The genus is Actinocyathus, a type of rugose coral. This was brought back from Morocco by a personal friend of mine around the year 2000. He had planned to put these under a glass-top coffee table but never got around to it. They make beautiful decorations and can be used for a lot of things. They also make a great gift for ocean collectors.

Rugose corals have a skeleton made of calcite that is often fossilized. Like modern corals (Scleractinia), rugose corals were invariably benthic, living on the sea floor or in a reef-framework. Some symbiotic rugose corals were endobionts of Stromatoporoidea, especially in the Silurian period.

Rugose corals first appear in the geological record in Middle Ordovician rocks from North America. They diversified more slowly than tabulate corals, but their patterns of evolution are similar. They were important members of Palaeozoic reef communities, but their diversity declined during the end-Devonian extinction. At this time, and in the earlier extinction event at the end of the Ordovician, solitary corals and generalist colonies were more likely to survive than highly specialized colonial forms. During the Carboniferous, rugose corals regained some diversity and were the more common of the two orders. Throughout their evolution, it has been suggested that there was a trend towards a more integrated colony form, with more contact between polyps of the same colony. All rugose corals became extinct in the end-Permian mass extinction event.

Each of these beautiful pieces were purchased in person and brought back from Morocco. These pieces are over 300 million years old.

These make great gift ideas for the nautical collector. They also make great arts and craft supplies.