More about the crinoid
Pick an enthusiast
The naturalist
The presenter
The singer
The trilobite expert
The geologist
The earth scientist
The lecturer
The cameraman
The other cameraman
The sound recordist
One assistant producer...
... and another assistant producer
The freelance fossil collector
The director
The dubbing mixer
The rope access technician
Share your favourite fossil videos with us in the OU YouTube channel
Tell us about your finds: Talk fossils in the nature & environment forum.
Hermione Cockburn examines a crinoid fossil
Watch
You need the Flash Player (version 7 or higher) to view this clip - download Flash.
Read
... are the sea lilies.
Yes, they’re often known as sea lilies, but they’re not plants, they’re a sea animal.
Okay, so what would this creature, this animal, the crinoid have looked like when it was alive and growing on the reef?
It’s a relative of the sea urchin and starfish, so if you think of a starfish on a stalk you’ve basically got your crinoid.
So a long tall stalk, made up of tiny little plates we call ossicles, one on top of each other, and at the top of that there’s a mouth surrounded by tentacles we call arms, and it waves around in the water, it filter feeds.
So those arms create tiny little currents that send all the particles in the water down towards the mouth.
So yes, definitely, this is a single creature with a mouth.
Yes.
It’s clearly an animal.
Yes.
And what I love about this specimen is that you can see those individual plates that make up the stem so clearly.
Content last updated: 09/06/2008
