Singular crinoid with curved stem… a lithe flower bending toward the sun on its gently undulating shale matrix.
A marine animal attached to the sea floor, to become free swimming in adulthood.
But this one was crushed into sediment 350 million years ago when most of the Northern Hemisphere went under sea.
More recently, geologists isolated complex organic molecules from 350-million-year-old crinoid fossils like this—the oldest such molecules yet found. Christina O’Malley, a doctoral student in earth sciences at The Ohio State University, found orange and yellow organic molecules inside the fossilized remains of several species of crinoids dating back to the Mississippian period.
“People have suspected for a long time that organic molecules could be found inside fossils. This is just the first time that scientists have succeeded in finding them.”
“Crinoid skeleton is very porous, and we think that when inorganic molecules filled in the spaces of the skeleton during preservation, some of the organic molecules were trapped inside the fossil.” — OSU Research News
Actinocrinites gibsoni
From the Mississippian
From Edwardsville Formation, Crawfordsville, Montgomery County, Indiana
15 x 11 x 2”
Leave a Reply