Friday 17 July 2009

Fossils: Echinoid and Crinoid

Echinoid Fossil
Crinoid Fossil

16 comments:

John | English Wilderness said...

Whenever I visit new places, I always look out for interesting stones and fossils. Here are a couple from my collection.

The first is an echinoid fossil, an ancient sea urchin. It's about 20mm across.

The second is a segment from a crinoid stem, a strange creature which resembles a sea lily. It's about 5mm across.

Have you ever found anything interesting?

Chris said...

My wife and I are avid rock-hounders ... but we haven't done much lately. We usually camp in areas that allow us to search for different rocks. We haven't found any fossils but we do find quartz crystal points, obsidian, arrowheads, agates, and more. Once I lucked out and found an 8 oz. piece of, what i believe to be, California Jade.

Stunned By Stone said...

Beautiful stuff...
are u able to pick these up in the wold in where u r?

John | English Wilderness said...

I collect interesting looking rocks too. Earlier this year we went to the Isle of Wight and found a few IoW Diamonds, a.k.a. Selenite.

@chris: do you mean arrowheads made by ancient people or is it another name for something natural. I'd love to find an arrowhead.

@stunned by stone: I found the two above on the beach in Lincolnshire. After looking for a couple of hours I had a few examples of each.

eastcoastlife said...

They are pretty!
It's difficult to find fossils or pretty rocks in tiny Singapore. I will have to look very very hard.

Rick (Ratty) said...

These are great! I love fossils. I haven't seen any since I was a kid. I constantly examine rocks to see if there's anything like this, but I think the forest isn't a great place to look.

Chris said...

@John ... Correct, "ancient" native-american arrowheads. They are not easy to find anymore ... gotta luck-out and happen upon an old tribal settling grounds.

Sheila @ A Postcard a Day said...

I'm no expert on fossils or rocks at all, but I found several examples of the top echinoid in the heart of the Hampshire countryside when we lived there. I presume it must have been underwater once upon a time. They, and some other fossils I had, disappeared during a house move - I think I was the only one in the family who didn't look on them as a bunch of old stones.

Alan said...

beautiful pics. when I used to live in Lynn, Massachusetts I often walked on the beach at sunrise and collected shells

CyberCelt said...

I have a bunch of giant oyster shells, each about the size of a baby's head. I do not know what they are called, but they were some big bad prehistoric oysters! LOL

Texas is big for fossils as it was once covered by an inland sea. It is weird to go down in a cave and see sea animal fossils embedded in the wall.

Great photographs. Thanks for sharing.

Chungyen Chang said...

These are really beautiful! I love the textures.

scara said...

Interesting YES! I am ac prolific picker upper of stones.
I found an echinoid fossil the same as yours (could send you a pic?) on stones being used as car park in my local hospital yep thats how bad i am
when i hoover i suck up lego, money, everything but a stone i will pick up and look at before putting it somewhere safe
am i mad?

loz said...

i found a small fossil that looks simalar to your segment of sea lily stem its about 1cm across and 1.7 tall , i wonderd what it was for a quite a long time and arived at the conclusion that it must be a polip fron a jely fish or star fish as i heard somewhere that there young grow in stacks then float away like leaves when there big enough ... what does your one look like frome a side view?? as mine looks like 7 clearly defined and separated litle stars stacked on top of each other!... ,i was sceptical of my theory as i thought it was unlikely that stuch soft tisue would fossilize easely

Anonymous said...

@John|English wilderness: What kind of fossil is the 2nd one? (petrified,mold,print or whole animal fossil) please reply as soon as possible...

John said...

Anonymous: the second fossil is a stem section from a star crinoid. I'm not sure if it's petrified or mold though, sorry.

clipping path solution said...

such an informative blog.

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