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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: My favorite part of a crinoid (Middle Jurassic of Israel)
Next week I return to southern Israel for fieldwork in the Mesozoic, so I’ve been reviewing our collections to see what we need for future projects. My heart warms a bit every time I pull open the drawers of fossils and see these robust plates of the crinoid Apiocrinities negevensis, which was reviewed in a previous blog post. They are thick disks of calcite with a heft and symmetry like exotic coins. They are easy to spot in the field because of their size and incised perfect star.
This part of the crinoid is called the proximale. It has a round base that articulates with the columnal below it in the stem, and its top has five facets that hold the basal plates of the calyx. It is thus the topmost columnal, specialized to serve as the integration between the articulated stem below and the complicated head above. The pentastellate (five-armed star, but you probably figured that out) impression is called the areola. In the very center is the open hole of the lumen, which goes from the head all the way down through the stem to the holdfast as an internal fluid-filled cavity.
Above are Miller’s (1821) original illustrations of Apiocrinites rotundus with the proximale shown by the red arrow. Note how thin this piece is compared to the equivalent from Apiocrinites negevensis. The significant thickness of the proximale is one of the distinguishing features of the Negev species.
I hope to see many more of these beautiful fossils next month in the field. We don’t need any more for our research, but they indicate that other good fossils are nearby.
References:
Ausich, W.I. and Wilson, M.A. 2012. New Tethyan Apiocrinitidae (Crinoidea; Articulata) from the Jurassic of Israel. Journal of Paleontology 86: 1051-1055.
Miller, J.S. 1821. A natural history of the Crinoidea or lily-shaped animals, with observation on the genera Asterias, Euryale, Comatula, and Marsupites. Bryan & Co, Bristol, 150 pp.
Wilson, M.A., Feldman, H.R. and Krivicich, E.B. 2010. Bioerosion in an equatorial Middle Jurassic coral-sponge reef community (Callovian, Matmor Formation, southern Israel). Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 289: 93-101.
Source: http://woostergeologists.scotblogs.wooster.edu/2014/06/01/woosters-fossil-of-the-week-my-favorite-part-of-a-crinoid-middle-jurassic-of-israel/
