''Marsupites'' is an extinct

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

crinoid Crinoids are marine animals that make up the class Crinoidea. Crinoids that are attached to the sea bottom by a stalk in their adult form are commonly called sea lilies, while the unstalked forms are called feather stars or comatulids, which are ...

s from the

Santonian The Santonian is an age in the geologic timescale or a chronostratigraphic stage. It is a subdivision of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or Upper Cretaceous Series. It spans the time between 86.3 ± 0.7 mya (million years ago) and 83.6 ± 0.7 mya. ...

stage of the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', ...

.''Marsupites''
at Fossilworks.org

Biostratigraphic significance

The

International Commission on Stratigraphy The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), sometimes referred to unofficially as the "International Stratigraphic Commission", is a daughter or major subcommittee grade scientific daughter organization that concerns itself with stratigr ...

(ICS) has assigned the extinction of ''Marsupites testudinarius'' as the defining biological marker for the start of the

Campanian The Campanian is the fifth of six ages of the Late Cretaceous Epoch on the geologic timescale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). In chronostratigraphy, it is the fifth of six stages in the Upper Cretaceous Series. Campani ...

stage of the

, 83.6 ± 0.2 million years ago.

Distribution

Fossils of the genus have been found in: * Lipnik, PolandLach & Salamon, 2016 *

Haslam Formation The Haslam Formation is a black shale geologic formation exposed on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, British Columbia, Canada. It preserves primarily marine fossils dating back to the Santonian Epoch of the Cretaceous period Period may re ...

, British Columbia, CanadaHaggart & Graham, 2018

References

Bibliography

* * * ''Fossils'' (Smithsonian Handbooks) by David Ward (Page 173) Uintacrinida Prehistoric crinoid genera Cretaceous echinoderms Index fossils Prehistoric echinoderms of Europe Cretaceous echinoderms of North America Cretaceous British Columbia Paleontology in British Columbia Fossils of Canada Fossils of Poland {{cretaceous-animal-stub