Stone "Stars" from the Bottom of an Ancient Ocean

These unusual finds, resembling miniature stone stars, are actually fossilized fragments of the stems of sea lilies—ancient echinoderms that inhabited the oceans hundreds of millions of years ago. The characteristic star-shaped shape of these artifacts is explained by the structure of the creature's stem: after the animal's death, its trunk, composed of many individual segments, disintegrated into pieces that eventually turned into stone. The discovery of such fossils gives scientists the opportunity to literally touch sea creatures that existed long before the advent of dinosaurs, transforming chance geological discoveries into vivid evidence of our planet's incredibly ancient history.