Bolivian Devonian Crinoids

[caveman]

I found this forum while I was searching for information about the Bolivian Crinoids I bought at Ebay.
Looking for information about the stuff I contacted Jeffrey Thompson and he told me about Peter Lee and this place.
I got a few pdf's at the moment, but giving the correct names to the stuff is difficult. Maybe someone here can help out?
The stuff I've got is to be seen at:

palaeopage.nl/bolcrin/index.html

Some of the samples seem to be pretty rare and will be donated to
the museum of natural history Maastricht in near future.

Greetings from Netherlands, Mart

[Joe Botting]

These are absolutely stunning, Mart. They remind me a lot of the Late Ordovician crinoids of Morocco (I'm describing them), at least in the preservation; these are clearly far more diverse, as you'd expect for the Devonian. I'm sure you realise that most of them don't have names yet (although a few have been published, like Apurocrinus sucrei and Boliviacrinus isaacsoni), and are in the process of being described, so there's a limit to what can be done. Rather than just matching a description, one has to work from the beginning, sorting out the plate arrangement to work out the major groups, then narrowing it down to suborder, family, and so on. Do you have the Treatise on Invertebrate Palaeontology for crinoids? That is normally the best starting point for a new fauna. Of course, Jeffrey will have already done it all for the material he has... are these ones that he doesn't recognise?

It's going to take a lot of work to try to pin down genera to these (where they're not new), and the sheer number is, to be honest, a little overwhelming. To try to work out the genera, we need to piece together the calyx plating, especially in the lowest three circlets, and in many cases the CD-interray in particular, where the anal series is modified. Specimens which are just showing the arms (especially in oral view) are often spectacular, but uninformative; you'll have to match the fine detail of the specimens (brachial morphology, branching patterns etc.) up to descriptions of the fauna once it's published.
Most of what you've got seem to be camerates (unsurprisingly), but not all. 5027 looks more like a flexible, and 5028 perhaps an inadunate (hard to be sure because of the rock breakage); 5052 is almost certainly an inadunate, though. Some are just surreal, like 5033 - possibly a highly derived cladid? 5045 looks like another cladid, and likewise 5048. 505l is a holdfast, and a very nice one at that. 5076 is bizarre - is that a multi-plated column???

You get the idea... perhaps you could pick out some specifics to have a look at, and we can take it from there? How far have you got already, and are there any you're particularly struggling with? Have you worked out which are multiple specimens of the same species (there are clearly some duplicates)? I'm happy to help where I can, but working out the taxonomy of all these from scratch is going to take over my life for years... ;D