WITCHES’ MONEY AND CHICKEN LEGS: THE RESEARCH HISTORY OF ENCRINUS LILIIFORMIS

Long before the advent of scientific palaeontology, common fossils were connected with superstition and legends of popular belief (Abel 1939). In Lower Saxony the abundant columnals of the Muschelkalk sea lily Encrinus liliiformis were called Sonnenräder (sun wheels), and in Thuringia and Hessia they were called Bonifatiuspfennige (St. Boniface's pennies) because the saint who baptised the German tribes was said to have cursed all the pagan money, which turned into stone. In southwestern Germany, Encrinus columnals were called Hexengeld (witches’ money). According to a legend from Beuthen in Upper Silesia, in 1276 St. Hyacinth's rosary broke when he was praying at a fountain, and the beads dropped into the water. The saint prayed for them to multiply, and since then the fountain has been producing rosary beads: columnals of a diverse Middle Muschelkalk crinoid association (Hagdorn et al. 1996).

Therefore, it is not astonishing that columnals of Encrinus liliiformis were among the first crinoid remains described in the scientific literature. In his monograph, De natura fossilium (1546), Georgius Agricola from Chemnitz in Saxony introduced the name ‘Encrinos lilgenstein’, which means stone lily. However, he used this name for Chladocrinus columnals from the Lias of Hildesheim. For the cylindrical columnals of Encrinus liliiformis, Agricola coined the names ‘Trochites’ (wheel stones, a translation of their trivial German name, Rädersteine) for single columnals and ‘Entrochus’ for pluricolumnals. A hundred years later, Fridericus Lachmund, in Oryctographia Hildesheimensis (1669), illustrated columnals, cups and cup elements (Pentagonus) as well as a fragmentary crown, the arms of which he compared to chicken legs.