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Hello @jenny-straka! This appears to be an out of place fossil, definitely not from Florida. Rather, this comes from a place called Mazon Creek in Illinois, its a fern fossil around 309 million years old. Most of these I see labeled as Pectopteris, but I am no paleobotanist so I do not know if that is valid. It probably made its way to Florida after a parent bough it online and seeded the beach so a kid could find a fossil (but failed to actually find it again). If you’d like us to add it to the research database, you can complete the following steps:
-Take a photograph of the specimen with a scale. A ruler is preferred, but a coin will do in a pinch.
-For the classification column, use the taxon wizard to fill out higher taxonomy. Just put in the most specific identification you feel reasonably confident in, for this one Pectopteris
-For lithostratigraphy, put Francis Creek Shale under formation and Carbondale Group for Group.
-For Geochronology, put into the wizard Pennsylvannian for the period. If you are having trouble with the wizard, manually enter the eon (Phanerozoic) and era (Paleozoic)
-Change the location to where it is actually from, Grundy County, Illinois, USA. You can put where you found it in the field notes!
Let me know if you have any trouble and tag me when you are done!