Ogmore - Carboniferous Limestone Fossils

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The Carboniferous limestone contains Carboniferous tabulates. Colonial tabulate corals such as Michelinia and Syringopora can be found at Ogmore. Michelinia formed small colonies with large, thick walled corallites. The phaceloid Syringopora had longer, thinner cylindrical corallites. By the late Permian the group was in decline.

Rugose corals are found in both colonial and solitary life modes. They are robust and calcitic. The population of rugose corals declined until extinction during the Permian. Today colonial corals are restricted to low latitudes.

This photograph is of a brachipod. Delepinea is a large productid. Brachiopods are marine invertibrates. They are sessile animals that secrete an external shell. Brachiopods are bilaterally symmetrical and have two valves of unequal size. They lived usually attached to the seabed by the pedicle. Brachiopods can be used as zone fossils for biostratigraphy in the Ordovician, Silurian, Carboniferous and Cretaceous.

Criniods are echinoderms. They live in a calyx made from calcite plates. Their flexible arms that collect food are called brachia. The tegmen can be found on the upper surface of the calyx. The tegmen contains the mouth and anus. Their disarticulated remains form part of the content of the Carboniferous limestones.

Gastropods are molluscs. Gastropods secrete a single calcareous shell which is closed at the apex. The shell is spirally coiled.

Burrows are left by the activity of organisms. Bioturbidation is a form of trace fossil. The trace fossils reprent sediment reworked by organisms when they buried into the soft sediment.

Zoophycos trace fossils can be found. These indicate complex feeding and dwelling burrows.