Jamaican Cretaceous Crinoidea

Abstract

Jamaica has the best-known fauna of fossil crinoids of the Antillean islands. Two Cretaceous species have been reexamined on the basis of new material. Lower Cretaceous Apiocrinites sp., previously referred to Austinocrinus n. sp. and first documented from a short pluricolumnal, is now known from brachials and further fragments of column. This is the first millericrinid, and only the second non-isocrinid stalked crinoid, to be identified from the Jamaican and Antillean fossil record. Other ossicles may be derived from the cirri of a comatulid. Applinocrinus cretacea (Bather) is well known from the upper Senonian of England, North America and the West Indies, although Caribbean specimens have not been figured previously. Functional interpretations of the mode of life of Applinocrinus suggest that it was a benthic crinoid, presumably with arms. It lived embedded in the sediment.