Bill would designate 'elegant sea lily' as state fossil

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Indiana has a state bird, a state insect, even a state pie. So why not a state fossil?

That's the thinking behind a bill filed by two state senators that would designate the "elegant sea lily" as Indiana's official state fossil.

Indiana is one of only a handful of states that haven't added a fossil to their lists of official state items. Senate Bill 114 would change that, adding the elegant sea lily, whose official name is Elegantocrinus hemisphaericus, to the mix.

The bill has bipartisan support, a rarity in a Statehouse with Republican supermajorities. Its authors are Sen. Phil Boots, R-Crawfordsville, and Mark Stoops, D-Bloomington. But it has been assigned to the Senate Rules Committee, which means it's unlikely to gain traction.

Stoops told The Herald-Times that the idea for a state fossil came from the Indiana Society of Paleontologists.

The elegant sea lily is an adult crinoid, a type of marine animal that lived in Indiana about 350 million years ago when much of the state was under water, said Peggy Fisherkeller, curator of geology at the Indiana State Museum. The animal usually attached to something like mud or sand as a juvenile and could become free-swimming as an adult.

"Think of it as a starfish on a tall stalk," Stoops said.

Elegantocrinus hemisphaericus was discovered in the Edwardsville Formation in the Crawfordsville area in 1865, said state geologist John Steinmetz. Its impact is still felt today.

"The Statehouse is literally built on limestone," Stoops said, "and limestone is made up of decayed crinoids."

Indiana's limestone industry generates millions of dollars for the state's economy and employs thousands of Hoosiers, Stoops noted, "all because of this little creature that lived here hundreds of millions of years ago."

"To me, that's pretty amazing," he told The Indianapolis Star, "and makes it the perfect candidate for the state fossil."

Across the United States, official state fossils take numerous forms, including mammoths, sea creatures and dinosaurs.

This isn't the first attempt to designate a state fossil in Indiana. Steinmetz, director of the Indiana Geological Survey, said past efforts have focused on the extinct blastoid, which looks like a walnut, and the Archimedes bryozoan, another extinct marine animal that grew in the shape of a corkscrew.

"It's something that comes up periodically. And, believe it or not, this can be a politically polarizing issue," Steinmetz said.

"There are camps or individuals who favor one or the other," he said. "We don't take a position. We love them all."