Pyritized Crinoid Arthroacantha - Sylvania, Ohio

This is a beautiful pyritized crown of the crinoid, Arthroacantha carpenteri. It comes from the famous Silica Shale of Sylvania, Ohio which is renown for it's preservation of trilobites. There crinoids were collected some time ago all of the quarries have been off limits to collectors due to liability reasons for many years.

Crinoids where animals which were rooted to the floor of the ocean by a stem and had many armored feeding arms which they used to filter the water for food. They first appeared in the Ordovician period and are still alive today.