ON THE CRINOID GENUS SCYPHOCRINUS AND ITS 

 BULBOUS ROOT CAMAROCRINUS 



By FRANK SPRINGER 



ASSOCIATE IN PALEONTOLOGY, U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM 



(Abstract read before the Paleontological Society of America, December, 1912. Resume by R. S. Bassler, 

 Proc. U. S. National Museum, vol. 46 (Nov., 1913), pp. 57-59, plates 1 and 2) 



INTRODUCTION 



For more than half a century there have been known to paleontologists 

 certain bulb-like, supposedly crinoidal or cystoidal, bodies which were described 

 from American localities by Hall in 1869 as Camarocrinus. Similar structures 

 had been known long before that from rocks in Bohemia considered of Silurian 

 age, to which Barrande had given the name Lobolithus, without description. 

 For a full account, with ample illustrations, of their morphology and occurrence, 

 and of the pertinent literature, reference may be made to Professor Charles 

 Schuchert's admirable paper of 1904, On Siluric and Devonic Cystidea and 

 Camarocrinus!' 



These organisms may be briefly described as large bulbous, chambered 

 bodies, with thick walls composed of irregular plates, and to one end of which 

 are attached roots and the terminal portion of a stem similar to those of 

 crinoids. 



Hall's interpretation of this structure was that the " probable theory in 

 regard to this fossil points to a functional similarity with a crinoidal root, 

 * * * Viewing it in this respect it may be regarded as a large chambered bulb, 

 with an attached column, on the distal extremity of which was a calyx having 

 characters unknown at the present time. In this aspect it must have been a 

 free floating organism, similar in its habits to the recent Medusae and 

 Comatulse." ' 



This view in substance has been generally held by subsequent authors. 



Dr. Bather' in 1900 definitely associated Camarocrinus with the Camerate 

 genus Scyphocrinus, as a root, " perhaps connected with a free-floating exis- 

 tence." And Dr. Kirk* in 191 1 considered it " firmly established * * * that the 



1 Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. 47, pt. 2, pp. 253-272, 1904. 



2 28th Report New York State Museum, p. 206, 1879. 

 * Lankester, Treatise on Zoology, pt. 3, p. 135, 1900. 

 *Proc. U. S. National Museum, vol. 41, pp. 54-56. 



