Indiana University Press Collector's Guide to Fort Payne Crinoids and Blastoids (Life of the Past)

Collector's Guide to Fort Payne Crinoids and Blastoids is the first comprehensive guide for identifying the fossils of echinoderms from hundreds of millions of years ago, when North America was covered by a warm, equatorial sea. Crinoids and blastoids, echinoderms (the same family of marine animals to include starfish, sea urchins, and sand dollars) from the Fort Payne Formation in Kentucky, are rarely seen at gem, mineral, and fossil shows, nor are they regularly displayed at major museums. By combining high-quality color photographs and an accompanying descriptive text, William W. Morgan provides the first comprehensive identification guide to these fascinating fossils. Collector's Guide to Fort Payne Crinoids and Blastoids features photographs, often offering more than one view, of the best-quality specimens curated in the Smithsonian and other prominent invertebrate fossil museums. Morgan includes photographs that are unlabeled so that readers can test themselves to see whether they can differentiate some of the more subtle features that may be necessary for accurate identification.