The Biology Department at The College of Wooster is in the midst of a massive move in advance of the construction of the new Ruth Williams Hall of Life Science. The staff has been combing through old specimen collections, giving away items they don’t need for teaching or research. Among the objects are occasional fossils they gave to the Geology Department. The above specimen is one of the most curious: a combination internal and external mold of a crinoid stem from the local Lower Carboniferous rocks.
This is a closer view of the fossil. It is a cylindrical cavity with faint rings in a regular distribution. (These are external molds of the individual crinoid columnals.) Suspended down the axis is a segmented pillar with a stellate cross-section. (This is the internal mold of the crinoid stem lumen, a central cavity that runs down the center of the stem.) It appears that an iron-rich cement (probably siderite) filled this lumen after the death of the crinoid. The stem fragment was enveloped in a siderite concretion and the calcite stem columnals dissolved away. This leaves us with both an external mold of the stem and an internal mold of its lumen.
For comparison, this is a crinoid stem fragment in its original calcite. It was found in a local Carboniferous limestone.
Here are cross-sections of the same stems showing sediment-filled stellate lumens in their centers.
