Jenis Crinoid Feather Stars

• Crinoidea comes from the Greek word krinon (a lily) and eidos (form)
• Other Names: Sea lilies, feather starts.
o Sea lilies refer to the crinoids in their adult forms, which are attached to
the sea bottom by their stalks and resembling lilies. Feather stars refer to
their unstalked forms.
• There are two groups of living crinoids:
o Those with columns, the living stalked crinoids.
o Those without columns, the comatulids.
• They come in an array of colors and the size of their living forms are few inches
to a couple of feet in dimension
o However, some extinct crinoids were great in size. One had a stalk of
nearly 21.5 meters. length.
• Their average lifespan is 15 years.
• Their fossils have been used for jewelry. For example, Fossilised crinoid
columnals extracted from limestone quarried on Lindisfarne (UK) or found
washed up along the foreshore were threaded into necklaces or rosaries and
became known as St. Cuthbert's beads.