Geology doi: 10.1130/G33792.1 published online 17 January 2013; Geology Christina E. O'Malley, William I. Ausich and Yu-Ping Chin (Mississippian, Crinoidea) Isolation and characterization of the earliest taxon-specific organic molecules Email alerting services articles cite this article to receive free e-mail alerts when new www.gsapubs.org/cgi/alerts click Subscribe to subscribe to Geology www.gsapubs.org/subscriptions/ click Permission request to contact GSA http://www.geosociety.org/pubs/copyrt.htm#gsa click official positions of the Society. citizenship, gender, religion, or political viewpoint. Opinions presented in this publication do not reflect presentation of diverse opinions and positions by scientists worldwide, regardless of their race, includes a reference to the article's full citation. GSA provides this and other forums for the the abstracts only of their articles on their own or their organization's Web site providing the posting to further education and science. This file may not be posted to any Web site, but authors may post works and to make unlimited copies of items in GSA's journals for noncommercial use in classrooms requests to GSA, to use a single figure, a single table, and/or a brief paragraph of text in subsequent their employment. Individual scientists are hereby granted permission, without fees or further Copyright not claimed on content prepared wholly by U.S. government employees within scope of Notes articles must include the digital object identifier (DOIs) and date of initial publication. priority; they are indexed by GeoRef from initial publication. Citations to Advance online prior to final publication). Advance online articles are citable and establish publication yet appeared in the paper journal (edited, typeset versions may be posted when available Advance online articles have been peer reviewed and accepted for publication but have not © Geological Society of America as doi:10.1130/G33792.1 Geology, published online on 17 January 2013