1 hour ago
2
Say ahhh!
A woman searching for fossils on a recent vacation with her husband got more than she bargained for when she found a weird and terrifying formation resembling a set of human teeth.
Christine Clark, 64, was on Holy Island in Northumberland when she noticed a tiny stone that seemed to be “smiling” at her.
“It looked like someone’s fake teeth,” she told BBC of the strange find.
Sure enough, perfectly embedded into the lower half of the rock is what appears to be a disembodied set of open choppers encircling a black “mouth” on an otherwise featureless pebble.
After posting images of the stone on a fossil identification page on Facebook, she concluded it was an ancient marine invertebrate called a crinoid.
Crinoids, which belong to the same phylum as sea urchins and sea cucumbers, first appeared some 500 million years ago during the Cambrian period. Although it’s one of the oldest complex animals on the planet, modern versions of it still exist today.
The creatures attach themselves to the sea floor with a flexible stem, and their bodies are surrounded by a series of branching arms that somewhat resemble a flower — earning them the nickname “sea lilies.”
“The stem consists of these little discs, called ossicles, and what Christine has found is a number of these ossicles connected together, in what is called a columnal,” Dr. Jan Hennissen, senior paleontologist at the British Geological Survey, told the outlet.
So the “mouth” formation in the stone Clark found weren’t teeth at all, but one of those stems bending and forming in just the right shape.
“It is probably from a rock formation called the Alston formation, which is a dark limestone, and that is about 350 million years old,” Hennissen surmised.
Clark said she’s gotten a number of offers to buy the fossil, but so far plans on keeping the unusual artifact.
“It brings a lot of amusement to many people,” she said.
English (US)