Have you ever seen Archimedes?
Contrary to what people might think, what I'm about to show you is not Archimedes the Greek mathematician. Though I would love to meet him for myself, we know that's not possible because... well, he's dead. That's why I'm about to show you something better.
Now you might ask: What could possibly be better than meeting the guy who shouted eureka?
A lot of things, actually.
Let me show you!
If that doesn't amaze you, then let me explain. What you're seeing is actually a fossil of our very, very late ancestors. The Archimedes specie (sp.) is under the phylum bryozoa, which is a classification of organisms that are distinguished from other groups by their colonial living habits, minute bodies, and U-shaped digestion tracks.
Falling under the class Stenolaemata, Archimedes sp. is characterized by its long, tubular, narrow, and calcified body. When alive, many small organisms called zooids actually encircled around the fossil you see in the picture. Only the central stalk was attached to the sea floor, and it is the only one preserved because it is not as brittle as the zooids.
What makes Archimedes sp. notable is that it can be an index fossil for the Mississippian time. This means that, should you happen to find a similar looking fossil while you're digging through your backyard, you can automatically assume that the rocks around you are of Mississippian age. Age correlation is much complicated than that, though, but that's the general idea.
The Archimedes sp. became extinct during the Permian, just like most of the marine and terrestrial species alive at that time.
This was just one of the fossils I've encountered in my micropaleontology class last semester. I'm planning to post more, featuring other types. There's actually quite a lot of very interesting ones which I would actually want to share here.
Oh, if you have any questions, I'll try my best to answer them! For now, I'd appreciate to know what you thought of this!
Picture taken by myself using my iPhone 6S. The fossil sample belongs to my university.
Information from my Geology 130: Micropaleontology notes, as taken from Invertebrate Fossils (1952) by Raymond C. Moore, Cecil G. Lalicker, and Alfred G. Fischer.