Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois

ESCONI Gem, Mineral & Fossil Show

More ESCONI 2017 Show Pictures

Various pictures from the vendors tables…
Read more: More ESCONI 2017 Show Pictures
ESCONI Gem, Mineral & Fossil Show

Saturday Pictures from the ESCONI 2017 Show

Mazon Creek Auction Material
Read more: Saturday Pictures from the ESCONI 2017 Show
ESCONI Gem, Mineral & Fossil Show

Today and Tommorrow are the 2017 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show

Come out and enjoy! Saturday, March 25th – 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.Sunday, March 26th – 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free admittance and parking! Exploreyour interests Shop for jewelry, gems, fossils, minerals from world-class vendors! Mineral Miner KU Minerals Exclusive Inspiration Rock Stars Rib River Lavin’s Gems Circle of Stones Fossil Hut Southwest Treasures Jackangeline Pop Up Rock Shop Find unique and interesting books at the used book sale Learn from members of club demonstrating their hobbies and collections Bid and buy gems, minerals and fossils at the Silent Auction and Live Auctions(photos of some items will be…
Read more: Today and Tommorrow are the 2017 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show
ESCONI Gem, Mineral & Fossil Show

More ESCONI 2017 Show Preview Pictures

Here are some more preview pictures for the ESCONI Show, which starts tomorrow.
Read more: More ESCONI 2017 Show Preview Pictures
ESCONI Gem, Mineral & Fossil Show

Tomorrow is the 2017 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show

Tomorrow is the day! Come out and enjoy! Saturday, March 25th – 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.Sunday, March 26th – 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free admittance and parking! Exploreyour interests Shop for jewelry, gems, fossils, minerals from world-class vendors List to Follow Soon, Stay tuned! Find unique and interesting books at the used book sale Learn from members of club demonstrating their hobbies and collections Bid and buy gems, minerals and fossils at the Silent Auction and Live Auctions(photos of some items will be posted on website a week before show) Enjoy amazing displays from the Field Museum…
Read more: Tomorrow is the 2017 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show
ESCONI Gem, Mineral & Fossil Show

ESCONI 2017 Show Preview Pictures

Here is a preview of some of the mineral specimens available during the auctions this weekend.
Read more: ESCONI 2017 Show Preview Pictures
ESCONI Gem, Mineral & Fossil Show

Donation of Material for the Junior Booth at the Upcoming Show

For the junior booth, we need small specimens in large quantities that could go in grab bags. Small geodes, tumbled stones, brachiopods, or crinoid stems anything like that would do. Maybe, you’ve got small jars or bags of these things sitting in the basement coated with dust. Get rid of some clutter and drop it off at the annual show this weekend, March 25th and 26th.\ Thanks!
Read more: Donation of Material for the Junior Booth at the Upcoming Show
Calendar of Events

Reminder: 2017 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show March 25th and March 26th

Just a little over a week away! Saturday, March 25th – 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.Sunday, March 26th – 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free admittance and parking! Exploreyour interests Shop for jewelry, gems, fossils, minerals from world-class vendors List to Follow Soon, Stay tuned! Find unique and interesting books at the used book sale Learn from members of club demonstrating their hobbies and collections Bid and buy gems, minerals and fossils at the Silent Auction and Live Auctions(photos of some items will be posted on website a week before show) Enjoy amazing displays from the Field Museum &…
Read more: Reminder: 2017 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show March 25th and March 26th
Around the Web

BBC: Legendary Dinosaurs That We All Imagine Completely Wrong

BBC earth has a post about common misconceptions of various popular dinosaurs. Velociraptor, Archaeopteryx, Triceratops, and yes, Tyrannosaurus rex are just a few of the ones listed. Like many children, I had a severe dinosaur phase. There was a period of my life when I cared more about prehistoric reptiles than pretty much anything else. However, it turns out that much of what I thought I knew is wrong. That is because the prevailing image of dinosaurs has always been a little slow in catching up with current scientific understanding. Until the “dinosaur renaissance” of the late 1960s, dinosaurs were…
Read more: BBC: Legendary Dinosaurs That We All Imagine Completely Wrong
Around the Web

20 Things You Didn’t Know About “Inner Earth”

GeologyPage has a story about 20 things you didn’t know about the inner Earth. 1. In 1692 Edmond Halley (of comet fame) proposed that the Earth is hollow. Below the outer crust where we live, he pictured two concentric shells and a core about the size of Mercury, all floating in a luminous gas. 2. Helloooo down there: Halley even imagined that these shells might be inhabited. Jules Verne riffed on this idea in his classic Journey to the Center of the Earth. 3. Halley was right about the planet-size core, at least. At Earth’s center is an iron-rich orb…
Read more: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About “Inner Earth”
Calendar of Events, Field Trips

Field Trip: Vulcan DeKalb (aka Larson) Quarry, Monday, April 10, 2017

There will be an ESCONI Field Trip to the Vulcan DeKalb (aka Larson) Quarry on Monday (!) April 10, 2017 from 1 PM to 3 PM. The quarry is located at 15622 Barber Green Road.This trip is combined with a visit from Dr. Reed Scherer’s Invert Paleo class from NIU. There are no trips to this quarry on weekends. The rules are shown below: You must be an ESCONI member as of April 3rd and at least 18 years old to attend this trip. That means you can pay your membership dues at the upcoming show, if you haven’t…
Read more: Field Trip: Vulcan DeKalb (aka Larson) Quarry, Monday, April 10, 2017
Calendar of Events

MAPS Expo 2017 is Friday, March 31st to Sunday, April 2nd 2017

The MAPS National Fossil Expo #39 will be held from Friday, March 31st to Sunday, April 2nd, 2017. This years topic is “The Silurian Period”. The show’s informational newsletter is here. And, the keynote speaker is Dr. Carlton Brett. The title of his talk will be announced soon. The show will be held at Sharpless Auction facility just North of I-80 at exit 249 in Iowa City, IA. Don’t miss it, it’s always a great time!
Read more: MAPS Expo 2017 is Friday, March 31st to Sunday, April 2nd 2017
Around the Web

The Field Museum’s Response to the Recent Tully Monster Paper

The Field Museum blog has a reply to the recent Tully Monster paper that disagreed with the determination of the Tully Monster as a vertebrate, which appeared in a couple papers published last year in Nature. Last year, two papers in the journal Nature sought to resolve what group of animals Tully Monster fossils belong to; both papers concluded the vertebrates. Last week, Dr. Lauren Sallan and colleagues published a paper in the journal Palaeontology, “The Tully Monster is Not a Vertebrate…” And that’s okay; it is part of how science works. It’s quite normal for new ideas, based on…
Read more: The Field Museum’s Response to the Recent Tully Monster Paper
Calendar of Events

ESCONI At PaleoFest

We are at PaleoFest at Burpee. Come on out!
Read more: ESCONI At PaleoFest
Calendar of Events

ESCONI Events March 2017

Field trips require membership, but visitors are welcome at all meetings! Sat, March 11th ESCONI Minerology Study Group Meeting 7:30 PM College of Dupage – Tech Ed (TEC) Building, Room 1038B (Map) – Topic: Annual Mineral Identification Contest; Bring 3 unlabeled specimens and 4 labels Sat, March 25th ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show! For info see this page Sun, March 26th ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show! For info see this page ESCONI Paleontology Study Group Meeting 7:30 PM College of Dupage – No Meeting ESCONI Archaeology Study Group Meeting – Open at this time, seeking a…
Read more: ESCONI Events March 2017
Calendar of Events

Reminder: Burpee Museum: Paleofest 2017 March 4th and 5th, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm

Burpee Museum’s annual PaleoFest 2017 will be held on March 4th and 5th this year. The keynote speaker is Matthew Lamanna PhD., from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. His talk is called “From Egypt to Antarctica: Discovering New Dinosaurs in the Southern Continents”. Roughly 150 million years ago, during the middle of the Mesozoic Era (the ‘Age of Dinosaurs’), the all-encompassing supercontinent of Pangaea split into a northern half, called Laurasia, and a southern half, called Gondwana. Gondwana itself ultimately separated into all the major Southern Hemisphere landmasses we know today—South America, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica—with several important events…
Read more: Reminder: Burpee Museum: Paleofest 2017 March 4th and 5th, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Calendar of Events

Dr. Ken Angielczyk of the Field Museum will be the May 2017 General Meeting Speaker

The speaker for the May general meeting will be Dr. Ken Angielczyk, Associate Curator at the Field Museum. His program will center on his field work in locations such as Antarctica, Tanzania and South Africa recovering fossils of anomodont therapsids, an extinct clade of non-mammalian synapsids (“mammal-like reptiles”).
Read more: Dr. Ken Angielczyk of the Field Museum will be the May 2017 General Meeting Speaker
Around the Web

MinuteEarth: Why Did T Rex Have Such Tiny Arms?

MinuteEarth on YouTube has a neat little video about T Rex and it’s tiny arms. Enjoy!
Read more: MinuteEarth: Why Did T Rex Have Such Tiny Arms?
Around the Web

400 million year old gigantic extinct monster worm discovered in Canadian museum

Phys.org has a post about a gigantic worm which lived about 400 million years ago. The fossil species was discovered back in 1994 by Derek K Armstrong of the Ontario Geologic Survey. He had been dropped by helicopter to investigate the rocks and fossils in a remote and temporary exposure in Ontario. The species has been named Websteroprion armstrong, which honors Armstrong and Alex Webster of the Death Metal band Cannabal Corpse (he is regarded as a ‘giant’ in handling his instrument). The animal possessed the largest jaws ever recorded in this type of creature. The jaws were over one…
Read more: 400 million year old gigantic extinct monster worm discovered in Canadian museum
Around the Web

‘Tully monster’ mystery is far from solved, group argues

Phys.org has a story about our friend the Tullymonster. Recall that last year there was quite a bit of discussion about the classification of the Illinois State Fossil. Two independent groups of scientist published paper last Spring, one claiming that it was a vertebrate and one even claimed it to be a primitive lamprey. Now a group of paleobiologists led by the University of Pennsylvania’s Laren Sallen, say all that research was wrong. The original paper is open access and appears in the Journal Paleontology. “This animal doesn’t fit easy classification because it’s so weird,” said Sallan, an assistant professor…
Read more: ‘Tully monster’ mystery is far from solved, group argues

Friday, April 10th	General Meeting – 8:00 PM via Zoom. Jessica Hull will present “Life in the Devonian Period, The Age of Fishes.”
Saturday, April 11th	Junior Study Group Meeting – 2:00 PM, in person at the College of DuPage Technical Education Center (TEC) Building – Room 1038A (Map). Katherine Howard will present on Sand and Sediment Collecting. Specifics of this meeting are available from Scott Galloway, 630-670-2591, gallowayscottf@gmail.com.
Saturday, April 18th	Paleontology Study Group – 7:30 PM via Zoom and in person at the College of DuPage, TEC, Room 1038B (Map). Keith Robitschek will present “Digging the Marl of the Lance Formation.”
Friday, April 24th	MAPS Expo XLVII – Springfield, IL.
Saturday, April 25th	MAPS Expo XLVII – Springfield, IL.
Sunday, April 26th	MAPS Expo XLVII – Springfield, IL.
No meeting this month	Mineralogy Study Group

Most Recent Post