Ordovician Dawn

A scene beneath an ocean near what is now Garden Park, Colorado approximately 500 million years ago. Endoceras, a mollusk with a cone-shaped shell, has captured a primitive jawless fish. Three trilobites lie in the mud in the left foreground near a starfish. Rugose corals wave their tentacles from cup-like bodies attached to the ocean bottom. Other coral species appear like rounded domes. Stalked starfish relatives called crinoids wave tentacled arms in search of floating prey.