Name the Brittle Star

[BobWill]

I went back to the site where a friend found the brittle star mass mortality assemblage I posted here on the 16th of May. I wanted to look for one of my own and was just about to give up when I spotted this rock with more than just arms this time.

 

This central disc is 7mm across and some of the arms are still attached. This is from the Duck Creek Formation in Cooke County Texas which is in the Washita Group, Albian Stage of the Lower Cretaceous. Is this enough detail to put a name on the label for this thing? I'll settle for a family if no one knows the genus or species.

 

 

 

[Mike from North Queensland]

Nice find and it now takes all doubt out of the specimen being a brittle star.

Wish I knew what the actual genus is.

 

Mike D'Arcy

[Al Dente]

Nice find.

[DPS Ammonite]

I did some research and found that Cretaceous articulated brittle stars are rare. I found an expert that has written about Cretaceous Texas and Mexican brittle stars that you should send photos to: Ben Thuy, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in Luxembourg. Email is: nebyuhtyahoo.com.

 

Look at some of his papers from Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ben_Thuy/publications.

 

Here are two papers that mention the rarity of brittlestar fossils and suggest that genus and species IDs can be made from individual plates: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-4983.2008.00836.x/pdf   and

http://www.geomuseum.uni-goettingen.de/museum/publications/images/Contributions_of_geosciences/10.3249_3927.pdf

 

Bob, please let us know what you find out.

 

John

 

[westcoast]

That's good work on finding even more to give a really complete picture of those creatures. There's a chunk of work there for somebody. I look forward to following this topic further.

Has a new species been named after TFF yet?..fossilforumi  sounds good. Just saying...

[doushantuo]

the definitive paper on isolated lateral arm ossicles is Stohr's 2011 Zootaxa paper,still paywalled.

 

From a slightly less groundbreaking free access neontological paper of hers:

 

 

 

 

[piranha]

According to Berry 1941, there are three Cretaceous ophiuroids from Texas.

The lower Cretaceous species are: Ophiura graysonensis & Ophiura texana.

 

Berry, C.T. (1941)

Cretaceous ophiurans from Texas.

Journal of Paleontology, 15:61-67

 

Check your PM for a pdf