Category: Mazon Creek
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Fossil Friday #280: Mayomyzon pieckoensis
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #280. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Bluesky/Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! Mayomyzon pieckoensis is an extinct species of lamprey found…
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Throwback Thursday #280: Braceville Trip 05/16/2009
Here’s a great report from Andrew Young of the Braceville Field Trip on May 16th, 2009. Notice that the spoil pile is much bigger!
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Mazon Monday #284: Mayomyzon pieckoensis
Mayomyzon pieckoensis is an extinct species of lamprey found in the Mazon Creek fossil biota. Pipiscius zangerli (see Mazon Monday #253) is also a lamprey from Mazon Creek. Lampreys are a group of jawless fish known for its funnel-like sucking mouth. There are about 38 modern species with maybe 7 extinct species currently classified. Genetic…
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Mazon Monday #283: Mazon Creek bromalites evidence a specialized, xiphosurid-rich diet for Pennsylvanian predators
This is Mazon Monday post #283. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Another week, another new Mazon Creek paper,.. “Mazon Creek bromalites evidence a specialized, xiphosurid-rich diet for Pennsylvanian predators” was published in the journal Palaios. It was authored by Russell Bicknell, Julien Kimming, Andew Young, Bruce Lauer, Rene’ Lauer, and…
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Fossil Friday #278: Annularia sphenophylloides
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #278. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! —————————————————– Today, we have another beautiful contribution…
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Throwback Thursday #278: Silver Tullies and Trilobites
ESCONI was more active in lapidary in the past. Until the early 2010s, there was a Lapidary Study Group. Sheila Bergmann was the study group chairman for many years. The pieces shown below are silver castings and silver plated from the Dave and Sheila Bergmann collection. There’s a few calymene trilobites and various tully monsters.…
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Mazon Monday #282: Pit 11 Shutdown in 1974
This is Mazon Monday post #282. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. For the Braidwood, Wilmington, and Coal City area, 1974 marked the end of an era with the closure of the last operating coal mine—Peabody Coal Company’s Pit 11. The mine had been in operation since 1951, originally opened by…
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Fossil Friday #277: Alethopteris sullivantii
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #277. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! —————————————————– Jim Alann recently sent us a…
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Mazon Creek, Field Museum, and ESCONI in the News!
Mazon Creek, Field Museum, and ESCONI was in the news on multiple Chicago channels! FOX 32 CBS News NBC 5 Chicago One of the “world’s best fossil sites” is located just an hour outside of the Windy City, according to Chicago Field Museum researchers. Dr. Arjan Mann, assistant curator of early tetrapods at the Field…
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ESCONI Field Trip to Braceville, IL for Mazon Creek Fossils – Saturday, September 6th and Sunday, September 7th, 2025
Braceville Field Trip Rules for September 2025 The ESCONI field trips to Braceville for Mazon Creek fossils are set for September 6th and 7th, 2025 from 9 AM to 3 PM. You can attend one or the other, but not both days. There is an attendance limit of 50 people each day. You must register…
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Mazon Monday #281: 283,821 concretions, how do you measure the Mazon Creek?
This is Mazon Monday post #281. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. There’s quite a bit of Mazon Creek fossil research happening. Last week, we posted a paper that redescribed Palaeocampa (see Mazon Monday #280), some of our friends at the Field Museum had a paper about Sphenophyllales in June (see…
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Fossil Friday #276: Lycopodites meekii
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #276. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! —————————————————– This week’s Fossil Friday is a…
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Don’t Go Dipping Your Toes In Carboniferous Waters | Armored “Worm” Oozed Toxic Chemicals In Rivers
EDGE Science has a nice video summary of the paper “Palaeocampa anthrax, an armored freshwater lobopodian with chemical defenses from the Carboniferous”, which was the subject of yesterday’s Mazon Monday post (see Mazon Monday #280). At this point, the Cambrian Explosion is a paleontology meme that has bled so far into the pop-culture zeitgeist that…
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Mazon Monday #280: Palaeocampa anthrax Redux
This is Mazon Monday post #280. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. The classification of Palaeocampa anthrax has long been controversial. The animal was first described as a catepillar in 1865 by Fielding Bradford Meek (1817-1876) and Amos Henry Worthen (1813-1888) in “Notice of some new types of organic remains from the…
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Fossil Friday #275: Crenulopteris acadica
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #275. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! For this week, we have some very…
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Mazon Monday #279: Prehistoric paradise hiding just outside Chicago
This is Mazon Monday post #279. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. When Arjan Mann and his lab at the Field Museum held a field trip to the Braceville spoil pile back in May 2025, he invited a ESCONI. Here is the story on Reuters. Near a riverbank in central Illinois,…
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Fossil Friday #274: Palaeoxyris prendeli from Terre Haute
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #274. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! —————————————————– Palaeoxyris prendeli is a shark egg…
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Mazon Monday #278: Anthracomedusa turnbulli
This is Mazon Monday post #278. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Lacking hard parts, jellyfish are rare in the fossil record. Mazon Creek has a few species of them. One of the most common animal fossils found in Mazon Creek is Essexella asherae, which only recently was reclassified as a…
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Fossil Friday #273: Macroneuropteris scheuchzeri from Indiana
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #273. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! —————————————————– Today, we have a stunning 3D…
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Mazon Monday #277: Sphenophyllales from the Mazon Creek flora (Upper Moscovian: Illinois, USA)
This is Mazon Monday post #277. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Here’s a new paper “Sphenophyllales from the Mazon Creek flora (Upper Moscovian: Illinois, USA)” by some of our friends at the Field Museum, Yale, and the Smithsonian. It was published in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society in…
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Fossil Friday #272: Crenulopteris acadica
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #272. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! —————————————————– Crenulopteris acadica is one of the…
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Mazon Monday #276: Video for Cal So’s “Taxonomic diversity and development of Late Carboniferous amphibamiforms from the Mazon Creek Lagerstätte”
This is Mazon Monday post #276. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Cal So, Postdoctoral Scientist in the Research & Collections Department of The Field Museum, Chicago, gave us an informative presentation in June 2025. The title of his presentation was “Taxonomic diversity and development of Late Carboniferous amphibamiforms from the…
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Fossil Friday #271: Laveiniopteris rarinervis
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #271. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! —————————————————– This week we have a breathtaking…
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Mazon Monday #275: Rhacophyllum molle
This is Mazon Monday post #275. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. After Lesquereux (1870) Rhacophyllum molle is a wispy plant, underfined plant species described by Leo Lesquereux in 1870 as Hymenophyllites mollis. Later, he reclassified it as Rhacophyllum molle. He thought it was a type of aquatic plant. He reported…
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Fossil Friday #270: Anthracomedusa turnbulli
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #270. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! —————————————————– For this week, we have a…
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Mazon Monday #274: George Langford Sr. Passes Away on June 16th, 1964
This is Mazon Monday post #274. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Recently, I ran across the letter from George Langford Jr. upon the death of his father – George Langford Sr. The letter is the subject of this post and follows below. George Langford Sr. is giant in the history…
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Fossil Friday #269: Crenulopteris subcrenulata
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #269. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! —————————————————– This week, we have a stunning…
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Mazon Monday #273: Neuropteris fimbriata
This is Mazon Monday post #273. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Neuropteris fimbriata is a seed fern. It has by found associated with Neuropters ovata and is considered a growth form of it. N. fimbriata was described in 1866 by one the founders of American paleobotany Leo Lesquereux (1806-1889). Lesquereux…
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Mazon Monday #272: Annularia radiata
This is Mazon Monday post #272. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Annularia radiata is a very commonly found species of Annularia. Annularia was the foliage for Calamites sp., which is related to modern day horsetails. It is very similar to the larger Annularia inflata (Mazon Monday #60). It was named…
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Fossil Friday #267: Annularia radiata
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #267. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! —————————————————– We have a sweet little Annularia…
