This is one large Crinoid of the Sea Lilly variety. It has broken tubules on the one sie at the top and on the other side o the bottom. It is 17 inches tall by 8 inches wide by 2 1/2 inches thick. A remarkable specimen.
This is a mass of another type of crinoids. This is a very early variety of life in the seas. The above large crinoid is more advanced and lived more in the late Ordovician, while this variety appeared very early, about 450 million years ago. The arcing ribs at the stems of the Crinoids and the fan shaped areas are the heads. This variety actually floted on the top of the water like lilly pads, but it was not a plant, but rather a coral like animal.
These are broken pieces of extremely rare Ordovician sponges. There have been almost no finds of Orodivican sponges, except for some i the northern US. They had sat in a box unidentified for a very long time, but recently they were determined to be sponges. I have several large specimens of branching sponges and flat sponges. At the site that these are found there are some very large flat sponges that are over a meter in diameter. The pieces above were taken off of a large flat sponge, but the broke. It is sort of like a jig saw puzzle that has to be put back together.