Rare & beautiful Prehistoric ( 480 million years old ) Scyphocrinites Crinoid Fossil display specimen. Morocco origin. Large size - 7 1/4". Crinoid Fossils make up the class Crinoidea of the Echinoderms ( Phylum Echinodermata ). The earliest known Crinoids were in the Cambrian period about 488 million years ago. At that time the supercontinent Gondwana was in the southern hemisphere and contained most of the land. Crinoids were some of the earliest animals to live in the ocean. They had a stem with a crown consisting of a central body with arms usually branched and feathery. This gives it a lily-like appearance. They ate bits of small organisms and obtained nutrients from plankton, detritus, and larva.