Brigantian sponge? tabulate?

[tqb]

Just had a look - you've got some very nice corals there! I love cerioid Lithostrotions (annoyingly, the non-cerioid fasciculate ones are now called Siphonodendron, but you probably already know that!).

Have you got John Nudds' key to Lithostrotionids?

www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CD8QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.app.pan.pl%2Farchive%2Fpublished%2Fapp25%2Fapp25-385.pdf&ei=8OdaUtTQD-6T0QXe2oHQDQ&usg=AFQjCNHUXWWWrgUquTV2CVW5o9iMx5HF9A&sig2=-tCfzvZeFAxC6vSLMou-Jw&bvm=bv.53899372,d.d2k

- very good and I'm told it's still valid (doesn't use Siphonodendron though - and splitting them off like that upsets some people anyway!)

The ones I'm after are Corwenia, Palastraea (Palaeosmilia) regia and most Orionastraea - I have a few of the last two but they're very elusive around here!

I've put a Carb. coral thread on the UKF forum - here's an early page:
www.discussfossils.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3326&PN=7&title=carboniferous-corals

[reighan]

Oh, wow, thanks! I've been inactive for a while and have forgotten a lot of the little I knew but now I'm all motivated again. :-) I didn't think anyone knew or cared about Carb coral. Yours are beautiful (and nicely prepped and photographed). I'm on the Llyn. Let me know if you're going to be in the area and want to check out the beach. I've always had a feeling that there is a lot there that I simply didn't recognise, so who knows what you might find. Luckily, my Coursera classes are finishing this month, so I can switch back to palaeontology for a while. (Some day they will actually schedule the introductory geology course that I need badly but they have been postponing for nearly a year now.)

[tqb]

And thanks to you! I started collecting Carb corals because we happen to live near some and I needed a fossil fix. The Yorkshire Lias is that bit further but even there I now prefer to look for Carb erratics...

Lucky you to live on the Llyn! We had a couple of holidays around there a long time ago and must go back soon - I hadn't realised the beaches were fossiliferous, it'd be good to meet up. We're probably going to stay on the north Anglesey coast which is excellent for corals, hopefully next year.

Perhaps we could sneak a Carb coral thread on here?!!

[reighan]

You can find at least one bit of junceum or similar on just about any north Wales beach, I think. This beach (Trefor) is all presumably erratics because the moraine contents are eroding out of the mudbanks, though there is a fairly localised intensification of some ironstone material that Joe said is oncolite that I'd guess is local. The local shale is supposedly nonfosilliferous, but I'm not so sure; I really have to study how iron occurs and changes in deposits. There is a great assortment of nonfossiliferous rocks, some of which may come from Anglesey, since this area is Ordovician volcanic under the drift. There are older fossiliferous outcrops on other parts of the peninsula too. I started learning (once I finally found Joe and Lucy) because I didn't know what I was finding and then couldn't find any decent literature on it. There are probably artefacts too but I know even less about iron age archaeology than palaeontology, even with Time Team. :-)

You've gotten me motivated again. Once my Human Physiology course is done (late October), maybe I could contribute to a thread. I'll have mostly questions, though. :-)

[Joe Botting]

Wow, I've got some catching up to do...

Amazing specimen, Tarquin - that does look to me like a sponge, but it's a weirdie. The architecture looks like a hexactinellid, but the struts of the skeleton would be very robust for that - it's somewhere between those and stromatoporoids, from what I can make out of the arrangement, but that makes no sense at all. The calcite preservation may mean very little - in shallow water, silica is often replaced by calcite, and inside nodules, all sorts can happen.

This is just a quick note - I'll have to have a close look later on.

[tqb]

Hi Joe, thanks and welcome back!

[Joe Botting]

No worries, Tarquin - it's an intriguing one. Good to see you're still here, and I will have a good look at this one soon.