Fossils in stone
What the limestone remembers — the dead that became the rock.
Limestone is a graveyard the sea built. The shells and bones of dead things settled to the bottom and, over millions of years, became the rock itself. Carve into a fossil bed and you're cutting through the deep past.
What you'll find
ammonites coiled shells, extinct 66 Ma crinoids sea lilies — stem discs, like tiny coins corals reef builders, colonial bivalves the clams and oysters
Reading them
Fossils are index markers — each one lived only for a slice of deep time, so a fossil tells a geologist when the rock formed. To a mason, it's a signature the stone carries of the sea it came from.
