Hexagonaria Coral Fossil

I recently got a new fossil, a 350 million year old Hexagonaria sp. coral fossil. (My husband is probably thinking, "Oh, great, now she's collecting dead corals, too.") This particular fossil was collected in the Sahara desert. It's hard to imagine that 350 million years ago, there were oceans in the Sahara and mid-west America where corals of the Hexagonaria genus thrived. It's so interesting to think about; this is the ancient ancestor (or distant cousin) of the modern closed brain corals in our aquariums and oceans. It looks so much like a Montastrea or a Prism coral. Wouldn't it be amazing to go back in time and see this coral when it was alive? What color were its polyps? What was its habitat like? Did it have any symbiotic relationships? We can only imagine.



Macro shot:



Here's a macro of the neon green Favia lizardensis in my coral aquarium for comparison:



Check out more fossil photos on my Flickr page->.