Bryozoan
How to recognise them
Flat mats or tubes with a pitted surface
Fossil Info
Bryozoans are tiny marine animals, sometimes called moss animals (but they are not plants!). These animals live in colonies inside a hard skeleton. Bryozoans live in pits in the skeleton and gather food particles in the water with tiny tentacles. They are our very distant relatives – the individual animals in the colony share a common nerve cord that is like a very simple version of ours.
Fun Fact
You can see bryozoans today at the beach, often as white mats with a rough surface that grow on seaweed.