yet more new echinoderms

[Joe Botting]

It's never-ending. There I go, quietly finding some nice, attractive but ordinary-ish fossils for the Radnorshire Museum, and still the weird critters leap out at me.

This time, there's a new crinoid species (quite an event!), and a cornute (another first from the Inlier). Both of them are rather weird.

The crinoid is incomplete, but has spectacular plates with radiating ridges all over them, and narrow, serially branching arms that run between them. I've been looking through all my references, and so far can't find anything even remotely similar, from anywhere. In fact, if it wasn't for the arms, I'd have to call it a cystoid instead. The cornute (a type of the controversial 'carpoid' group, and the weirdest of them all!) is possibly starting to disarticulate. At least, I hope so, because otherwise it's even stranger than they usually are. I'll get some drawings together when I can work out the best angle to look at them from!

Oh, and a couple more bryozoans, but that's almost expected nowadays...

Joe

[Joe Botting]

As promised, the new cornute is up on the faunal list:

www.asoldasthehills.org/Echinoderms.html

The only problem is... it turned out to be two new cornutes instead. :-) One of them is quite close to Galliaecystis lignieresi, from the slightly older Arenig of France, but it's a very rare and interesting beast. The other is... well, see for yourself. Ok, so it might be explained by me not knowing much about this group, but I've never seen anything quite like it. The hairy bit sticking out the side is particularly entertaining. :-)

Enjoy.

Joe

[Joe Botting]

...and a mystery is (mostly) solved!

The problematicum sp. A, the most challenging fossil we've ever come across in the area, is now comprehensible - well, as comprehensible as any cornute!
The reason why specimens were always broken appears to be that they were never attached. The 'arms' and the 'body' bear an uncanny resemblence to some of the place of the new 'hairy' cornute - not identical, but close enough to be distinctly similar. The hairy bits themselves seem to be a linear structure within an expanded plate, rather than actual fibres. And the growth stages? Again, different plates, some with very short prongs, others with longer ones.
The really neat part is that this also ties up a few other puzzling fossils (a triradial bit, and lots of little cresecents) that are sometimes associated with the problem thing. The whole thing is, indeed, a cornute. Now all we need is an articulated one to prove it.

You see, I told you we could be completely wrong, given the opportunity - but we did get the echinoderm part right! :-)

I'll have to go and adjust things in the faunal list according in due course... and will probably cobble together an essay on it, since such a gross misinterpretation on my part must surely be instructive...

Joe