Description
This is a great Fossil Barnacle cluster.
From the famous Pinecrest Beds in Sarasota. Florida
This Fossil barnacle with Shell is a marine crustacean with an external shell, which attaches itself permanently to a variety of surfaces. Barnacles feed by filtering particles from the water using their modified feathery legs. These animals are a type of arthropod constituting the subphylum Crustacea, and are therefore related to crabs and lobsters.
Barnacles live their lives in three stages, two larval stages during which they are free swimming and one adult stage, solidly anchored to a surface and living in colonies closely surrounded by neighbors. Usually when the water temperature and the season is right, they tended to grow rapidly and in large colonies. Barnacles are alien-looking creatures with translucent body, feathery appendages and two, short antennae.
The larvae float in the water until they attach themselves to a hard surface. In this case t is a welk shell. This Fossil Barnacle with Shell is Pliocene in age and was found on dry land. During periods of high water, Florida was covered by ocean. Because it was under water animals lived on the sea floor. Once the water receded the animals were covered by dirt and sediment and became fossils.
