This is Mazon Monday post #286.  What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil?  Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com.

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Last week, Mazon Creek, the Field Museum, and ESCONI were back in the news! WTTW, Chicago’s public television station, ran an article highlighting Mazon Creek. The story is an excellent read, exploring the scientific importance and new research of the site along with the perspective of amateur fossil collectors.

There’s a Mother Lode of Fossils in Chicago’s Backyard, and It Could Hold Clues to the Evolution of Life on Earth

When Arjan Mann joined the Field Museum as assistant curator of early tetrapods, it was with the intention of turning the institution’s gaze back onto the trove of fossils in its backyard.

“I think that the mother lode still is in the ground,” said Mann. “And more concretions than have been collected still reside in these piles, still reside in the dirt, and they’re just waiting for the next person to come and uncover them and uncover the next evolutionary mystery or solution, too.”

There’s more vertebrate material at the site than previously thought, he said. And advances in imaging technology, including electron microscopy, have yet to be applied to Mazon Creek fossils on a large scale.

So might there be more to existing specimens than meets the eye?

“Absolutely,” Mann said. “They might be more complete.”