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Pippa

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I found this 4cm wide "knitted mushroom cap" at a beach near Kenosha in SE Wisconsin. I thought at first to have found a tabulate coral, but looking closer, I can't see any corallites at all and oddly, the top, instead of flaring out to a solid "table", curves back into itself, with most of the center missing altogether.  

All of this made me think that maybe this is a sponge? If not, what could it be? 

 

Top:

P1030298.thumb.JPG.04d42838f428948c842ed5e6839e88e5.JPG

 

Bottom:

P1030296.thumb.JPG.796d6a8fc308477d25fe8d45fea5e606.JPG

 

 

 

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It's a worn solitary rugose coral, with lots of septa and dissepiments. Interesting shape, and it looks like it reflects the original - there are some Silurian possibilities, such as Schlotheimophyllum if it occurs around there.

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Tarquin

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I have collected literally a ton of material from that area. Used to fish for the salmon and trout at the mouth of the river. You will find an occasional Petoskey Stone and very rarely puddingstone. I had hundreds of Favosites specimens from that area in matrix that varied from light grey to beige to brown to charcoal to black. Would pick up fossils and interesting rocks when the fishing was slow. I guess that's why my fishing buddy always caught more than I did. The waves wash in new material every year during winter on those brutal east winds.

 

 

Mark.

 

Fossil hunting is easy -- they don't run away when you shoot at them!

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6 hours ago, Pippa said:

I can't see any corallites at all

Forest for trees syndrome. :)

It is one big coralite.

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6 hours ago, TqB said:

It's a worn solitary rugose coral, with lots of septa and dissepiments. Interesting shape, and it looks like it reflects the original - there are some Silurian possibilities, such as Schlotheimophyllum if it occurs around there.

Aha! Sponges have spicules only, no septa and dissepiments. And that large blob of nothing is replacing one large corallite.   

I googled shlotheimophyllum, the USGS Illinois geological survey lists all types of corals, but, alas, no shloth...

So a solitary rugose coral it is. For now. 

Thanks so much TqB. You ROCK!

 

2 hours ago, Mark Kmiecik said:

I have collected literally a ton of material from that area. Used to fish for the salmon and trout at the mouth of the river. You will find an occasional Petoskey Stone and very rarely puddingstone. I had hundreds of Favosites specimens from that area in matrix that varied from light grey to beige to brown to charcoal to black. Would pick up fossils and interesting rocks when the fishing was slow. I guess that's why my fishing buddy always caught more than I did. The waves wash in new material every year during winter on those brutal east winds.

Mark, I'd love to see some of your lake michigan trove. Do you have gallery with photos on the forum? If you do, I guess I just don't know how to find it.

 

Thanks also for giving me the tip on Wisconsin beaches. Interesting how they're so different. Hubs and I quickly picked up a various corals and brachiopods, an odd piece of limestone, with rust stains that make it look like a brick wall -white "brick" with dark colored "mortar" and an another odd rock with rust colored ring stains. 

Anyone has an idea on how those stains came to be?

 

P1030277.thumb.JPG.730733fded1578458ed56c9c798d74b8.JPG    5da66e1d70a4e_P1030333.jpg.87f2348c5d5aff460efeeef19fdbf7aa.jpg

 

 

3 hours ago, Rockwood said:

Forest for trees syndrome. :)

It is one big coralite.

Haha, yep! You got me there. 

It IS a big corallite, isn't it? 

 

 

Question for all: how big can they get? Anyone know?

 

Also, if I could remove the fill, would there likely be any corallite underneath? What's the likelyhood? 

Never done anything like it though. I know people do the acid treatment to get halysites out of their matrix. Guess the success would depend on the fill being softer than the skeleton, or I'll end up with just fill and further degraded coral?  Lot's to think about...

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7 hours ago, Pippa said:

Question for all: how big can they get?

Quoted from George R. McGhee's book Carboniferous Giants and Mass Extinction. Siphonophyllia had even larger skeletons at 750 millimeters (30 inches) high

More of the septa could probably be exposed in the center, but I doubt it would be worth the effort, and the odds of being pleased with the results of your first try are low.

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17 hours ago, Pippa said:

Mark, I'd love to see some of your lake michigan trove. Do you have gallery with photos on the forum? If you do, I guess I just don't know how to find it.

I gave away my mineral and fossil collection away to a young man who was very interested in them in the 80's and then shortly afterwards got hooked on Mazon Creek fossils. I have nothing left from prior to 1988. I got tired of moving 27 crates of rock with the furniture each time I moved.

 

 

Mark.

 

Fossil hunting is easy -- they don't run away when you shoot at them!

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16 hours ago, Rockwood said:

Quoted from George R. McGhee's book Carboniferous Giants and Mass Extinction. Siphonophyllia had even larger skeletons at 750 millimeters (30 inches) high

More of the septa could probably be exposed in the center, but I doubt it would be worth the effort, and the odds of being pleased with the results of your first try are low.

Yeah, I'll try to work on some less pretty fossils first, so if I make things worse, I won't mind too much.

Wow, just saw a Siphonophyllia on fossil dude's website that barely fits into the palm of a hand. Beautiful!  

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9 hours ago, Mark Kmiecik said:

I gave away my mineral and fossil collection away to a young man who was very interested in them in the 80's and then shortly afterwards got hooked on Mazon Creek fossils. I have nothing left from prior to 1988. I got tired of moving 27 crates of rock with the furniture each time I moved.

Ouch! Yes, I totally understand. I figure, if we move I keep my faves and return the rest to the beaches... maybe for other people to find and enjoy. :)

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23 hours ago, doushantuo said:

Lovely gesture!!

Well, throwing rocks back into the waves while taking plenty of enjoyable walks at the beaches, hands down, beats packing them up into boxes for a move across country. :-)

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TqB:     Could this be a solitary rugose button coral?

 

Something such as "Hadrophyllum orbignyi" from the Devonian? While the bedrock at the Kenosha beach is Silurian, just a half hour north in Milwaukee, it's Devonian. Waves carry rocks from as far as Lake Superior down to Illinois. So surely that would be possible. I know that this rugose coral has been found in the midwest, but I have not found it mentioned in connection with Lake Michigan. Still these things do look quite similar to my little "button mushroom caps", down to the recurved rounded top.

 

What do you think?

 

 P1030298.thumb.JPG.04d42838f428948c842ed5e6839e88e5.thumb.jpg.6cb18110aab7399cc070594ab413f860.jpg5da9381a701ea_P1030296copy.jpg.f87253f9f27b475c778a5201346a6e16.jpg     5da9389245900_Hadrophyllumorbignyi.jpg.90c96d876a3e4f90481543f1e4dc9bc5.jpghadrophyllum-orbignyi.jpg.5d57870c3f30a14b46029f1e13e6fbbc.jpg

 

 

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3 hours ago, Pippa said:

TqB:     Could this be a solitary rugose button coral?

 

Something such as "Hadrophyllum orbignyi" from the Devonian? While the bedrock at the Kenosha beach is Silurian, just a half hour north in Milwaukee, it's Devonian. Waves carry rocks from as far as Lake Superior down to Illinois. So surely that would be possible. I know that this rugose coral has been found in the midwest, but I have not found it mentioned in connection with Lake Michigan. Still these things do look quite similar to my little "button mushroom caps", down to the recurved rounded top.

 

What do you think?

 

 P1030298.thumb.JPG.04d42838f428948c842ed5e6839e88e5.thumb.jpg.6cb18110aab7399cc070594ab413f860.jpg5da9381a701ea_P1030296copy.jpg.f87253f9f27b475c778a5201346a6e16.jpg     5da9389245900_Hadrophyllumorbignyi.jpg.90c96d876a3e4f90481543f1e4dc9bc5.jpghadrophyllum-orbignyi.jpg.5d57870c3f30a14b46029f1e13e6fbbc.jpg

 

 

The overall shape is similar but Hadrophyllum is a lot smaller (12mm maximum for H. orbignyi) and, much more importantly, the septal pattern is very different.

 

By the way, according to the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Schlotheimophyllum occurs in Canada and Indiana/Kentucky, so one could easily have been glacially transported to the shores of southern Lake Michigan. It could have been described under a different name - Ptychophyllum or Chonophyllum, according to this (not your area, I know): http://louisvillefossils.blogspot.com/2010/05/schlotheimophyllum-or-ptychophyllum.html

It's just one guess though, I'm sure there are several other possibilities of that size, especially if you add in Devonian as a possibility.

 

Yours is worn so we don't know how rounded or not it was on the top surface - it could have been a sharp edged cup, or more rounded like the Hadrophyllum. Whatever it is, it's a lovely specimen!

 

From the same paper as the black and white Hadrophyllum in your post, showing the septal patterns:

5da97e686198b_Screenshot2019-10-18at09_28_57.thumb.png.0764fdd8d6f75b5265c5f4071baefb38.png

 

 

 

 

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Tarquin

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On 10/18/2019 at 4:03 AM, TqB said:

The overall shape is similar but Hadrophyllum is a lot smaller (12mm maximum for H. orbignyi) and, much more importantly, the septal pattern is very different.

 

By the way, according to the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Schlotheimophyllum occurs in Canada and Indiana/Kentucky, so one could easily have been glacially transported to the shores of southern Lake Michigan. It could have been described under a different name - Ptychophyllum or Chonophyllum, according to this (not your area, I know): http://louisvillefossils.blogspot.com/2010/05/schlotheimophyllum-or-ptychophyllum.html

It's just one guess though, I'm sure there are several other possibilities of that size, especially if you add in Devonian as a possibility.

 

Yours is worn so we don't know how rounded or not it was on the top surface - it could have been a sharp edged cup, or more rounded like the Hadrophyllum. Whatever it is, it's a lovely specimen!

 

I'm sure you're right re. the septal patterns being different - even though, having no experience, I just can't see what your trained eye can see.

And obviously size matters, haha. if anything, googling the different corals has shown me how important dimensions are on photos and in descriptions. They're often buried deep in pages and pages of research, or in the Louisville Fossil site, they're missing altogether in his beautiful blog. 

 

I will probably never know exactly what it is that I have and that's ok.  As you say, it IS a lovely specimen. 

 

I also really appreciate you taking the time to explain your reasoning behind your responses. This is so much more helpful than just being given a pat answer.  If nothing else, you're helping me learn (alas, a bit late in my life) that things aren't always what they seem. :)

 

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a long while back i posted this,but memory may be failing me:

hadroprr00 (2).jpg

 

 

edit:

revision de Hadrophyllum orbignyi Milne-Edwards & HAime,1850(Coelenterata ,Rugosa) du Devonien D ' Amerique et discussion sur le systematique

des Hadrophyllidae

Geodiversitas,28-2/2006)

all diacritics omitted

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RECOMMENDED,Plusquellec more or less(probably MORE) pioneered the ultrathin section method for use in Paleozoic coral taxonomy

g2006n2a2 (1).pdf

hadroprr00 (2).jpg

hadro23qprr00 (2).jpg

 

 

 

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