The Ordovician Day Buffet

One of the first questions asked by the WLBOTT Elders is: Will There Be a Buffet?

To satisfy this buffet desire, and in honor of our series on ancient Estonia, we created Ordovician Day at the WLBOTT Ladle & Lube. These are delicacies that would have been available at the time of the Kärdla Meteor impact, 450 Ma.

First Up: An Appetizer of Trilobites Bites

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And the Taste?

Elder G speculates:

What might a trilobite taste like?

Let’s triangulate from modern analogues:

• Trilobites were arthropods
• Their closest culinary cousins today would be:
  • Horseshoe crabs
  • Crustaceans (shrimp, lobster, crab)

Likely Flavor Profile:

• Mild, slightly sweet meat
• Firm but not tough
• Possibly closer to crab with a hint of shrimp

Texture:

• Segmented body suggests:
  • Small pockets of meat rather than large chunks
• Could be a bit fiddly—high effort, low yield
  (WLBOTT Elders already arguing over portion sizes)

Preparation (Purely Hypothetical, Before the Ethics Committee Arrives):

• Light steaming or roasting would probably suit best
• Too much seasoning would overwhelm a delicate flavor
• A squeeze of lemon and a suspiciously large amount of butter would inevitably appear

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Main Course: Orthocone nautiloids with a side of Algae and Microbial Mats

These were nautiloids big guys – up to 9 meters long, and hungry. Wikipedia is a little more conservative in its estimates”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthocone

Orthocone nautiloids range in size from less than 25 mm (1 in) to (in some giant endocerids of the Ordovician) 5.2 m (17 ft) long. Orthocone cephalopod fossils are known from all over the world, with particularly significant finds in Ontario, Canada and Morocco.

Nautiloids are a group of cephalopods (Mollusca) which originated in the Late Cambrian and are represented today by the living Nautilus and Allonautilus. Fossil nautiloids are diverse and species rich, with over 2,500 recorded species. They flourished during the early Paleozoic era, when they constituted the main predatory animals. Early in their evolution, nautiloids developed an extraordinary diversity of shell shapes, including coiled morphologies and giant straight-shelled forms (orthocones). No orthoconic and only a handful of coiled species, the nautiluses, survive to the present day.

Wikipedia

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The Dinner Special

At the Ladle & Lube, we having a special – if you can finish our 3 meter Orthocone nautiloid, you get a second one free! You remember Sister Magdalena of the Open Window and her charge, Fred? Fred is the penitent middle school boy responsible for the Whoopee Cushion incident at St. Gangulf Middle School. Sister Magdalena took Fred to dinner at the Ladle & Lube to celebrate his leadership in the Great Radish Harvest. Fred sees that the diner is offering the Orthocone nautiloid challenge, and orders it, on a bed of algae. Sister M decides on the kelp salad with tomatoes and the deviled emu egg with crackers.

The Flavor Profile

Orthocone Nautiloid:

• Flavor: Promising, familiar-adjacent
• Texture: High risk, high reward
• Emotional Factor: Slight unease while making eye contact

Algae & Microbial Mats:

• Flavor: Nutritional virtue with a hint of tidepool
• Presentation: Surprisingly elegant
• Likelihood of Being Described as “An Acquired Taste”: Extremely high

Likely Flavor Profile:

• Mild, slightly briny
• Comparable to:
  • Squid (calamari)
  • Octopus (but less tender unless prepared carefully)

Texture:

• Potentially firm and muscular
• Risk of rubberiness if overcooked
• Large size suggests:
  • Different textures in different parts (mantle vs. tentacles)

Preparation (As Debated by the Elders)

• Slow braising could tenderize tougher sections
• Thin slicing and quick searing for more delicate cuts
• Someone inevitably suggests deep frying, to the quiet disappointment of at least one Elder

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A Birthday!

During tonight’s diner service, Joe and Tina enjoyed a delightful meal of kelp and Brachiopods. But Joe had had a surprise in mind: knowing it was Tina‘s birthday, he asked the staff to prepare their special surprise – Sea Lilies and Sparklers!

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Sea Lilies

Crinoids [sea lilies] are marine invertebrates that make up the class Crinoidea. Crinoids that remain attached to the sea floor by a stalk in their adult form are commonly called sea lilies, while the unstalked forms, called feather stars or comatulids, are members of the largest crinoid order, Comatulida. Crinoids are echinoderms in the phylum Echinodermata, which also includes the starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers. They live in both shallow water and at depths over 9,000 m (30,000 ft).

Only about 700 living species of crinoids are known, but the class was much more abundant and diverse in the past. Some thick limestone beds dating to the mid-Paleozoic era to Jurassic period are composed almost entirely of disarticulated crinoid fragments.

Feeding
Crinoids are passive suspension feeders, filtering plankton and small particles of detritus from the sea water flowing past them with their feather-like arms. The arms are raised to form a fan shape, which is held perpendicular to the current. Mobile crinoids move to perch on rocks, coral heads, or other eminences to maximise their feeding opportunities. The food particles are caught by the primary (longest) tube feet, which are fully extended and held erect from the pinnules, forming a food-trapping mesh, while the secondary and tertiary tube feet are involved in manipulating any encountered food.

The tube feet are covered with sticky mucus that traps any particles that come in contact.

Locomotion
Most modern crinoids, i.e., the feather stars, are free-moving and lack a stem as adults.

In general, crinoids move to new locations by crawling, using the feather-like arms to heft the body. Such a movement may be induced in relation to a change in current direction, the need to climb to an elevated perch to feed, or because of an agonistic behaviour by an encountered individual. Crinoids can also swim.

In 2005, a stalked crinoid, Neocrinus decorus, was recorded pulling itself along the sea floor off the Grand Bahama Island. While stalked crinoids were known to move, before this recording, the fastest motion known for a stalked crinoid was 0.6 m (2 ft) per hour. The 2005 recording showed one of these moving across the seabed at the much faster rate of 4 to 5 cm (1.6 to 2.0 in) per second, or 144 to 180 m (472 to 591 ft) per hour.

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Wikipedia

Sea Lilies – a Flavor Profile

According to Elder G:

The dessert course of curiosity… a plate that looks like a bouquet and eats like a philosophical question.

What is a Sea Lily, Really?

Crinoids are echinoderms, which puts them in the same extended family as sea stars, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers

They’re not plants at all, despite the floral name. Those elegant “petals” are actually feather-like arms used to catch food particles drifting in the water.

Likely Flavor Profile

If we triangulate from modern echinoderms:

Flavor

• Mildly briny
• Slightly sweet, but more subtle than shellfish
• A distinct mineral or ocean-floor note (“Hey, I’ve filtered plankton for a living”)

Closest modern comparison:

• Somewhere between sea urchin (uni) and a very delicate oyster

Texture

This is where things get… texturally adventurous.

• The arms would likely be soft and feathery, possibly a bit fragile or filament-like
• The central body slightly more substantial, but still delicate

The WLBOTT Kitchen Assessment

Let’s be honest. This is not a “hearty main course.”