the fossils
cladopora
branching coral · winding bristly bands
The tell
Pale bands that wander and branch across a dark stone, each one edged with fine bristles. The bristles are the coral cells themselves, cut lengthwise by whatever face the lake wore on it. A bryozoan is flat lace with holes too fine to count; this is bristly and it winds.
Cladopora is extinct. It was a tabulate coral, part of the same reef that made the Petoskey, and it has been gone since the Devonian. Syringopora is the other branching tabulate on this chart: that one is a bundle of hollow parallel tubes joined by cross bars, where cladopora is a solid twig.
What it gets mistaken for
- syringopora
- crinoid
- charlevoix
- sponge
- coral
The facts
- also calledbranching coral · winding bristly bands
- age~385 million yrs
- where it turns upstatewide in gravel · mistaken for bryozoan
- the field markbristly bands that wander · bryozoan is flat lace
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