These fossil sea biscuits were picked up on a limerock road out in the country. Around here limerock is crushed and spread onto dirt roads to stabilize them. Often the gravel will contain these casts of the sea biscuit "test"...(shell). As you probably already guessed, the sea biscuit is an Echinoderm and a cousin of sea urchins, sand dollars, and seastars. These are fossils, but sea biscuits still exist.
6 comments:
Those are beautiful. Can you eat seabiscuits?
Seriously, though...In regards to the sand dollars (and seabiscuits, for that matter)...how and what do they eat? How do they reproduce? I guess I'm presuming on your knowledge, but you are the Oracle of Florida...heh! You can just give me a website to go to, if you have one handy. (I guess I'm ready for school to begin...sigh.)
What happened to the turtle?
Hick,
Sand dollars are detritivores...meaning they eat detritus (dead matter). I should have included this in my post...see, I was right when I said you ask great questions.
Dollars will use strings of sticky mucous to collect detritus, plankton, etc and then slurp those in...think spaghetti slurping.
Sea urchins are more active grazers and have a little scraping mouth structure called "Aristotle's Lantern" for scraping algae off the bottom.
The turtle post is now up. I still owe you cypress knees and scallop in the shell.:)
The limerock we haul out of Miami is loaded with whole clams so perfect you could almost pass one off to someone as if it was still alive.The limerock pit supplies the rock they add to concrete.Probley every house in St Augustine has rock from this pit in their house.We have hauled about 400 rail cars a day for over 75 years and they have a 99 year lease to continue.Dont be surprised if Miami one day produces the largest sink hole ever seen.
Oh shoot...now I'm getting hungry for clams. Maybe I should be living closer to the ocean because of the good eats, but I hate the beach. Mountains rule!
Thanks for the info, FC...good stuff. I think I will have to add your blog to my science curriculum when we start school in a couple of weeks.
Hick,
What an honor. I will keep it accurate and family friendly.Thanks for stopping by.
Hey, I think I specifically know one of those.
-Pablo
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