Plant Fossil Wood

What is it?

These strange fossils were noticed by Chris Moore during the recovery of the fantastic Swanage Crocodile skull in April 2007. This specimen was collected, which was a good job because less than a month later, the rest were almost completely worn away. No-one has been able to make a definitive identification, but it has been tentatively suggested that it could be the stem of a horsetail. However, this isn’t convincing as it looks to be a flat disk rather than the segmented sections of a horsetail.