Tour of Fossil Bryozoan Reefs

A very rich layer of fossil Bryozoan reefs is shown . Ohio , Kentucky and Indiana have a world famous fossil layer of rocks .Ordovician fossil layer (called the Cincinnati Series )is full of Bryozoans . Bryozoans are found as: broken twig like shapes , fan shapes and spheres and encruster like blobs .This tour only shows the branching twig like type .Other Brozoans resemble leaf lettuce like fronds .During the Paleozoic , the world was warmer and there where no Ice caps at the poles.Sea level was 600 feet higher than today .This put the lowlands of the continents under 5-60 feet of sea water .

Scientific article about worlds largest Bryozoan .
http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/Portals/10/pdf/newsletter/2005No.1.pdf

Good pictures of the largest Bryozoan
http://drydredgers.org/ronsbryos1.htm

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Cincinnati
• fossils
• Dry
• Dredgers
• fossil
• Bryozoa
• Bryozoans
• Ordovician
• reefs
• coral
• geology
• paleontology
• biology
• paleo

[Adams42]

'Who' are the photosynthetic symbionts in the Bryozoans???

[flyingscience]

@Adams42 Bryozoans are filter feeding colonial animals similiar to coral but far more complex .

What is a light(photo) artificial (synthetic) , friend companion (symbiont). They eat plankton so in Sponge Bobs world its probably Gary the snail.

[flyingscience]

We have 700 feet of rich limestone and shale (only a few feet are seen at the surface) this is called the Ordovician series .It blankets the Earth but usualy deep down buried under younger layers . The Cincinnati Arch has bowed this rock layers upwrds and the glaciers removed / bulldozed the younger layers off .This is what gave us the best late Ordovician outcrops in the world.

[flyingscience]

1.I used the word reefs however the term Bryozoan communities would be more accurate .Reefs are denser in population .Sometimes they are reefs in concentrated patches or layers .

[Vietnigamese]

Subscribed thanks for the really well made video.

[flyingscience]

@Astronomy Guru1 Is your coral Mississippian age ? Are the Brachs the same age?

[flyingscience]

@AstronomyGuru1 Sounds fun , my kids and I have been collecting water worn horn corals , and glacieral erratic horn corals Devonian from Canada deposted here in Ohio (see my videos on that : glacial erratic fossils ) .

[Cnidarious]

So you put the skeletons back together?

I just got a fiendish idea.

I sometimes take bits of Pachyclavularia mat tissue and Super glue it to gorgonian skeletons to make a sort Pseudo gorg.

imagen a reassembled ancient Bryo skeleton

Reseeded with life.

Interesting to think about.

[lilmisstasha22]

theres a place in northern canada (i went there with my step dad) theres all these boulders and what not everywhere, we were breaking rocks and all of a sudden in the center of the rocks were fossils, we even found one with a spinal cord and donated to a local high school!!

[huttonism]

Excellent!