#sea lilly

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Sea Lilly

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Crinoids It always sort of amazes me that these are animals. Crinoids are part of the Echinoderms – the same phylum that includes starfish and sea urchins. They are filter feeders, either attached to the seafloor or sometimes floating through the water column, picking up little bits of plankton and other passing organic matter as food. There are a number of extant species of them, but they were far more abundant in the oceans in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic. Most of the time, they are found as little disks from the columns having broken up, but occasionally they can be preserved in tact if they are buried rapidly after death in areas with little current flow or predation. These articulated crinoids are on display at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum in British Columbia, Canada. 

  -JBB Image source: https://flic.kr/p/2gUpd81

[abyssal-plains]

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Saccocoma tenella

This fossil is one of the most common creatures found in the Jurassic aged Solnhofen limestone, the famous deposits in Germany where the earliest feathered dinosaur fossils were located.

This guy is much tinier and was a free-floating crinoid. Crinoids are some of the most common fossils found in the Paleozoic, but most of them were attached to the ocean floor. These crinoids had no stalk, no connection to the ground. They probably still were filter feeders, taking nutrition from small particles floating in the water, but scientists are still working to understand the details of their motion. Their arms curl up on death, but were most likely extended during life and used to both direct plankton in towards it mouth and maintain its position in the water.

Really cool looking, not as well known fossil from one of the most famous units in the world.

-JBB

Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/worf/215445272

Read more: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00015-011-0059-z http://www.palass-pubs.org/palaeontology/pdf/Vol37/Pages%20121-129.pdf http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mesozoic/jurassic/solnhofen.html

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dean_r_lomax

The world's largest fossil sea lily (crinoid) colony ever found. This enormous fossil measures almost 20 metres and took many years to prepare!

It is one of the most stunning fossils ever found, and one that I had the pleasure of seeing in 2017, on display at the Hauff Museum in Germany. It is from the infamous fossil beds of Holzmaden in Germany and is about 180 million years old. Stunning!

Here's a little video I recorded with the specimen in 2017: https://youtu.be/JscDtQV4cVk

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Awesome crinoid!

mikeharrisonfossils Pentacrinites fossilis crinoid from Lyme Regis, Dorset. Although it looks like a plant and they are often referred to as sea lilies, these beautiful fossils were in fact animals. The preservation on this example is just perfect!! I found this on a stormy day on the beach, it must of literally just washed out as the fragile and intricate detail is rapidly destroyed by the sea, and as you can see there is no damage

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Gorgeous crinoids from England

brandonfossilsI found and prepared these fossil ‘sea lilies’.I have seen big waves smash a whole sheet of these specimens into little pieces. The sea in stormy conditions can destroy what it reveals.This video is of beautifully preserved crinoid fossil fragments-of the species Pentacrinities sp. from Lyme Regis .

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Holy ****

lh_fossilsThe world’s largest sea lily colony ever to be found and prepared is on exhibit in the Urweltmuseum Hauff. It measures 18 by 6 metres and was attached to a 12-metre long piece of driftwood. It took 18 years to prepare.