Roger - Big Bend Texas Fossil

[greywolf22]

Roger
This was found about 1/4 mile from my house in Big Bend along side a dirt road. The area was covered by a shallow sea millions of years ago.




Jack

[PaArtifactHunter]

what type of fossil do you think it is?it looks rely neat what ever it is I have something that has those circle marks kind of but it is blue and grey and I call it a digital rock but I think its a fossil of some sort found it where I collect my artifacts I will have to put a picture out.

[greywolf22]

Do not know what it is.
Jack

[turkeytail]

Wild looking!

[painshill]

Hi Jack
Welcome back... missed ya. Hope you brought back some of that mud you've been digging in. It would have been useful here last week. Good for throwin' :laugh:
I would say that’s a nice chunk of fossilised coral reef. The two “sandwich” plates look to be disc or plate corals… possibly a Turbinaria species or something similar (ignore the colour... that doesn't survive):

They frequently have those frilly edges and may grow like a haphazard series of stacked cookies (or even in neat matching pairs):

Unless that's a single thick plate (unusual), I think you have more than one species there. The plate coral looks to have intergrown with at least one other kind of tabulate coral (the honeycomb-like material). Apart from solitary rugose types, corals frequently grow together as a species mixture to form a reef:

Typically they begin to commonly appear in the fossil record from around 450 million years ago. For Big Bend, I would think lower cretaceous is most likely.
Roger

[Dandielyonwine]

Very nice chunk of reef you have there!

[greywolf22]

Roger
Thanks for the info.
Jack