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sea lily
(redirected from Sea lilies)

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sea lily, stalked echinoderm of the class Crinoidea. Sea lilies are ancient, having reached their peak in the Middle Mississippian period; about 5,000 fossil species are known. About 80 modern species remain. Marine animals, like all echinoderms, they are largely restricted to fairly deep water, from about 35 to 1,000 fathoms (60–300 m). Small organisms and particles are trapped in mucus in the water-vascular (ambulacral) grooves located on the feathery, branching arms and are conveyed to the mouth. Unlike the free-swimming feather stars feather star, common name of a class of echinoderms that, as juveniles, are attached to the sea bottom by a stalk with rootlike branches; the mouth side faces upward. In the adult stage they break away from the stalk and move about freely.
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 to which they are related, sea lilies remain permanently attached to the ocean bottom. Two genera, Rhizocrinus and Cenocrinus, occur at moderate depths in the Atlantic and Caribbean. Sea lilies are classified in the phylum Echinodermata Echinodermata [Gr.,=spiny skin], phylum of exclusively marine bottom-dwelling invertebrates having external skeletons of calcareous plates just beneath the skin.
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, class Crinoidea.
sea lily [′sē ‚lilĀ·ē]
(invertebrate zoology)
The common name for those crinoids in which the body is flower-shaped and is carried at the tip of an anchored stem.


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The Polo-sized fossils you find here are made by the crosssection of crinoid stems, or sea lilies.
Crinoids are animals, although they 'cross-dress' like flamboyant plants with their brightly coloured, feathery rays and they are sometimes called Sea Lilies or Feather Stars.
A sprawling shelf of fossilized sea lilies from 400 million years ago reveals a mesmerizing panorama of lolling plants whose wispy heads seem to flutter while the rocky surface appears veined with traces of water that also seem to pulse and course undyingly in the strange abeyance of eternity Remains of a prawn and crayfish (from the Eocene Epoch) hung nearby in flat, ghost-like silhouettes, betraying a different kind of preservation more reminiscent of a photographic image.
 
 
 
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