I was super excited to discover several fossils on Oval Beach in Saugatuck, Michigan, USA that are highly unusual to find in winter. The fossil below was lying under deep layers of sand, but luckily, the mild weather with minimal snowfall allowed winter winds to push sand off the under layers. Also contributing to fossil hunting were the low water levels from a long dry spell during summer 2012, which produced more beach to explore.

These fossil samples are extinct tabulate corals, reef building colony-type corals, Halysites, commonly called, Chain Corals. They are fairly easy to distinguish due to the chain-link raised marks for which they’re named.

In life, the extinct Halysites corals possessed small tubes where the jelly-like polyps resided. The coral polyps contained stinging cells for protection and also for siphoning plankton and organic matter passing by in the ocean currents. As the Chain Corals grew, they built up walls of tube-like chambers called theca which steadily multiplied while adding more links to the chain. In their heyday, they built large limestone reef structures on the seabed. They thrived especially during the Silurian period as far back as 425 million-years-ago!

Halysites Chain Coral Classification

Kingdom: Animal

Phylum: Cnidaria (means stinging animal)

Class: Anthozoa (means flower animal)

Order:  Tabulata (possess inner horizontal dividing walls from growth patterns)

Family: Halisitidae (means chain coral)

Genus: Halysites  Species: unknown

Explore more Lake Michigan fossils in another photo-essay I provided, otherwise, keep scrolling!

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