My first thought on seeing this distorted fossil was how much it evoked one of those Palaeolithic “Venus figurines“. It is certainly difficult to deduce that this is actually a crinoid column (or stem). It was found during my last expedition to the Middle Jurassic Matmor Formation in Makhtesh Gadol, southern Israel (location C/W-506). This particular crinoid was infected by parasites that caused the grotesque swellings of the skeletal calcite in the individual columnals (button-like sections of the column). The infection of a species of Apiocrinites in the Matmor is the subject of a paper now in press by me, Lizzie Reinthal (’14) and the pride of Ohio State University, Dr. Bill Ausich. That story will be a later Fossil of the Week entry. The specimen above, though, is different. To my surprise, it is a parasitic infection in an entirely different crinoid order.
Here’s another view of the crinoid column. The top third shows some of the original star-shaped columnals in side view. This tells us that the crinoid was an isocrinid, possibly the cosmopolitan Isocrinus nicoleti. This group contains the famous and somewhat creepy crawling crinoids. We have just a handful of isocrinid stem fragments in the Matmor despite a decade of searching for a distinctive calyx (the head of the little beast). Note that the gall-like swellings have holes in them. This will be important in a later analysis of the parasitic system here.
And now the other side of the fossil. Again, in the top part you can make out star-shaped columnals, but that distinctive outline is lost in the swollen column below. The stem must have been seriously hindered from flexing and bending with such a debilitating infection.
References:
Salamon, M.A. 2008. The Callovian (Middle Jurassic) crinoids from northern Lithuania. Paläontologische Zeitschrift 82: 269-278.
Tang, C.M., Bottjer, D.J. and Simms, M.J. 2000. Stalked crinoids from a Jurassic tidal deposit in western North America. Lethaia 33: 46-54.
Wilson, M.A., Reinthal, E.A. and Ausich, W.I. 2014. Parasitism of a new apiocrinitid crinoid species from the Middle Jurassic (Callovian) of southern Israel. Journal of Paleontology (in press).
