Description
This is by far the best Crinoid Holdfast we have ever offered. Truly a museum quality piece. 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 Fossil Museum Piece Crinoid Holdfast block from this site is preserved in Spectacular detail. Because of the wide variety and number of these Crinoids it is also assumed they lived in dense communities. This one contains not only a detailed holdfast but numerous brachiopods , an inverted trilobite cephalon and a nearly complete Maurotarion christyi. There is at least one species of bryozoan.
This Crinoid 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. This one is Ordovician and from the Waldron Shale of Indiana.
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 Museum Piece Crinoid Holdfast shows where the crinoid attached the animal to the sea floor. They thrived in the warm shallow inland sea that covered the area during the Silurian Period. 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 Museum Piece Crinoid Holdfast has exceptional detail . The block is 7 7/8 by 9 1/2 inches long. It has been meticulously prepared using air abrasive technology. It also has various fauna on the plate as well.
