WhenProfessor Ken McNamara’schildren were small he took them fogy hunting . On one trip , McNamara ’s then-4 - twelvemonth - old daughter turned up something he said ; “ was n’t supposed to be there ” . It ’s use up almost 30 years , but her find has led to a paper overturning much of what we thought we knew about isocrinid crinoids , also have it away as ocean lily , once a prevalent feature of the marine ecosystem .
For something like 500 million age , crinoids master shallow - water marine ecosystem . However , around the clip the dinosaurs reigned on earth , an increase variety of maritime predatory animal enter their home ground . The crinoids are echinoderms along with sea virtuoso and ocean urchins , and have stalks rather than being loose - floating . They ’re filter - feeders with little protection ( unlike sea urchins ) and mostly vanish from shallow waters around the time the dinosaurs lost their authority . Their hideaway to more lightly predated depths is part of theMarine Mesozoic Revolution .
At least we consider so until McNamara , a Cambridge University palaeontologist , took his tiddler on a field trip to an Albany pit on Western Australia ’s south coast . “ nipper are with child , ” he told IFLScience . “ They ’re complimentary labor , have great seeing and they ’re near to the ground . ” Whatever nestling labor law might say about such things , it worked , as McNamara ’s daughter turn up a fogy crinoid from an on the face of it shallow - water land site ten of millions of years after these were intend to have been abandon .
The discovery led to a wider search , regard the designation of hundreds of ocean lily fossils near Exmouth in due north - west Western Australia that indicate crinoids were flourish in shallow Australian waters 33 million years later . In junction withDr Rowan Whittleof the British Antarctic Survey , McNamara has now published a paper inCommunications Biologyrevealing the crinoids live in shallow waters for tens of 1000000 of year across much of the Southern Hemisphere after their big retreat in the north , cause this a much more significant matter than a local anomaly . McNamara ’s daughter does n’t get authorial acknowledgment , but he assures us a coinage will be call after her in a coming paper .
Northern Western Australia appear to have been especially important to shoal H2O sea lilies ' survival , with metal money spreading from there on ocean current . McNamara even thinks crinoid diffusion can pass over the history of Southern Hemisphere currents .
McNamara admit to IFLScience the understanding the timescales between the hemispheres are so dissimilar remains ill-defined . “ We thought it might be an absence seizure of the vulture , but we found sea urchins in some of the same deposit , ” he said . Whatever the explanation , the sea lily story is , he sound out , “ more complex than we first thought , and that makes it more interesting . ”
