Description
Here is your chance to own a classic fossil from a classic site. This is a Spectacular piece.
HARDER and Harder to obtain Crinoid fossils.
Fossils especially this Eucalyptocrinus crassus Fossil Crinoid Holdfast from this site are preserved in Spectacular detail. Because of the wide variety and number of these Crinoids it is also assumed they lived in dense communities.
This Crinoid holdfast is the attachment point for an animal related to modern day starfish so they are echinoderms. They have modern relatives also crinoids that live in the deep oceans today. So then they lived in shallow salt water seas and lagoons. They lived during the Paleozoic and were most prevalent during the Mississippian Period.
Although there were many species of Crinoids, they shared a basic body styles consisting of a stem by which it anchored to the sea floor with a “holdfast”. A calyx which enclosed soft body tissues, and arms and pinnules which filtered food from the water.
This Fossil Crinoid Holdfast attached the animal to the sea floor and thrived in the warm shallow inland sea that covered the area during the Mississippian Period some 350 million years ago. Because the crinoids living near what is now Waldron, Indiana they were established near an ocean delta system that periodically buried the colonies in silt. However the silt eventually hardened into stone that preserved the crinoids in glorious detail.
The Crinoid holdfast has exceptional detail . This fossil is 5 by 4 3/4 inches long from the tip to top of the holdfast. It has been meticulously prepared using air abrasive technology. It also has various bryozoans on the plate as well.
