There's this thing I found at the beach...?

Question

i found this thing in the sand at the beach during low tide in carlsbad. the sand was very wet. it was shaped like an oval wiht an indentation at the top. and it kinda looked like the cross section of an apple. at the indentation was this wormy projection about 4 cm long. the whole thing was pretty much flat and 8 cm in diameter. it had a soft body with bumps on the top and ridges radiating out from the central point on the underside. the underside looked like that of a mushroom. the top was gray and the bottom was purple. what is it? is it even alive?

Answer 1

you should have taken a picture even by your discription it is hard to tell what it could be ,you should also mention measurements
a see cucumber ,a sea slug
was it flat and hard could it not have been the backbone of a squid
lots of weird things in the sea because we dont see these things as often as land things

Answer 2

Jellyfish.

Answer 3

Sounds like a Jelly Fish ;-)

Answer 4

I would suggest that you take it to a nature preserve to have it correctly identified. I have no idea what it is and have never heard of such a thing before.

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Answer 5

Sounds like Renilla, the "Sea Pansy" ...

Here are a couple of pics ...

http://www.jaxshells.org/pan.htm

http://www.jaxshells.org/pvent.jpg

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Answer 6

Was it a sand dollar?
http://www.mbayaq.org/efc/living_species/default.asp?hOri=0&hab=7&inhab=143
Here's another site:
http://bss.sfsu.edu/holzman/courses/Fall02%20projects/sandollar/sanddollar1.JPG

Answer 7

May be a sea slug

Answer 8

sounds like a sand dollar.

http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/pterodactyl/sand%20dollar.jpg