Chain-like fossil from Cretaceous Alabama

[aplomado]

I can't figure this one out- we found it in Limestone Creek in Alabama.  The formation is Tombigbee Sand.  Cretaceous ~83 MYA.

 

What do you all think?  

[Fossildude19]

Cropped and brightened:

 

[Lone Hunter]

Chain coral? Also reminds me of beedi sponges or really strange heiroglyphics. 

Edited December 7, 2021 by Lone Hunter

[val horn]

? What are all the dark lumps not part of the chain?  I am interested because they seem to have a similar  shape to the links in your chain.

[Plax]

was it colored with a pen or marker?

[digit]

3 minutes ago, Plax said:

was it colored with a pen or marker?

Yup. That's kinda what it looks like to me as well.

 

Assuming this is not something you have in hand but are curious about. If you do have this item, a photo in better light would be useful.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[abyssunder]

13 minutes ago, Plax said:

was it colored with a pen or marker?

I had the same feeling...

[aplomado]

No, it is actually not colored at all!  We picked it up like this.

 

If you look closely, you can see the matrix is covered with other lumps.  I suspect those are similar structures to the dark colored ones.

 

I will try and get some better pics tonight if I can.

Edited December 7, 2021 by aplomado

[digit]

So a personal find? That's much different from someone doodling on a piece of rock and then trying to pass it off as a prehistoric necklace chain.

 

Looking forward to some clearer photos. I'm stumped if this is something non-manmade. Obviously, something more likely to be in the invertebrate camp than a vertebrate.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Rockwood]

A look at the back side would help to see if this is a chain or if it is actually a crack in the matrix which allowed for more robust preservation of the ball (?) like shapes.

It has an almost oolithic look to me.

[Fossildude19]

Some light air abrasion would probably go a long way to figuring this thing out.

[digit]

I sent some images of it to Roger Portell, invertebrate paleontology collections manager at the FLMNH. This was his reply:

 

?

 

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Mark Kmiecik]

Reminds me of Syringopora.

[Paleorunner]

12 minutes ago, Mark Kmiecik said:

Reminds me of Syringopora.

 

You mean it could be some kind of coral like these? 

 

Let's hope he uploads better photos, he has me very intrigued. 

 

 

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EPm2nX6t_kw/TodigPU1uxI/AAAAAAAAArU/dmfQ3IKX4BA/s1600/PICT0266.JPG

 

[Mark Kmiecik]

Just now, Paleorunner said:

 

You mean it could be some kind of coral like these? 

 

Let's hope he uploads better photos, he has me very intrigued. 

 

 

 

Yup. That's exactly what I had in mind.

[Fossildude19]

Just now, Mark Kmiecik said:

 

Yup. That's exactly what I had in mind.

 

That one is Halysites, though. 

[Mark Kmiecik]

4 minutes ago, Fossildude19 said:

 

That one is Halysites, though. 

 

Even better fit than the Syringopora.

[val horn]

I looked up syringoporid and found this  which might occasionally show chains as is illustrated.  it might also be autopora.

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A syringoporid coral (Lower Carboniferous of Arkansas)

 Mark Wilson  January 22, 2012 1:24 am

http://woostergeologists.scotblogs.wooster.edu/files/2011/12/Syringoporid_585.jpgThis specimen was collected from the Boone Limestone (Lower Carboniferous) near Hiwasse, Arkansas. It is a species of Syringopora Goldfuss 1826, sometimes known as the organ-pipe coral (but not the real organ pipe coral!).
http://woostergeologists.scotblogs.wooster.edu/files/2011/12/syring.jpg
Syringoporids are tabulate corals, a group that is always colonial. The corallites (tubes that contained the individual polyps) are vertical and were connected by small horizontal tubes, through which they shared common tissue. Some colonies had hundreds of corallites and built mounds up to a meter in diameter. Syringopora is the longest-ranging genus in the family, having started in the Ordovician Period and going extinct in the Permian.

Syringopora was first described by Georg August Goldfuss (1782-1848), a German paleontologist and zoologist. (Goldfuß is the proper spelling, if I can use that fancy Germanic letter.) He earned a PhD from Erlangen in 1804 and later in 1818 assumed a position teaching zoology at the University of Bonn. With Count Georg zu Münster, he wrote Petrefacta Germaniae, an ambitious attempt to catalog all the invertebrate fossils of Germany (but only got through some of the mollusks).

[abyssunder]

We need better pictures from OP. 

[hadrosauridae]

I have a smaller version on many cretaceous marine fossils (duck creek fm) I collected recently.  I was told they were most likely bryozoans.  Many different type of bryozoa, some for complex 3d structures, but the ones in my area all seem to be single layer, and confirmed by other from the same area. 

[Rockwood]

No. Stop it people.

Just no.

[minnbuckeye]

I think Halysites occurred up through the Devonian. The posted fossil is from the Cretaceous.

[aplomado]

Ok, you all have me intrigued!!!

 

Here is a better picture.  The dark chain is about one inch long.  There are no fossils visible on the back of the matrix.  One of my family found this in a creek.

Edited December 8, 2021 by aplomado

[JohnJ]

The darker colored bumps look to be the same as the lighter colored ones.

[Rockwood]

Rhizoliths ? Connected by a stolon in the case of the chain like structure ?