a MYSTERY OF THE SEA! please help

[xfer]

Toby should be making this thread, but I had the photos on my camera and just uploaded them, so hopefully he can post some more info.

We found this on the beach, in a tide pool, on Hilton Head Island, SC. No idea what it is--animal, vegetable, mineral, fungus, etc. We couldn't get extremely good pictures of it due to my camera's poor close-up focusing, but here they are:

To me, it looks most like a stem with a leaf on top (albeit a thick, mushroom-like leaf).

Any clue? Maybe Mia can post these in her LJ or something, too.

 

[xfer]

I mean, are there SEA MUSHROOMS? because it could definitely be that. It had bilateral symmetry, not radial symmetry like many mushrooms, though.

 

[Nemesis_lxix]

^looks more like an animal to me.

 

[xfer]

i dont think it had a body cavity though--solid through. did you rip it apart, toby?

 

[xfer]

what about this?

http://www.enature.com/fieldguides/detail.asp?shapeID=1067&curGroupID=8&lgfromWhere=&curPageNum=6

or some other kind of polyp, like a jellyfish polyp.

 

[CATL]

I can't tell you what it is, but it does look cool.

 

[Nemesis_lxix]

why all that interest in finding out what it is ???

 

[coelacanth_M]

because toby and alex may have discovered a new species!

 

[Nemesis_lxix]

^you actualy belive that ?

 

[xfer]

intellectual curiousity demands that when you encounter something you don't know, you figure out what it is. that IS how new species are discovered.

I emailed the Teacher Resource Center at the New England Aquarium, so we'll see what they say.

 

[FuSoYa]

I didn't dissect it, but I still have it, in case the Aquarium or Marine Biological Institute or whatever are interested in a sample.

 

[Desertsands]

You found... just -one-?

 

[minxnim]

there are sea mushrooms but ive never seen one that color.

 

[xfer]

someone said it might be a lophophore? i don't think so...