Sea Lilly?

[talkingstones]

Hi again! Doing lots of fossiling out here and found this one down at the creek. My thought is that it is a Sea Lilly but not sure of the type. Thoughts appreciated!

[snowmom]

hard to tell from these photos, though close up they are a little blurry. getting them wet and taking photos in clear strong daylight may help clarify details. Can you tell us the region this came from? Do you know what era (age) it is from...or if it is from a specific formation? by doing a little background searching you can narrow down to what fossils were in existence at that time. Makes ID a lot easier. best wishes

[snowmom]

hard to tell from these photos, though close up they are a little blurry. getting them wet and taking photos in clear strong daylight may help clarify details. Can you tell us the region this came from? Do you know what era (age) it is from...or if it is from a specific formation? by doing a little background searching you can narrow down to what fossils were in existence at that time. Makes ID a lot easier. best wishes

A little search turned this up, might have some clues. www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/14606-fossil-hunting-in-the-catskills/

[talkingstones]

Hi snowmom. Unfortunately, we are under rain for the next few days but will try to get clearer photos as soon as possible. No longer in the Catskills. We bought a farm in the Ohio River Bluffs about 58 minutes west downtown Cincinati in southeastern Indiana and moved here in December. Mostly Ordovician era and you literally can't take a step here without crunching fossils... Which are proving to be pretty incredibly interesting...ergo, we are doing quite a bit of fossiling now and learning a ton along the way. Anyway, thanks for the info. If I'm ever in the Catskills again, will look into it.

[Deleted]

Love it Kathy. Looking forward to learning what it and whatever else you have there are/is!

Lucky!

[Fossilman]

Looks like Dawsonoceras.....Could possibly be a part of the bottom half of a Batocrinus,or Platycrinites.....

[Pat]

Not a fossil person, but my first (and only) thought was "worm".

[talkingstones]

Thanks guys. Fossilman, I think it is of the last one you mentioned after looking them up. We're coming across some interesting stuff here, the closer we look at the ground!!! This was a good find but now that we know they are out there, we're looking for better samples. Wild stuff, these fossils!!! They do look kinda weird, Pat, but all these wormy little thingies have huge stories to tell as they laid the groundwork for life on this planet and that's really cool!!!!

[Fossilman]

Sounds like your in prime fossil country-lucky you...............

[talkingstones]

Actually, it really is luck! We had been looking to move out of NY for a while now and came out here on vacation to see the kids and grandkids. I liked the idea of coming west but really wasn't keen about the Midwest in general or Indiana particularly. We had been looking at places online and called a realtor about one but it had sold. She showed us this place and we really fell in love with it!!!! It's an old Victorian farm. We had no idea about the fossils till we moved here and really had no clue till we really started getting out a few weeks ago and looking. It really is amazing to see this stuff and the diversity of what is here and that there is so much of it, especially since we really had no idea any of this was here!!! One of the things about this property that I have a hard time processing is the mix of prehistory with modernity. The foundation of the buildings here are literally made of blocks of fossil stone. I look at the barn and can actually see the fossils in the blocks of stone. I have a hard time wrapping my head around that! Another is the lack of rock clubs. People who are native to here are like oblivious to what this is and that amazes me!!!! Out West, rocks and fossils ... Well there are whole towns that build their economy around them. Here they could but haven't... At least that we have found. To me, that seems really odd. Anyway, will post as I find things of interest...which I do apologize for but it's all of interest to me, lol!!! I will try to limit myself to the really exceptional though as you guys are probably bored with my little wormy stuff. I just think it's amazing and every day, we are finding new stuff! We do have some agate here and chert and a stray Quartz or two but the real story of this place is the fossils. Just amazing stuff and very refreshing!!!

[jamesp]

If it spirals it is this, otherwise sea lily seems correct. Cool find, what's it like living on the ocean bottom ?

[Garage Rocker]

Hello talkingstones, from a fellow ocean bottom dweller. I'm an hour south of you and the limestone here is full of fossil also. I built a creek beside my house and bordered it with rock found locally. Just about every piece is loaded with fossil. It's shady out there right now, but here's a pic.

The creek is used to run water away from the house and the rocks stay put. It's turning out to be a great place to keep all the rocks and geodes I'm finding.

Randy

[Pat]

Mar 14, 2016 7:26:25 GMT -5 jamesp said:

If it spirals it is this, otherwise sea lily seems correct. Cool find, what's it like living on the ocean bottom ?

Those bryozoans really got /get around!

[jamesp]

Mar 14, 2016 10:31:04 GMT -5 Pat said:

Mar 14, 2016 7:26:25 GMT -5 jamesp said:

If it spirals it is this, otherwise sea lily seems correct. Cool find, what's it like living on the ocean bottom ?

Those bryozoans really got /get around!

From one bryozoan lover to another, the bryozoans will rise again !!

[inyo]

Not an Archimedes bryozoan colony, in my opinion. The mystery specimen would have derived from roughly late Ordovician material. Archimedes is a much younger invertebrate, a Mississippian-age Index Fossil not present in rocks of Ordovician times, though the animal continued to live on after the Mississippian until the conclusion of the Permian some 251 million years ago.

To my eye, the specimen in question comports quite well with a fragment of a re-crystallized section of a crinoid stem (AKA, "sea lilly")--not a portion of the calyx. Could be Pycnocrinus, though don't quote me on that genus for the record...

[talkingstones]

Hey James, those are some great pictures!!! Actually, that was what we were keeping our eye out for but I'm thinking crinoid on this one. It looks stacked rather than spiral so Inyo, I think you are right. Randy, you're photo is looking really similar to what I'm seeing here! We have a creek running beside the drive that is a runoff from the town above us and hills around us. We sit in a hollow here and have two gullies that run off our bluff into the creek out behind the corn crib on the back of the property. We get the shell conglomerations and bryozoans in those blocks and they are just solid fossil material which does "rise again," James, after the rains. We get a lot of good size pieces that just drop out of the blocks and wash down so they do "get around," Pat. It's a very small sample, a little bigger than a postage stamp but is really kind of pretty. Is there any better way of cleaning these off than tooth brush, baking soda and Dawn? I feel like I lose a lot in detail with all of the scrubbing.

[jamesp]

Agreed, crinoid. Have found the bryozoans that can trick you.

A dozen new bryozoans were discovered from chert at Girard GA. A colorful chert.

From tumbled chips made by native man, about all bryozoans and fun to look at: