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I found this in Casselman River in Rockwood Pennsylvania a few years back just laying in the middle of the river as I was walking through it trying not to slip on the rocks haha! Always thought it was an intriguing & unique find but still to this day I have no idea what it is. No one whom I've showed it to over the years could identify it either. Needless to say, we're not expirenced in fossils none the less! I just stumbled upon this site and thought to myself how great it would be to have it finally identified after all these years (found it in 2014) so I figured I'd post some photos and anticipate receiving some exciting feedback! Any insight at all would be so very much appreciated, and I thank you for taking the time to give it a look & read my post! Thank you so much and take care!!

When I first found this, I was convinved it was a fossil. The material was obviously from cretaceous seabead, and the pattern indicated it was a sponge. I even looked it up and found a suitable candidate. Covered in a fine muddy brown clay, a clay that also exagerated the pattern, and submerged only partially in fresh water. I later brushed it of in the sink at home and let it dry over night. In the morning I realized there was a thin film, soft and now easy to peal off. I was a bit surprised but didn't think anything more of it. So, I went back to the same area today, to investigate if there was any more material of interest, and found two more stones with the very same pattern and of the same calcium material. I grew suspicious as the pattern for the new stones was all located in the top. And all patterns were nicely rounded of to the edges. To my knowledge, there should be a very very small probability that three fossil stones would have the pattern oriented uppward and according to gravity. Besides, the underside of all stones was heavily erroded. There was material from familiar cretaceous fossil sponges at the location, only a few feets away, but they too were heavily erroded and crushed to smaller bits. Realizing the two new stones had the exact same pattern uppwards, made me leave them and not pick them up. And now I am almost convinced this is not a fossil, but a bacteria colony living on cretaceous seabed material? The stuff did not look living in any way, it looked like a brown mud. Regardless I left the two stones. -What kind of bacteria would make this pattern? -how long does it take for bacteria to do this? -if it is a fossil, why would they all have the pattern oriented at the top? And why rounded of, pattern and all, to the edges? That is very suspicous.