Bugboy's Arts

Silurian brachiopod with prominent concentric ridges(rugae), the valve is somewhat square-ish in shape. the rims sort of extrudes thinly upwards. Also some of these guys retain a functional pedicle until adulthood.

Alt: productid brachiopods look superficially like clams but they are not molluscs. With productids they have one conves bowl-like valve and one flat almost concave valve. The concave valve is where their filter feeding lophophore attaches to, it's like a bristly tentacle that traps small particles. Many productids have spikes on their convex shell to help anchor them into the sediment

alt: top and side view of a paraspirifer brachiopod, they superficially look like clam shells, but inside you can see the spiral lophophore, the two filter feeding appendages that kinda look like a coiled spring. In the extinct spiriferids, these lophophores are supported by a hardened structure

alt: a Carboniferous crinoid (an echinoderm with radial arms jutying out of a central cup atop a stalk, like a sea flower with feathery tentacles) Gilbertsocrinus has a unique tegmen, the top part of its calyx. They are shaped like a grappling hook where five two pronged curving hooks emerge out of the tegmen. Their stalk is also unusually flexible for crinoids and have been found wrapped around other crinoid stalks, sort of like climbing vines, but animal..

Despite the gnarly experience, its cup and chimney is only about 3 cm tall

alt: a crinoid is an echinoderm with radial arms jutting out of a central cup atop a stalk, like a sea flower with feathery tentacles instead of petals. Dorycrinus is one of many spiky crinoids from the carboniferous. On its cup, above the attachment points of its feathery arms, are 5 large radial spines and one smaller central spine to either deter parasites from attaching on it, or fend off predators that attack said parasites which will also damage the crinoid.

a crinoid is an echinoderm with radial arms jutting out of a central cup atop a stalk, like a sea flower with feathery tentacles instead of petals.

alt: i wanted to go more colorful with this crinoid (an echinoderm with radial arms jutying out of a central cup atop a stalk, like a sea flower with feathery tentacles), here depicted with bands of blue and yellow for the arm and stalks, with red pinnules, the feather bits on the arms. most crinoids today live in the deep sea, but corocrinus and many others in the paleozoic lived in shallow water. Corocrinus seems to have this beautiful triangle/hexagon grid skeleton thingy on its cup instead of the usual hexagon plates