Crinoids and beach glass found the week of July 7th 2008.
Each discovery was on the beach, at dawn with the tide receding, in Harbert, Michigan.
If you look closely in the first photo you can see the crinoid with the center hole shaped like a star -
The third photo shows a rock I found with a partial crinoid stem in situ where you can see how the discs are stacked -
The last photo is intriguing, some sort of fossilised organic life, oval links like chains of some microscopic bacteria.
(Wish I had a macro lens!!!)
___________________________
__________
Just returned from a beach vacation on Lake Michigan for a week - stayed in a cottage 3 minutes to the beach , the best weather ! Discovered many crinoids YAY, took in some art galleries, ate loads of Michigan grown blueberries and asparagus and biked the country roads. Got totally brown. hah. It's a bad habit but really, I couldn't help but tan because of all the sun exposure and my skin's ability to take the sun's rays so easily - I even found a Petroskey stone which is fossilised coral, that even before the glacier period, these fossils formed during the Devonian Period when most of the US was covered by warm shallow seas. (I've since found out it is not a Petroskey stone)
And a bluish rock with raised strings of chain links. Like some sort of fossilised strings of bacteria - Curious. I even found a crinoid with the center like a star. Very fun.
And when I say crinoid, that's rather inaccurate as that word describes the whole animal . What I am finding are the round discs that are stacked forming the stem of the organism and have disarticulated. Finding the whole organism is very, very rare but occasional plates with the remains in situ are discovered in excavations and cutting into rock for roads and such. But generally what washes up with the lake tides are the single stem discs - I've seen some 2 inches across in diameter but those are quite rare - the biggest one I found this time was the size of my littlefinger nail -
_______
