the.com/crinoid
a flower that's secretly an animal, secretly older than the dinosaurs, and refuses to die out
means A crinoid is a marine animal—related to starfish and sea urchins—with a stalked, cup-shaped body crowned by feathery arms, including living sea lilies and feather stars as well as countless fossil forms.
from From the Greek 'krinon,' meaning lily, plus '-oeides,' meaning 'like' or 'in the form of'—so literally 'lily-like,' a 19th-century scientific coinage honoring the flower these animals so convincingly impersonate. That same '-oid' suffix gives us 'asteroid' (star-like) and 'humanoid'; 'krinon' is a cousin of the lilies that still bloom in Greek gardens today.
- age
- Thriving for over 480 million years
- alias
- Nicknamed sea lilies despite being predatory animals
- anatomy
- Feathery arms filter food from passing currents
- survival
- Outlived multiple mass extinctions, still around today
- fossils
- Their stems form chunks of ancient limestone
feather star — living crinoid with 200+ species in modern oceans, most diverse crinoid group today
mississippian crinoid sea — carboniferous period north america 323-359 million years ago, limestone beds packed with crinoid fossils
sea lily — stalked crinoid genus metacrinus found in deep oceans, looks like a flower rooted to seafloor