Cuddy's beads

This is the tiniest thing in my Dad's museum, perched on the end of my middle finger. It is a Cuddy's (St Cuthbert's) bead from Lindisfarne. He has quite a big collection of these in his museum - they are sections of Crinoids, which were animals (not plants) somehow related to sea urchins and sea lilies. These ones are about 350-300 million years old. Wow. I don't know how to visualise that. But there are older things in the collection too (to follow...)  I've never been to Lindisfarne but have longed to go for ages. Not really for the fossils, but now I know these are there, I would love to find some of these things of the least for myself. That's the excitement with fossils - actually finding them for yourself. An amazing and exhilarating experience... (There's a wonderful introduction to fossils on the Open University website, and the info in this post is thanks to my Dad's fossil expertise!)