Have you ever found a cool fossil in Lawrence County?

I found this Acrocyathus fossil in western Lawrence County. The place where I found it was once covered by an immense colony of rugose coral. It thrived beneath the waters of a shallow sea.

We know this because the petrified ghosts of that reef litter the fields and woods today in thousands of honeycombed Acrocyathus fragments. They are exposed by the winter frosts and washed up by the summer rain.

When the sea dried up and the coral died, the reef was covered by mud and sediments. As the mud dried and the sediments hardened, the coral inside decayed and the cavities left behind slowly filled with minerals which, over time, formed fossils like this one.

According to the University of Kentucky Geological Survey, these fossils are approximately 330 million years old and are typically found in the geologic formation known as St. Louis Limestone. For more information about Acrocyathus, follow this link: https://tinyurl.com/ydwd7t6h

Leave photos of your favorite local fossil finds in the comments!