Crinoids are often referred to as “sea lilies” even though they’re technically animals, not plants. They have been around since the late Cambrian, some 500 million years ago — 250 million ...

Experts identified them as pieces of sea lily, formally known as crinoids. Sea lilies are aquatic animals related to sea stars and sea urchins. In the fossil, the sea lilies were embedded in chalk.

Crinoids are a group of eerie, perfectly symmetrical creatures that include sea lilies and sea feathers. Sea lilies attach themselves to the ocean floor with a stalk, while sea feathers abandon ...

Dr Neil Clark, a real life palaeontologist, shows a range of fossils including colonial coral found in equatorial regions, crinoids which are sea lilies still alive today and orthocones (related ...