Paleontica Community

Hi everybody, that's not the first time i consult that very interesting site, specially to try to identify the sponges i have.
I suppose the following piece is a sponge.
I found it in the Cenomanian of the village or Port des Barques near the town of Rochefort, in the department of Charentes-Maritimes, Sputh-West of France.
The scale i used is in centimeters.

Hi! Welcome to to fossiel.net. It is indeed a very interesting site and a perfect place for discussion.

Could you post some close-up pictures of your fossil? This would help a lot for determination.

Best wishes,
Oliver

Thank you Oliver, i have magnified the photos i have. I'll take more tomorrow if necessary.

Yes, additional photos are indeed neccessary. The ones you magnified are unfortunately too bad for determination.

Best wishes,
Oliver

Have you considered the possibility that it could be a coral? Maybe something in the family of Helioporidae, like Polytremacis?

Cheers,
Johan

[Bewerkt door FossilDude op 11-10-2017 om 22:15 NL]

Hi, fossildude. I had concidered it could be some kind of coral, but i'm knew in the fossil domain, and the idea it could be a sponge rather than a coral predominated. I agree that your proposition is a good one.
And i also find that you have a really nice nautilus.

Thank you for the compliment.

Maybe you can try to take a close-up photograph of some of the better preserved parts of the specimen, as Oliver already suggested. In the attached photograph I've indicated a part that would be suitable for this.

If it's a Helioporid coral, we should be able to discern the apertures of the smaller zooids. These are tiny little holes surrounding the larger ones.

Cheers,
Johan

Hi, as promised i took some pics of the zone you showed me.

Dear ?

thank you for the additional pictures. To me it is still not identifyable. I don't see any septae that would hint to a coral. The surface shows no regular structure and is possibly eroded. This makes is difficult to state if this is a coral or f.e. a bryozoan colony. Here is an example of the bryozoon Celleporaria palmata from miocene deposits of France, that lives in symbiosis with the coral Cryptangia: https://www.fossiel.net/id_system/fossi ... =5040-0006

Finally only a view on transverse or longitudinal sections can lead to a solution.

Best wishes,
Oliver



[Bewerkt door hubertus68 op 12-10-2017 om 11:32 NL]

Thank you very much for your answers, both of you.
Cheers.
Sophie.