Wa Starfish?

[DLB]

starfish or what?????

[DLB]

[DLB]

[DLB]

[Uncle Siphuncle]

I think I'm seeing crinoid stems.

[micropterus101]

Crinoid stuff is really rare from WA which formation did you find them in? I am going to send a link to the wa state echinoid guru Casey Burns he can id that urchin for you too. In all the years i have been digging I have found only one partially preserved Crinoid and the stem didnt look like those in the Lincoln creek formation. I have seen starfish though in the Physt formation.

[DLB]

Crinoid stuff is really rare from WA which formation did you find them in? I am going to send a link to the wa state echinoid guru Casey Burns he can id that urchin for you too. In all the years i have been digging I have found only one partially preserved Crinoid and the stem didnt look like those in the Lincoln creek formation. I have seen starfish though in the Physt formation.

Lincoln creek formation and WHat there is Crinoid stuff there?????i thought that crinoids were older than that formation? shows i dont know about that formation

[isocrinus]

These are crinoid pleurocolumnals from Isocrinus oregonensis. These are actually quite common in the Lincoln Creek Formation at Porter Bluffs and elsewhere. Note that much of the Lincoln Creek is age equivalent to the Keasey Formation in NW Oregon near Vernonia where the type locality of these exists (Mist).

Isocrinids like this lived in the Pac NW as early as the Triassic and were forced out of here in the early Oligocene by the water temperature cooling (the offshore current used to come from the south and changed to from the north as it is today). These crinoids are still found off southern Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia, as well as in the Bahamas and Caribbean and elsewhere.

There is another species of crinoid found in the Lincoln Creek, another Isocrinid with simple pentagonal columnals, instead of the stellate Isocrinoid columnals. Also, less arm branching. Genus Hypalocrinus but as of yet undescribed as we await the return of a potential type from a researcher in Sweden who should have sent it back to the Los Angeles County Museum years ago. I'll get around to describing it someday.

Note that it is illegal to collect at Porter Bluffs, except by special permit through the highway department for research purposes. Even then, they require road cones, signs, flaggers, safety vests and hard hats. Overkill if you ask me - but its the law unfortunately. Best if the amateur paleo community respects it so they dont take a generally bad attitude about us collecting anywhere and attempt to restrict it everywhere, as is happening.

Casey Burns

[DLB]

These are crinoid pleurocolumnals from Isocrinus oregonensis. These are actually quite common in the Lincoln Creek Formation at Porter Bluffs and elsewhere. Note that much of the Lincoln Creek is age equivalent to the Keasey Formation in NW Oregon near Vernonia where the type locality of these exists (Mist).

Isocrinids like this lived in the Pac NW as early as the Triassic and were forced out of here in the early Oligocene by the water temperature cooling (the offshore current used to come from the south and changed to from the north as it is today). These crinoids are still found off southern Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia, as well as in the Bahamas and Caribbean and elsewhere.

There is another species of crinoid found in the Lincoln Creek, another Isocrinid with simple pentagonal columnals, instead of the stellate Isocrinoid columnals. Also, less arm branching. Genus Hypalocrinus but as of yet undescribed as we await the return of a potential type from a researcher in Sweden who should have sent it back to the Los Angeles County Museum years ago. I'll get around to describing it someday.

Note that it is illegal to collect at Porter Bluffs, except by special permit through the highway department for research purposes. Even then, they require road cones, signs, flaggers, safety vests and hard hats. Overkill if you ask me - but its the law unfortunately. Best if the amateur paleo community respects it so they dont take a generally bad attitude about us collecting anywhere and attempt to restrict it everywhere, as is happening.

Casey Burns

i got this one not at porter but along a river in a shale pile its pretty secluded and no highways there although you may need a hard hat for all the rocks that fall!! so you think it is a type of crinoid found?

Edited June 30, 2011 by DLB

[Ludwigia]

These are crinoid pleurocolumnals from Isocrinus oregonensis.

I agree completely with Casey.

Roger

[DLB]

Wow I'm so happy to find crinoid stuff in WA I'll have too go looking for more !! :)

Edited June 30, 2011 by DLB

[isocrinus]

No question about it. Please private message me at caseyburnsflutes<AT>gmail.com and share with me locality data so that I can add this to my data on these. These are actually quite common in the Lincoln Creek, the Keasey, and are found in a few scattered places such as in sediments on top of the basalts at Yachats. Interestingly, I have never found these in the Pysht - though the Pysht is of similar age.

Keasey and Lincoln Creek are full of volcanic ash whereas the Pysht is devoid of any ash layers. They much have formed farther apart - or perhaps the currents from the north kept all ash from the southern Olympics southward. And kept the crinoids away too (these ones prefer warmer water).

Casey

[Wrangellian]

Ah, I was going to suggest 'Isocrinus', but then I saw that a user named 'Isocrinus' already did so! What age is the Lincoln Creek Fm? I find similar things up here in the Upper Cret of Vancouver Island.. closest I could get to an ID was ?Isocrinus sp.

[paco]

"Isocrinus" ID-ing Isocrinus speciments, how fitting :-)

[FossilDAWG]

These are crinoid pleurocolumnals from Isocrinus oregonensis. These are actually quite common in the Lincoln Creek Formation at Porter Bluffs and elsewhere. Note that much of the Lincoln Creek is age equivalent to the Keasey Formation in NW Oregon near Vernonia where the type locality of these exists (Mist).

Isocrinids like this lived in the Pac NW as early as the Triassic and were forced out of here in the early Oligocene by the water temperature cooling (the offshore current used to come from the south and changed to from the north as it is today). These crinoids are still found off southern Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia, as well as in the Bahamas and Caribbean and elsewhere.

There is another species of crinoid found in the Lincoln Creek, another Isocrinid with simple pentagonal columnals, instead of the stellate Isocrinoid columnals. Also, less arm branching. Genus Hypalocrinus but as of yet undescribed as we await the return of a potential type from a researcher in Sweden who should have sent it back to the Los Angeles County Museum years ago. I'll get around to describing it someday.

Note that it is illegal to collect at Porter Bluffs, except by special permit through the highway department for research purposes. Even then, they require road cones, signs, flaggers, safety vests and hard hats. Overkill if you ask me - but its the law unfortunately. Best if the amateur paleo community respects it so they dont take a generally bad attitude about us collecting anywhere and attempt to restrict it everywhere, as is happening.

Casey Burns

Now that's what I call an informative reply!

When did Porter Bluffs become off limits for collecting? I collected there one time many years ago; I had an overnight stopover on a flight that went through Seattle, so I rented a car at the airport, drove to Porter, collected by flashlight from the fallen blocks in the ditch, then drove back to Seattle in time to catch a 7:30 AM flight home.

When I was at the University of British Columbia, someone had donated a collection from Mist to the geology museum. There were a few specimens of absolutely complete Isocrinus. I was told the Mist locality is on private property and is closed to collecting.

Don

[isocrinus]

Been a while since I checked in here.

A few decades back someone was apparently injured in a minor rockslide at Porter Bluffs. Since then the state highway department posted "No Trespassing" signs there. I've collected there with a special permit from the highway department. But they also required hard hats, orange vests, road cones extending for 500', and a "Men Working" sign at the parking area at the south end of the cut. Not exactly the easiest conditions even for research collecting! Especially as people drove by the cones so closely that they blew them into the ditch. And every chip truck did the same with that and our sign.

The Mist locality is accessible from the end of a county road, and then on a bit of private land owned by some trust, and then along the bluffs along the river. Its on a public waterway and thus State owned. However, a large landslide in the winter of 1995-1996 covered all of the crinoid containing laggerstatte layers (or what was left after them after some more or less illegal commercial mining of these beds in the 1980s). The last time I checked (August 2011) the slide was still there covering. Crinoids are present elsewhere at the site but are extremely rare and usually poorly preserved. And difficult to find. Last summer a fellow researcher and I didn't find any in-situ and I've been examining that locality for 42 years!

I'd be real interested in learning more about any Cretaceous Isocrinus material. Could you post or email me photographs? There are reportedly some Jurassic or Cretaceous Isocrinus that have been collected in southern Oregon as well. Usually just columnals.

Casey

[parsonsian]

I'd be real interested in learning more about any Cretaceous Isocrinus material. Could you post or email me photographs? There are reportedly some Jurassic or Cretaceous Isocrinus that have been collected in southern Oregon as well. Usually just columnals.

Here are a couple of photos for you, isocrinus. I think they fit what you're looking for, but I'm not entirely sure. I collect these in NW Wyoming.

[parsonsian]

And these.

[DLB]

Ya it deffenatly looks like that but yours are much better preservation than mine!

[erose]

We also get Isocrinus in the Lower Cretaceous (Albian) of Texas. One of the few stemmed crinoids that is commonly found although stems are all I have ever seen.

[Wrangellian]

I have since found some columns and bits of arms(?) at my local Upper Santonian site, I'll see if I can get some decent pics and post them as well.

[DLB]

Greatly appreciated

[Wrangellian]

Sorry I could not get very good pics of mine but I think the specimen quality is not as good as yours either... also I didn't do a good stabilization (rushed job) to get them out of there, so you can see the glue around (but not on) them.. they were exposed for a while and already crumbling when I found them. I wonder if someone with an air abrasion unit could make these look better, if it's even worth it.

Columnals are distorted (squashed) and are about 7mm at their widest. They seem to be more the pentagon type than star type, unless the points are just weathered down..

- anyone good at jigsaw puzzles?

This one is not from the same spot, and is just a cavity, ~4mm

[DLB]

Thanks for the post the last pic looks just like the fossil I found ! what age is that from I wonder if there from around the same time? Don't know why u can't find them around here any more. They must have all died from climate change.