Crinoid Stem Wampum

 

This month I paid a brief visit to the Besser Museum at Alpena, Michigan, USA. They had a large exhibit on Native American artifacts found in Michigan. While it was not identified as the above pictures are wampum that had threaded sting of crinoid columnals according to the 2018 book 101 American Fossil Sites you've gotta see by Albert Binkley Dickas (pages 98-99). It makes sense as while fossil hunting in Alpena I found quite a few crinoid stems. Though I am not sure since the exhibit was labeled "Various Shell Beads". It is looks like the shells where cut in circles and then a hole drilled in the middle. So they look like crinoid stems.

The Besser Museum for Northwest Michigan was named for Jesse Besser (1882-1970) who perfected and produced machines that create these famous concrete blocks. Out in the yard is a huge boulder sized Hexagonaria (Gürich, 1896) coral fossil (see my foot for size reference). They also have areas where you can search for and keep fossils from material dumped there from local quarry.

Devonian Coral: Hexagonaria

These two images depict a Hexagonaria sp. coral found in Jefferson County, Kentucky. It is from the Jeffersonville Limestone. Units on ruler are in centimeters.

Devonian Coral Hexagonaria

Here is a Hexagonaria sp. coral found in the Jeffersonville Limestone in Louisville Kentucky. The end needs to be polished to reveal more detail about the septa. This coral existed in the Middle Devonian period. It measures about 4 cm in length and 1 cm wide.

For more information, see Erwin Stumm's Silurian and Devonian Corals of the Falls of the Ohio pages 43-44 and plates 38-39 (pages 128-131).