WHAT IS AGATIZED ROCK from Tampa Bay
These unique agatized rock is really 20+ million year old fossilized coral. The outside skeleton of tiny ocean animals called polyps, which live in colonies attached to hard underwater surfaces. When alive, polyps combine their own carbon dioxide with the lime in warm seawater to form a limestone-like hard surface, or coral. Agatized coral occurs when silica i
n the ocean water hardens, replacing the limy corals with a form of quartz mineral known as Agate, a variety of Chalcedony. This long fossilization process (20-30 million years – from the Oligocene-Miocene period) results in the formation of a “pseudomorph,” meaning that one mineral has replaced another without having lost its original form. Silicified coral, Fossil coral or Agatized coral are the remnants of primal coral reefs that grew in the warm coastal waters of ancient oceans. Chalcedony is a micro crystalline (fine crystals visible only under a microscope) Quartz that includes stones like Jaspers, Agates, Onyx, Petrified Wood and Flint. Agatized coral is one of the hundreds of cousins in this massive gemstone family. Coral will fossilize in one of two ways: (1) Silica will replace a portion of the Coral, creating geodes, sometimes with brilliant boytrodial Quartz clusters inside, (2) In extremely rare instances, water will become trapped inside a geode. In the second occurrence, the coral is completely replaced by silica creating some exotic specimens. One of the oldest deposits of agatized coral is in Eastern West Virginia. This formation is called Hillsdale Limestone and it runs through Greenbrier and Pocahontas counties in West Virginia. And the in Tampa Bay area, near the Ballast Point and the shores of Honeymoon Island are other locations that used to be found rich with agatized coral recently discovered in the late nineteenth century.
