Coral Limestone
This is a very special limestone block. We can see the fossilized remains of a coral colony in it.
A coral colony that lived in a coral reef on the edge of an ocean 200 million years ago.
You really mean coral, just like we find in the sea today?
Yes. Similar types of coral still exist today.
Coral polyps are small animals that accumulate limestone, and eventually build coral reefs.
Did other animals live in the coral reefs?
Coral reefs are the most species-rich environment on Earth, and this was already the case over 200 million years ago. So mussels, snails, aquatic reptiles and many others lived there. When they died, their limestone shells and skeletons sank to the floor.
Over millions of years, vast cemeteries of sea life, with thousands of meters of deposits, piled up.
Today these fossil-rich rocks are found, for example, on the Murtèr saddle, at 2500 metres above sea level, a long way from any tropical ocean.
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