Pretty part of the world too.

I grew up in Trenton, Missouri on the north end of the state. Pennsylvanian, not Mississippian, crops out in that area. Lithology consists primarily of thin bedded marine limestones mudstones, and shales (usually Winterset Limestone/Galesburg Shale/Bethany Falls Limestone in descending order), although there are some non-marine sandstones containing plant fossils in a couple of areas (below the Bethany Falls, I think). I had the good fortune of discovering a fantastic crinoids collecting local only 18 miles from home.

Your photo reminds me of marine Mississippian limestones that I’ve seen on occasion. The lacy bryozoa inside the looped upper part of the crinoid stem does indicate that the rock is most likely Paleozoic, and not younger.

Identifying crinoids by columnals, alone, is virtually impossible (there’s a paper I have in my library published by the University of Kansas on this subject by the late R.C. Moore, PhD., but I don’t have it sitting in front of me). There are not enough disarticulated crinoid plates from the dorsal cup or crown in your photo to determine for sure if it’s Mississippian, but the rock and fossils “look right”.

But as they say: “Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts” – - stratigraphic regimes can change dramatically from region to region, although the Mississippian marine facies seems to have covered a very large area.

I had to relearn everything about what I knew when comparing some Texas Pennsylvanian rocks to their Missouri “eqivalents”.

I’ve collected museum-quality crinoids from Missouri, Kansas, and Texas (which I’ve called home for 25 years). Most of the serious collecting has been confined to Permian and Pennsylvanian strata, so I’m no authority on Mississippian.

Nice photo!

Ron