Echinoderms are now considered as a biological and geological model that underlies researches of primary importance. The extent of the contributions made by the International Echinoderm Conferences to various fields of research is attested by the scope covered by presentation at the international conferences. These proceedings contain the complete papers or abstracts of all the presentations and posters presented at the eighth International Echinoderm Conference, held in Dijon, France in September, 1994. Coverage includes: general; extinct classes; crinoids; asteroids; ophiuroids; holothuroids; and echinoids.

The dominant faunal elements in shallow Paleozoic oceans, echinoderms are important to understanding these marine ecosystems. Echinoderms (which include such animals as sea stars, crinoids or sea lilies, sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea cucumbers) have left a rich and, for science, extremely useful fossil record. For various reasons, they provide the ideal source for answers to the questions that will help us develop a more complete understanding of global environmental and biodiversity changes. This volume highlights the modern study of fossil echinoderms and is organized into five parts: echinoderm paleoecology, functional morphology, and paleoecology; evolutionary paleoecology; morphology for refined phylogenetic studies; innovative applications of data encoded in echinoderms; and information on new crinoid data sets.

An abundance of crinoid ossicles was noted in the early reports of Lower Carboniferous strata of northern Utah and southeastern Idaho. Articulated crinoid cups and crowns, however, were not reported. Collections of the past 50 years and especially the past 15 years have found significant numbers of well-preserved crinoid cups and crowns along with a few echinoids, blastoids, and asterozoans in the Gardison Limestone of the Wasatch Range, Henderson Canyon Formation of the Bear River Range, Wellsville Mountain, and northern parts of the Wasatch Range of northern Utah, as well as in the Lodgepole Limestone of western Wyoming. The purposes of this paper are to describe the crinoids, blastoid, and echinoids from northern Utah and western Wyoming, discuss their relationship to previously described faunas from North America and Europe, and relate their stratigraphic occurrences to conodont zonations and their geographic occurrence to recent interpretations of the regional carbonate facies and tectonic setting.