good morning John around a hundred
million years ago the continent that is
currently North America was two or three
large islands and slicing through the
space between these islands was a
massive shallow ocean called the Western
interior Seaway it stretched all the way
from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic
Ocean at its deepest this giant sea was
just 900 meters deep for comparison the
deepest point in the Mediterranean Sea
is five thousand metres deep it was warm
it was shallow there were rivers from
all over the place dumping nutrients
into this thing and today all over the
interior of America you can still see
the remnants of that time there are
these little cylinders they look like
maybe crystals or fossilized plant parts
but really they are the remains of
crinoids zis tree like filter feeders
blanketed that sea but they were not
plants they were animals beautiful
animals and if you've ever wanted to see
a fossil come to life I've got good news
for you because one crinoids are still
common on earth as they have been for
nearly half a billion years and too they
do not disappoint in their beauty and
oddity crinoids come in two main flavors
today the stalked kind which we call sea
lilies and the unstopped kinds which we
call feather stars now they look more
like a kind of coral than anything else
like that they would just sit anchored
to one spot and the ocean filtering
plankton on the water and chilling out
but corals our collections of tiny
organisms and corals are very much stuck
to one place crinoids our animals they
are macro organisms like us and they can
though they don't often move oh yeah I
mean I maybe forgot to mention the main
thing about feather stars which is this
like you've probably seen viral videos
of this movement but it isn't the kind
of thing that like it hurts to watch
again crinoids spend almost all of their
time sitting in one spot but they spend
almost all of their viral video time
engaging in this amazing mesmerizing
locomotion like other echinoderms like
starfish sea urchins eat cucumbers etc
feather stars are Penta
radially symmetrical they have
five-sided symmetry this is harder to
see in crinoids but it is a thing they
might have any number of legs but that
number should be divisible by five
except that they often get their legs
chewed off or knocked off they are
pretty delicate but they could describe
them back
and while feather stars move around
looking like the most unearthly gorgeous
thing that has yet happened see lilies
which are essentially the same thing
like their different species but very
similar when they move around yeah they
just drag their stock behind them just
trudging across the ocean floor um check
this out their blood they have a
vascular system their blood is just
water transports oxygen and nutrients
and waste it does the whole vascular
system thing but it's just seawater
talking about an organism that figured
out how to do its thing before blood
existed and is still doing that crinoids
have continued to adapt like their
locomotion that wasn't happening 500
million years ago that's relatively
recent I mean like 200 million years ago
but still try nodes y'all did it good
work just keep swimming I guess is what
this is if you're a member of the
bizarre B spin club we sent out feather
stars early instead of armadillos if
you're wondering whose fault that makes
up was wonder no longer thank you for
being a part of that project all the
money from it's going to help some of
the most vulnerable people in the world
so that everybody knows the dftba
warehouse and store have been closed
down everybody is still on staff we hope
to be up and running soon John this
episode was a really great break for me
I hope it was for for you as well and
I'll see you on Tuesday