to the center of the coral like the spokes of a wheel and are strengthened 

 by small crossbars. The outer surface of the coral is strongly wrinkled. 



In colonial forms the skeleton may be branching or closely packed 

 and massive. Colonial corals were very numerous in the Devonian and 

 Silurian seas once covering Western New York. Favosites is an abundantly 

 found fossil whose massive colony may be a few feet in diameter. The 

 colony is made up of numerous prismatic shaped individual tubes a fraction 

 of an inch in diameter. They have no vertical septa but characteristically 

 possess many horizontal partitions or tabulae. The vertical walls of the 

 individual animals are perforated by small pores. Favosites is often called 

 honeycomb coral. 



Pleurodictyum is a colonial coral of a depressed and disc-like shape. 

 A concentrically wrinkled covering is found over the lower surface. The 

 individual corals average one-fourth of an inch or less in diameter and 

 are prismatic and funnel-shaped. The colony averages a few inches in 

 diameter. Pleurodictyum is sometimes mistaken for a fossil turtle shell 

 because of its convex mosaic-like surface. 



Bryozoans 



Most bryozoans are tiny, colonial marine animals. The calcareous 

 skeletons formed by the colony of animals are often preserved as fossils. 

 Some fossils consist of a simple chainlike series of tubes usually found 

 encrusting foreign surfaces such as brachiopod shells. Others form thin 

 leaflike expansions, rounded branches, massive bodies, or lacy fans. The tiny 

 holes seen perforating the fossils are the openings where each animal of the 

 colony lived. 



Bryozoans are common local fossils; they are found in a great variety 

 of shapes and sizes. One of the commonest Western New York bryozoan 

 fossils is Fenestrellina (often called Fenestella) which is a fan or funnel- 

 shaped, lacelike colony. The individual animals lived in the almost micro- 

 scopic double row of holes along the radiating branches. 



Brachiopods 



Brachiopods are common fossils of Western New York because they 

 were among the dominant forms of the ancient life which existed here and 

 possessed the necessary hard parts to be preserved as fossils. The hard parts 

 consist of an external shell of two parts called valves. In this respect they 

 bear a superficial resemblance to clams. However, the valves of brachiopods 

 differ from those of clams because they are of unequal size and shape. If the 

 brachiopod were to be cut so that two equal valves resulted, the cut would 

 pass through the middle of each valve, while in a clam it would pass 

 between the valves. 



BRYOZOAX Fenestrellina BRACHIOPODS Mucrospirijer mucronatus, Atrypa reticularis 



