Description

Lower Ordovician

El Kaid Errami, Morocco.

Big 195mm slab with at least 14 eocrinoids, largest is 134mm.

Eocrinoid, Multiple.

Eocrinoids are one of the earliest-known groups of echinoderms.  The name implies that they are ancestral to crinoids but they are not despite the fact that both groups have very similar structure (holdfast, stalk, plated body, arms).  Eocrinoids appeared in the Early Cambrian but became extinct by the end of the Silurian.

Most eocrinoids on the market are Cambrian-age. Here’s something unusual and not a fossil you think about as coming from Morocco.