Great South Gems & Minerals

• Archimedes Fossil, Bryozoan, Thumbnail •
(Alabama)

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• Archimedes Fossil •

Archimedes Fossil - bryozoan

Ray personally collected these unusual fossils in Alabama. They look just like the shank part of a screw. Each of these fossils is about 1" long.

Named after the ancient Greek Archimedes, the inventor of the water screw. This bryozoan looks like the water screw. These bryozoans are from the Mississippian Period, about 320 to 260 million years old.

• Classification: Kingdom Animalia
• Phylum: Bryozoa
• Class: Stenolaemata
• Order: Fenestrida
• Family: Fenestellidae
• Genus: Archimedes (Many Species)

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The screw-like fossil you see here was the home of thousands of bryozoans. With a powerful magnifying glass or microscope you can see tiny pits. Each pit was the home of one bryzoans. Lots of species are extinct but many are living today. Bryozoans have a very ancient lineage going back to the Ordovician Period, some 500 million years, with common forms still around today. Scientist tell us that there are several classes of bryozoans and over 5000 living species today. Most people are unaware of their existance and would bave a hard time distinguishing colonial marine bryozoans from coral.

Bryozoans are all marine animals with many fresh water, as well as salt water species. In life the individual animals, "Zooids", formed sheets that were attached to the central skeletal structure shown here. The whole structure would be attached to the seafloor or a shell. Archimedes lived by filtering sea water from microscopic organisms.

See Ray's article under RAY'S RAMBLINGS about the collecting site where these fossils were collected.
See Morphology of the Bryozoan.

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