Fossil Cystoid Holdfast

$10.00

1 in stock

Description

Here is your chance to own a classic fossil from a classic site.
HARDER and Harder to obtain fossils from this private quarry in Middleport, New York

This is a Fossil Cystoid Holdfast. It is a Caryocrinites ornatus and was collected decades ago and just recently prepared by our prep lab. Here is a Super detailed fossil from a classic site in NY. The holdfasts are rarely seen like this.

Fossils especially this Fossil Cystoid Holdfast from this site are preserved in Spectacular detail. Because of the wide variety and number of these Cystoids it is also assumed they lived in dense communities,

This Cystoid Holdfast is the attachment point of an animal related to modern day starfish so they are echinoderms. They have modern relatives called crinoids that live in the deep oceans today. So then they lived in shallow salt water seas and lagoons.

Although there were many species of Cystoids, they shared a basic body styles consisting of a stem by which it anchored to the sea floor with a “holdfast”, a theca which enclosed soft body tissues, and arms and pinnules which filtered food from the water.

Caryocrintes cystoids thrived in the warm shallow inland sea that covered the area during the Silurian Period some 420 million years ago. The cystoids living near what is now Middleport New York were established near an ocean delta system that periodically buried the colonies in silt. This silt eventually hardened into stone that preserved the cystoids in glorious detail.

This one has exceptional detail . It comes in a collectors case and it is 3/4 of an inch long. It has been meticulously prepared using air abrasive technology.