossilhunter21]

Yeah I am still learning, but now I have learned something new.

[FossilDAWG]

It is certainly a colonial coral, as several people have said.  It could be a Hexagonaria as that genus occurs in certain Devonian formations in New Mexico.  However, in the photos provided I don't see enough detail of the internal structure to assign this specimen to any particular genus.

 

Don

[Sinestia]

My apologies Don I will take better pics and thank you very much for the info from everyone.  

[Thomas.Dodson]

1 hour ago, Sinestia said:

My apologies Don I will take better pics and thank you very much for the info from everyone.  

To be fair it might be just be the wear on the specimen. The harsh reality is that some worn specimens are not identifiable beyond a certain point. Corals are especially tricky in that sometimes even the best specimens aren't identifiable without more complex methods (like good quality sectioning).

 

Any ID on this might come down to ruling out other species. If you still have locality data you can narrow it to a formation, find species reported from that formation (the references I linked might help you start) and, if you're lucky, none of the others will have hexagonal corallites.