AMERICAN MUSEUM NOVITATES Published by Number 204 the Amzrican Museum of NATURAL History Dec
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AMERICAN MUSEUM NOVITATES Published by Number 204 THE AMzRICAN MUsEUM OF NATURAL HIsTORY Dec. 24, 1925 New York City 56.39,1(77.2) THE CRINOID OCCURRENCE AT CRAWFORDSVILLE, INDIANA BY KURT EHRENBETtG' The Department of Geology and Invertebrate Palaeontology of The American Museum of Natural History possesses a great slab measuring 30X42 inches (Fig. 1) and some smaller ones, from the well-known crinoid locality at Crawfordsville, Indiana.2 These slabs show a great number of specimens and species mingled together but preserved in an excellent manner. As is to be seen from the photographs (Figs. 1 and 2), the crinoids do not lie in a single plane, but some lie higher, some deeper, the latter, by careful preparation, being exposed by cutting off the rock almost vertically. At least four or five layers are distinguishable. A more careful examination shows that all parts of crinoid skeletons are preserved, such as arms, calices, stems, and roots. Crowns and stems are found in abundance, but roots are rare. Concerning the orientation of the crinoids on the slabs, there is no special direction at all. Sometimes it seems that the majority of crowns in one layer have the distal ends in a certain direction, whereas in another layer they lie in a different direction. But it is almost impossible to determine this exactly. This is due to the fact that it is difficult to determine to what layer a specimen belongs. As stated above, the crinoids belong to many different species. On the larger slab we find the following species3: Barycrinus lyoni Hall. Cyathocrinus multibrachiatus Lyon and Casseday. Decadocrinus depressus Meek and Worthen. Dichocrinus ficus Lyon and Casseday. it polydactylus. Dizygocrinus indianus Lyon and Casseday. Gilbertsocrinus (Goniasteroidocrinus) tuberosus Hall. 'Privat-docent for Paleobiology at the University of Vienna. 21t gives the author great pleasure to thank the officials of The American Museum of Natural History for the opportunity to study the excellent collections of Paleontology in that institution. He is especially indebted to the late Dr. E. 0. Hovey, to Dr. C. A. Reeds, and to Assistant Mr. E. J. Foyles, who kindly helped him during his stay at the Museum. 3Unfortunately when studying these slabs, especially from abiologicalviewpoint, I had no chance to verify the determinations or to rectify them according to newer systematic researches. |sR lw|S|QX- | 11 | S ^ ^WB. 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Platycrinus hemisphericus. Scaphiocrinus xequalis Hall. coneyi Hall. unicus Hall. Scytalocrinus decadactylus Lyon and Casseday. Taxocrinus exsculptus Lyon. "i meeki Hall. "i ramulosus Hall. Besides these and some undetermined fragments, Protaster gregarius, Archimedes terebriformis, and Platyceras sp. appear on this slab. These forms, however. are represented by only one or two specimens. Similar circumstances were observed in the collections from the same locality in the Peabody Museum at New Haven, Conn., and also in the beautiful Springer collection in the U. S. National Museum at Washington, D. C. In New Haven,' about forty different species of crinoids were found, belonging to different groups, such as Camerata, Flexibilia, etc. A few other fossils, such as blastoids, asteroids, edrio- asteroids, bryozoans, brachiopods, and gastropods, also appeared, but they were always represented by single specimens. The question arises as to how to explain the remarkable accumulation of crinoid remains on the slabs. And this question leads naturally to the further one concerning the explanation of the occurrence of crinoids at Crawfordsville. This question is, of course, not a new one, and it has been answered long since. But so far as I can see, it has been answered always in only one way. The common idea seems to be that which Springer has ex- pressed twice in recent years. Once he dealt with that problem in 1917 on the occasion of examining the occurrence of the genus Scyphocrinus,2 and again in 1924 in his paper, 'A remarkable fossil Echinoderm fauna in the East Indies.3 There he expressed the opinion that the crinoids lived at Crawfordsville in colonies, and that therefore the place where they were found represents also their living-place.4 Is the above explanation the only possible one, and if not, is it the most probable one? 'The author is indebted to Prof. R. S. Lull, Prof. Charles Schuchert and Prof. C. 0. Dunbar for their courtesy in permitting him to examine the specimens from Crawfordsville, Ind., in the Peabody Museum of Yale University. 2Springer, Frank, 1917, 'On the Crinoid genus Scyphocrinus and its bulbous root Camarocrinus,' Smithsonian Institution Publ. 2440, LXXIV, p. 9. 8Springer, Frank, 1924, 'A remarkable fossil Echinoderm fauna in thle East Indies,' Amer. Journ. Sci., Ser. 5, VIII, p. 328. 4Compare also: Wachsmuth, C., and Springer, F., 1897, 'North American Crinoidea Camerata, Mem. Mus. Comp. Zool., XX, XXI, Cambridge. 1925] CRINOID OCCURRENCE AT CRAWFORDSVILLE 5 As 0. Abel stated for the first time in 1911,1 and discussed further in his 'Lehrbuch der Palaozoologie,'2 we have, in the case of finding a fossil in the rocks, always to examine whether the finding-place coincides with the living-place and also with the place where the animal died, or if it coincides with only one or with none of these places. In the latter case the finding-place represents only the imbedding-place. The question we have to deal with is, therefore: Did the crinoids, found at Crawfordsville, really live in this place? Is the occurrence in this locality, therefore, " autochthon " or " allochthon "?3 The first thing to discuss in this connection is the fact that the crinoids do not occur in a single layer but in a number of layers; each layer, at least in all examined slabs, appears only a little higher or deeper than its neighbors. Keeping this in mind, we can now imagine that all crinoids found in the slab lived there at the same time, or that those of the different layers lived one after another, at first those of the deepest layer, then those of the second layer, and so on. In the first case, we must suppose that the sedimentation of all layers took place at the same time; that means that the crinoids were killed by a single event. The supposition that the sedimentation was not a sudden but a continuous process seems untenable because crinoids could hardly live in a place where masses of mud were coming on or falling down without interrup- tion (see page 9). The first supposition also seems not highly probable, because the sediment itself shows no trace of a sudden deposition. Similar difficulties also arise, of course, when we think of a successive life of the crinoids in the different layers. But there are yet other things demanding consideration. As men- tioned above, we find on the figures and also on other slabs many arms, calices, and stems in beautiful preservation, but roots seldom occur. Among the many individuals of the great slab, only two root-regions are to be observed. That is remarkable indeed, for in the case of a colony-we should expect a higher proportion. But something else is worthy of. notice. All the roots I found on different slabs from the Crawfordsville locality are of the same type. 'Abel, O., 1912, 'Uber die verschiedenen Ursachen des gehuiuften Vorkommens von Tierleichen in Gesteinen,' Verh. zool.-bot. Ges. Wien, LXII, pp. 57-60. 2Abel. O., 1924, 'Lehrbuch der Palaozoologie,' 2d edition, Jena. That fossil animals did not always live in the place where we find their remains, was called to attention in the nineteenth century (see Bou6, A., 1873, '^ber die aus ihren Lagerstiitten entfernten und in anderen Formationen gefundenen Petrefacten,' Sitzungsber Akad. Wissen. Wien, LXVII, I Abt., pp. 375-390), but the importance of this fact had not become recognized at that time. 3In a previous paper (Ehrenberg, K., 1924, ',T;ber das Vorkommen von Fossilresten, ein Bei- trag zur Paliiobiologischen Terminologie, Naturwissenschaften,' 12. Jahrg., pp. 593-596), I proposed to distinguish tlle cases where living-place, dying-place, and imbedding-place are represented by the same locality as autochthon occurrences, and to consider occurrences where these three places are not represented by one locality, as allochthons. 6 AMERICAN MUSEUM NOVITATES [No.