Crinoid-netlies ! The Origin of Golden Swirl

… The Saga Continues ………

21 March 2023

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A new friend contacted me and mentioned a rock called “Flowering Tube Onyx”.

“Tube Onyx?” sez I. “Never heard of it.” A frantic search revealed a new page in this unfolding investigation. I decided (for the sake of an accurate record) to leave my essay below intact and add a new section at the end with my new findings.

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One of the very popular rocks here at KinesavaROCKS is one that I have called “Golden Swirl”. I use that name because I think I remember my dad using it too. And it kinda fits since there are circular structures in a lot of it so that, if you hold your head just right and squint a little bit, they look a little like swirls.

It is a pretty rock. Customers have made some beautiful cabs using it. Here’s some that “Kenneth” in Pennsylvania made. Nice!

I’ve tried to imagine how this rock was formed. My most recent theory was that it was a kind of oncolite which contains circular structures formed around some very small grain of something – much like an oyster grows a pearl. Just a guess. … It turned out to be an incorrect guess. … Sorry!!!

I was filling an order for a customer the other day and I happened to examine a small chunk that totally changed my opinion. Check this one out …

Crinoids are interesting little sea creatures that, in their adult form, look like a tube attached to the sea floor. They have been around for a long time. Wikipedia notes that, “the class was much more abundant and diverse in the past. Some thick limestone beds dating to the mid-Paleozoic to Jurassic eras are almost entirely made up of disarticulated crinoid fragments.” Wikipedia also notes that they have a “U-shaped gut, with the anus being located on the oral disc near the mouth”.

There are all kinds in this wonderful world we live in.

A lot of my customers live in places where crinoids are a lot more common than they are in Utah, but we do have them here. Here’s a rock I’m using for a step near my house.

From now on, I’ll be labeling my “Golden Swirl” agate as a crinoid fossil!

********* The Next Chapter in the Story ************************************

20 March 2023

Is this “Flowering Tube Onyx” ?

Victor from North Carolina sent me a message and mentioned that he was interested in “Flowering Tube Onyx” which he said was a western rock. I had never heard of it, but just the name made me think that maybe this could be my dad’s “Golden Swirl Agate”. It didn’t take much effort to discover that “Flowering Tube Onyx” was a real thing. And not only that, it also appears to be a Utah rock!

Why hadn’t I heard of it before this? ... OH !!! I remember. I’m not a great rockhound. That was my dad.

But, although it’s not exactly the same thing, it does appear to also be a crinoid fossil. Here’s a picture I found.

As the photo shows, this rock goes by other names too. "Cave Flowering Onyx" for example.

I could see a crinoid in one piece that IS exactly the same. Crinoids in limestone and other rocks are relatively common. Here’s a piece captured in limestone for comparison.

The author who posted the first picture also doesn’t have a clue as to what it is. He found his first piece at an estate sale in Idaho and was looking for more. But I did discover that the general location where it was found is in the mountains east of Nephi, Utah. That is well within the range of my dad's rockhounding. In fact, it's just on the other side of the mountain from where he grew up. Other locations in Utah are mentioned in different web pages. The Utah Red Horn Coral is about a hundred miles away but it was mentioned in association with this rock too.

Although my dad’s rock is clearly not the same "Flowering Tube Onyx” (or “Agate") that can be found listed in other places, it's a close relative. And I still haven't been able to find exactly the same rock anywhere else.

21 March 2023

Trouble in Crinoid City – Controversy

In the years that I have been sending my dad’s rocks to people – and trying to figure out what I was sending them – I’ve learned that there are sometimes strong opinions about it. I’ve been wrong about a number of my dad’s rocks. (And I tell people about it … as I did earlier in this essay when I realized that “Golden Swirl Agate” could not be oncolites as I first guessed.) A reconsideration of the rock in my yard – the one I’m using as a step – leads me to think that it might be “petrified worm burrows” rather than crinoids.

The history of science is filled with mistakes and false conclusions. But one of the best reasons for confidence in the answers that science reveals is that when scientists are wrong, they admit it and correct their mistakes. In 1912, German meteorologist Alfred Wegener proposed the idea of plate tectonics (also called “continental drift”) to explain geological mysteries. The leading geologists of the day rejected his theory completely until the 1950’s. After all, Wegener was “just a weatherman and not a reputable geologist”. But then, according to Wikipedia:

“Numerous discoveries such as palaeomagnetism provided strong support for continental drift, and thereby a substantial basis for today's model of plate tectonics.”

Today, Wegener’s ideas are firmly rooted our understanding of the world around us.

The best example of this in my dad’s rocks is a rock I call “Algae-on-a-Stick”. The head of the department at a local university once dismissed the clear, organic fossils in the center as “oncolites” after only a cursory look at them. I’m still looking for a paleontologist willing to seriously consider these fossils which I consider to be the most impressive in my dad’s entire collection.

The Burgess Shale fossils – amazing preservation of soft body creatures from the pre-Cambrian – lay ignored in the back rooms of museums. According to the Parks Canada website “The Burgess Shale” (https://burgess-shale.rom.on.ca/history/discoveries/ ), the discoveries weren’t interpreted correctly and mostly forgotten until “almost 80 years after the first fossil discoveries were made”.

In my search for the correct interpretation of “Golden Swirl Agate”, my good friend hypodactylus (see the comment to this essay) has suggested that the tube shaped structures are simply the circular structures found in a lot of agates.

At Reddit, TH_Rocks insists that they could not be crinoids.

“Dude, no. That is definitely not a crinoid. I've seen thousands of crinoid fossils. What you have is just a tiny stalactite.”

TH_Rocks pointed out that crinoids (which are not extinct) have flower structures when found in the oceans today.

I’m always grateful for suggestions but I continue to support “fossil crinoids” as the best interpretation.

• Many fossils of dating back to the same geological period are found in the same area in Utah.

• The “tubes” that can be seen in the rock are a uniform shape and size. Something like “stalactites” or agate banding would have varying sizes and shapes. Where are the bigger and smaller ones? Not in these rocks.

• The “tubes” clearly have annular rings rather than a spiral, cone, or bulges along the length of the tubes.

• The “tubes” mostly occur in connected bunches. The limestone preserved crinoids shown above are a typical bunch and have a strong resemblance to the ones in my dad’s rocks.

• Crinoids fossils with “flower” structures are found, but they’re quite rare, and expensive because they’re rare. Most of the time, only crinoid stems are sturdy enough to be preserved as fossils and the stems are usually broken segments, just as they are in my dad’s rocks. But the stems of crinoids with flowers still look just like the crinoid stem segments in my dad’s rocks.

A foundation principle of my philosophy is “I Don’t Know”. I wrote more about this in my essay “Reflections”. So, it may be that I’m totally wrong. Tell me what you think about it.