Evolutionary biology of crinoids in the Triassic period
Lecture in the TIETZ event hall on 21 March, 6.30 pm
The Museum für Naturkunde invites you to a lecture on Wednesday, 21 March at 18:30 in the TIETZ event hall. Admission is free.
Dr h.c. Hans Hagdorn, director of the Muschelkalkmuseum Ingelfingen, will talk about the most remarkable echinoderms in the history of the earth: crinoids. The speaker is a profound expert on these filigree marine organisms and talks about the development, distribution and current locations of these attractive fossils. A must for fossil collectors!
The lecture will show how crinoids have adapted to a wide variety of marine habitats over a period of 50 million years, up to the end of the Triassic, and how their morphology has changed in the process. It also presents the world's most important Triassic deposits, which have provided the evidence for research into these diverse echinoderms. The journey leads from the shell limestone of Central Europe through the Dolomites to the late Triassic of China and New Caledonia.
Together with other echinoderms, crinoids became almost completely extinct at the end of the Palaeozoic, around 250 million years ago. According to current knowledge, only a single lineage survived the most catastrophic of all extinction events on earth into the Triassic period. All later crinoids are descended from the holocrinids, which were widespread worldwide in the early Triassic.