A paleontologist has discovered the fossil of a new species of marine invertebrate from approximately 450 million years ago on Mohonk Mountain House land.
Howard R. Feldman, a long-time research associate with Mohonk Preserve who has been recognized for his global scientific research on prehistoric marine life, found the fossil during his work at a small quarry. Feldman named the new species Pycnocrinus mohonkensis out of respect for the finding’s location. He and two co-authors have described Dr. Feldman’s discovery and the fossil of the crinoid, a marine invertebrate, in an article published online by Cambridge University Press on May 13, 2024 in the Journal of Paleontology.
As Feldman, who is a professor at Touro College in New York City, explained it, the find was somewhat like catching a big fish in an area where the fishing had not been great. Feldman said that as he was in the quarry, he came upon the intact fossil of a crinoid embedded in shale that he describes as “very platy,” flat and delicate. Crinoids are marine invertebrate animals that belong to a large class, Crinoidea, of echinoderms along with feather stars. They are related to other echinoderms such as sea urchins and starfish.
Its appearance, he noted, is akin to a “modern-day sea lily.” In fact, people often mistake a sea lily for a plant, but it’s a marine animal.
The paleontologist sensed immediately that there was nothing exactly like the crinoid species he was looking at. “I thought, ‘Whoa, what is this?’ “ he recalled. “There is nothing like this one.”Feldman, using hand tools to delicately collect fossils on the grounds, said, “All of a sudden, you get this beautiful specimen.” He very carefully removed the segment containing the fossil embedded in shale and put it in his car to transport.
The importance of what he had unearthed was not at all lost on Feldman. “I found something that no other human ever saw before,” he said.
Sighting and picking out the fossil about ten years ago spurred a laborious process of years and many steps: extraction of the fossil from the shale encasing it; preparing it for transport; conducting research; writing with fellow authors about the new species; photographing the fossil; and more. Feldman said it took a year just to dig out the crinoid specimen from the embedded shale. While his knowledge and instinct told him that the specimen was unlike any other, much more follow-up was necessary.
Feldman first consulted with a fellow paleontologist and friend, James C. Brower. A professor emeritus who had taught at Syracuse University for 33 years, Brower was a renowned expert in the biology of fossil animals and plants and in crinoids of the Paleozoic era. The team went through a definitive technical reference, the 50-plus volume Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, and other professional literature. They examined every picture and description of crinoids, to compare the various species with the fossil specimen that Feldman brought. As Feldman observed, “Everyone got excited” about the find.
Then a sad event delayed the process for a time. Brower passed away at age 83 in 2018. Feldman turned to Carlton E. Brett, a paleontologist and long-time University of Cincinnati professor with some four decades of research and distinguished scholarship in paleontology, sedimentary geology and related fields.
During this period, Feldman and those working with him had to take utmost care in transporting the fossil. For taking it from the Hudson Valley to Syracuse, it had to be wrapped very carefully in bubble wrap and hand-carried to and from the vehicle. The same process occurred when the fossil was transported to Cincinnati, for Feldman’s work with Brett.
It’s no wonder. This newly identified species of marine invertebrate existed approximately 450 million years ago during the Upper Ordovician Period, a geologic segment of the Paleozoic Era that ushered in significant changes in plate tectonics and climate and was marked by a vast increase in the number of marine animal species. North America was almost entirely underwater with a muddy sea bottom. Crinoids, such as starfish, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers, flourished in this period, and some species of crinoids survive to the present day. Fossils from this era hundreds of millions of years ago can be seen in shale outcrops that are throughout the Shawangunk Ridge and in other parts of the Ordovician Martinsburg Formation. This mapped bedrock unit, running through five states, was formed as the seawater disappeared and the clay and silt of the sea bottoms hardened into shale.
The fossil of the marine invertebrate species that Feldman encountered was a creature from hundreds of millions of years ago that was not free moving and would have been attached to the sea floor. The images of it show an array of arms attached around the top that come out of the calyx, a cup-like structure forming the main body of the species. Below this part is a flexible stalk, attached at the bottom to a holdfast that, as the name denotes, would hold it to the ocean floor. Feldman explained that it was a “passive suspension feeder,” a marine animal that would eat essentially what the current brought to it, such as plankton and the detritus that would collect on the muddy bottom.
To Feldman, the detection of a new marine invertebrate species is highly significant. “We can get insight to past living environments – what was living, what disappeared – and have some insight into what we are doing today,” he said. “It allows us to reconstruct Earth’s history and know what we might modify.”
The fossil is now at a repository at the American Museum of Natural History repository, where scholars and researchers can further study it.
As a research associate with Mohonk Preserve since 2007, Feldman cites the nonprofit organization as a place that fosters a lot of “great science.”The Research Associate Program makes it possible for regional, national, and global scientists to use Mohonk Preserve as what the preserve terms a “living laboratory.” The scientists can conduct research and scientific studies; use Mohonk Preserve’s natural and cultural history records and data; and offer educational opportunities. The preserve lists 13 current research associates in fields such as cellular biology, forest ecology, ornithology, and data science. Hundreds of undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students have conducted a variety of research projects at Mohonk Preserve.
Feldman plans to continue work as a Mohonk Preserve research associate but does not anticipate any further steps at the exact site where he found the fossil of the new marine invertebrate species. He is also a research associate in paleontology at the Museum of Natural History in New York City. For Feldman, more projects and places beckon in his geology and paleontology research. He has authored or co-authored some 200 scientific articles and presentations, and two books on the geology and paleontology of the Middle East as well as on the Paleozoic rocks of the Hudson Valley and Western New York. He is an expert on Mesozoic brachiopods, mollusk-like marine animals.
Moreover, he loves teaching, a passion that comes through as he talks about the varied places he has taken his students to show them, as he says, that “the Earth is my classroom and my lab.” This includes field trips to the Hudson Valley. In a walk on Fifth Avenue in New York City, he has shown the students how at Tiffany’s, of the two windows flanking the entrance, the southernmost window ledge is “full of crinoids.” He instructs the students how to figure out the age of a rock through their observations. Conversations with Feldman skip from one geographic location to the next as he reels off what evidence of Earth’s history one can view at many, many pl, from outcrops along the New York Thruway to the fossils in buildings around the Hudson Valley.
As Feldman concluded, “Every time you look at something, there’s a geological explanation for it.”
Thanks to Feldman’s expertise and work, the record of Earth has a brand-new marine animal species from hundreds of millions of years ago added to it, and the name of a new species that honors its finding at Mohonk Mountain House.
Join the family! 
