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South Suburban Earth Science Club Fossil, Gem, Mineral & Jewelry Show – October 19th and 20th, 2019
Read more: South Suburban Earth Science Club Fossil, Gem, Mineral & Jewelry Show – October 19th and 20th, 2019The Prairie State College (PSC) Natural Science Department is hosting the South Suburban Earth Science Club Fossil, Gem, Mineral, and Jewelry Show from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 19th and 20th, in the Prairie Center Gym on PSC’s main campus at 202 S. Halsted St. in Chicago Heights. The event is co-sponsored by the South Suburban Earth Science Club (SSESC). The annual show is an opportunity for gem and fossil enthusiasts to meet the experts, get a close look at the latest finds, learn about the geological history of the area, and purchase rare gems,…
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PBS Eons: When Giant Lemurs Ruled Madagascar
Read more: PBS Eons: When Giant Lemurs Ruled MadagascarPBS Eons has a new episode. It is about the history of lemurs on Madagascar. How did they get there? In what ways did they evolve? What happened to the giants? Just a few thousand years ago, the island of Madagascar was inhabited by giant lemurs. How did such a diverse group of primates evolve in the first place, and how did they help shape the unique environments of Madagascar? And how did they get winnowed down, leaving only their smaller relatives behind?
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Reminder: Rock and Fossil Garage Sale – Saturday, September 28th, 2019
Read more: Reminder: Rock and Fossil Garage Sale – Saturday, September 28th, 2019There will be a sale of rocks and fossils from the collection of Dave and Sheila Bergmann on consecutive Saturday 28th, 2019 at 401 S. Lombard Ave, Lombard, IL from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Material for sale includes minerals and fossils in flats, as well as individual specimens. There will also be equipment, jewelry, and carvings along with some antiques, fishing equipment, lawn equipment and miscellaneous items.
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #20: ESCONI Class Song from 1967
Read more: ESCONI Flashback Friday #20: ESCONI Class Song from 1967As part of the run up to ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary, here is Flashback Friday post #20. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! Here is a song composed by some ESCONI members way back in 1967. The lyrics are by June Lyon Douglass. It should be sung to the tune of “Chicago”. ESCONI, ESCONI, That Go Happy Group! ESCONI, ESCONI, I’ll Give You The Scoop!! Believe Me, You Will Never Find Any – Club Of Its Kine in the Na-tion, The Na-tion The Mem-bers There Are Way Be-yond Compare! No Pho-nies, No…
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ESCONI October Paleontology Study Group Meeting October 19th, 2019 – Waves, Winds, and Tides: Fossil Collecting on the West Dorset Coast of Southern England
Read more: ESCONI October Paleontology Study Group Meeting October 19th, 2019 – Waves, Winds, and Tides: Fossil Collecting on the West Dorset Coast of Southern EnglandWaves, Winds, and Tides: Fossil Collecting on the West Dorset Coast of Southern England. Presentation by: Andrew Young, with Marie Angkuw, Jann Bergsten, Rhonda Gates, and Deborah Lovely. For the last several years, a group of ESCONI members have traveled to England in winter to collect fossils on its famous Jurassic Coast. Contrary to the time of year when vacationers typically hit the beaches looking for calm water and sunny skies, these enthusiasts plan their adventures precisely when the weather promises to be most violent and the tides most dramatic. It is when the fragile cliffs along the shoreline are…
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SciAm: Pterosaurs Were Monsters of the Mesozoic Skies
Read more: SciAm: Pterosaurs Were Monsters of the Mesozoic SkiesScientific American has an article about pterosaurs. It seems that they not the birds, which are dinosaurs, ruled the skies. Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to evolve powered flight. They ranged in size from the size of a small plane to the size of a modern sparrow. Many had heads larger than their bodies… they were, in essence, flying jaws of death! Unlike dinosaurs, which are survived today by birds, pterosaurs left behind no living descendants. As a result, all that paleontologists know about pterosaurs comes from the fossil record. And that record has been frustratingly fragmentary, leaving us with…
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Roy Plotnick: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Read more: Roy Plotnick: Where Late the Sweet Birds SangRoy Plotnick has an insightful post over on Medium. It’s about the 6th mass extinction. News flash, just in case you’ve been hiding in a hole somewhere, it’s happening now. He is commenting on a recent paper in the journal science. This past summer, my wife and I took a lovely walk around Echo Lake in New Hampshire. What struck us, and we mentioned to a ranger, was the dearth of bird song. Despite the general solitude, all we heard was an occasional song in the distance. The only birds we saw were some ducks in the lake. Earlier this…
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ESCONI Field Trip Report – Braceville Fall 2019
Read more: ESCONI Field Trip Report – Braceville Fall 2019The Fall 2019 trip to Braceville was on September 14th and 15th this year. The weather was great on Saturday, maybe a little hot for digging. On Sunday, the day started out wet, with a steady down pour in early morning, but a few hardy souls went in right from the beginning! It was two good days of fossil collecting, renewing old friendships, and making some new friends. It may take a little while with the freeze/thaw preparation, but hopefully, we’ll all come away with some awesome new fossils for our collections! With all the rain we have had this…
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Reminder: Rock and Fossil Garage Sale – Saturday, September 21st and September 28th, 2019
Read more: Reminder: Rock and Fossil Garage Sale – Saturday, September 21st and September 28th, 2019There will be a sale of rocks and fossils from the collection of Dave and Sheila Bergmann on consecutive Saturdays, September 21st and 28th, 2019 at 401 S. Lombard Ave, Lombard, IL from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Material for sale includes minerals and fossils in flats, as well as individual specimens. There will also be equipment, jewelry, and carvings along with some antiques, fishing equipment, lawn equipment and miscellaneous items.
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #20: Jack Wittry Presents at the September 2009 General Meeting By Andrew Young
Read more: ESCONI Flashback Friday #20: Jack Wittry Presents at the September 2009 General Meeting By Andrew YoungAs part of the run up to ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary, here is Flashback Friday post #19. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! Jack Wittry gave a lecture entitled “Antediluvian Phytology” on Friday, September 11th, 2009. It was about the Mazon Creek fossil flora. The definitive reference book on the subject, The Mazon Creek Fossil Flora, had been published a few years prior in 2006. That book was authored by Jack and published by ESCONI. This lecture summarized much of the information in the book. Since then, an animal book called “The…
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PBS Eons: How Pterosaurs Got Their Wings
Read more: PBS Eons: How Pterosaurs Got Their WingsPBS Eons has another episode. This one is about the origins of pterosaurs. Although the evidence is pretty sparse, we aren’t sure of their ancestors. Scleromochlus, or something like it, is a likely candidate. Watch the episode for more details… When pterosaurs first took flight, you could say that it marked the beginning of the end for the winged reptiles. Because, strangely enough, the power of flight — and the changes that it led to — may have ultimately led to their downfall.
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New Jurassic World Short Shows Just How Screwed the Humans Are Now
Read more: New Jurassic World Short Shows Just How Screwed the Humans Are NowGizmodo has a piece about the new Jurassic World short “Battle at Big Rock”. Check it out! The Jurassic Park/World franchise has long flirted with the idea that humanity’s hubris in reviving dino-kind would inevitably lead to said dinosaurs wreaking havoc on the whole world, not just a remote island park and/or research facility. Now, in the wake of Fallen Kingdom’s set up, a new short finally delivers on the idea of humanity dealing with the consequences of its actions.
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ESCONI Field Trip To St. Paul Quarry, in St. Paul, IN – October 25th, 2019
Read more: ESCONI Field Trip To St. Paul Quarry, in St. Paul, IN – October 25th, 2019There will be a field trip to St. Paul Quarry (Silurian; Waldron Shale) on Friday, October 25th, 2019. Please note: the date is subject to the Quarry’s work schedule and may be moved or canceled. You must be a member of ESCONI on or before Friday, October 11th, 2019 to attend. The quarry address is: 519 S. County Line Rd, St. Paul, IN 47272 (map). Their website is: https://newpointstone.com/st-paul/. Please email John Catalani at fossilnautiloid@aol.com to sign up for the trip. No phone calls.
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Palaeocast Episode 103: Terror birds
Read more: Palaeocast Episode 103: Terror birdsA new episode of Palaeocast is out. This one is about Terror birds. These are large flightless birds that evolved after the K-Pg extinction event. They originated in South America and migrated up to North America when the Isthmus of Panama formed almost 3 million years ago. Personally, I’ve always found these animals fascinating! Terror birds, or phorusrhacids as they are known scientifically, are a group of large, flightless birds that lived during the Cenozoic, and truly lived up to their name. Known for their large, powerful skulls, and enormous beaks, these birds are unlike the flightless birds we have…
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Roy Plotnick: Forehead Aliens, Rishathra, and the Ecology of Alien Worlds
Read more: Roy Plotnick: Forehead Aliens, Rishathra, and the Ecology of Alien WorldsRoy Plotnick has another insightful post on Medium. This one is about evolutionary biology. As a Star Trek fan, I appreciate the writers attempt to explain within their universe what were actually constraints produced by the need to use human actors and save on CGI. Personally, I don’t think it was necessary (don’t get me started on their contortions to explain changes in the appearance of the Klingons). But as an evolutionary biologist, I am appalled. Even given that the original DNA of all nineteen planets was identical, the odds that the end result billions of years later would be…
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Field Museum 6th Annual ID Day – Saturday, September 14, 10AM–2PM
Read more: Field Museum 6th Annual ID Day – Saturday, September 14, 10AM–2PMOn Saturday, September 14th, 2019, from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM, join our annual ID Day at the Field Museum—free for Illinois residents. Bring in remnants of the natural world—including clean, dry bones, fossils, rocks, seashells, and photographs of the natural world—to be identified by the Field’s scientists. This year, ID Day will also include a poster-making station for the upcoming global Climate Strike. You provide the ideas and we’ll provide the supplies.
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #18: So, Where’s The Shrimp? By Andy Jansen
Read more: ESCONI Flashback Friday #18: So, Where’s The Shrimp? By Andy JansenAs part of the run up to ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary, here is Flashback Friday post #18. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! We have our Fall Braceville Field Trip coming up next weekend – September 14th and 15th, 2019. Here is an article about Braceville collecting and concretions from the December 2007 issue of “The Earth Science News”. The article is by Andy Jansen. Currently, Andy serves as Treasurer and Librarian of ESCONI. He’s a valuable member of the ESCONI Board, a great friend, and an all around awesome guy! His…
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PBS Eons: When Bats Took Flight
Read more: PBS Eons: When Bats Took FlightPBS Eons has a new episode about bats. Bats are very rare in the fossil record and thus we still have much to learn about their evolutionary history. What came first flight or echo-location? Bats pretty much appear in the fossil record as recognizable, full-on, flying bats. And they show up on all of the continents, except Antarctica, around the same time. So where did bats come from? And which of the many weird features that bats have, showed up first?
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The Brain Scoop: Recommended Reading: 2019!
Read more: The Brain Scoop: Recommended Reading: 2019!The Brain Scoop has an episode which highlights some good books. So, if you are looking to read something interesting and science related, these are some really good suggestions! Hi! I’m on the road filming PREHISTORIC ROAD TRIP, a 3-part series that will premiere nationally on PBS in 2020! We’ll get back to our regularly scheduled programming soon, but in the meantime check out these books! More about Prehistoric Road Trip: https://to.pbs.org/2z2bF9z “Timefulness: How thinking like a geologist can help save the world,” by Marcia Bjornerud https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/sho… “The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, betrayal, and the quest for Earth’s ultimate trophy,”…
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Former ESCONI Junior Rebecca Rogers Is Making A Mark In South Africa! #WomenInScience @FM_WomenInScience
Read more: Former ESCONI Junior Rebecca Rogers Is Making A Mark In South Africa! #WomenInScience @FM_WomenInScienceThis news story details how former ESCONI Junior Rebecca (Rogers) Ackermann is making having a big impact as a professor of Anthropology in South Africa. The video is of one of her lectures titled “The evolution of human diversity: The relative roles of chance, adaptation and ancient sex”. HERI’s Deputy Director Professor Rebecca Ackermann celebrated the culmination of Women’s Month by being awarded one of Mail & Guardian’s Women Changing South Africa 2019. Ackermann was given the honour for her achievements in “creating policies and spaces to eradicate the barriers that women — especially black women — face in…
ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show
Most Recent Post
- ESCONI April 2026 Paleontology Meeting via Zoom and in-person – “Digging the Marl of the Lance Formation”
The April 2026 Paleontology Study Group Meeting will feature Keith Robitschek and his presentation “Digging the Marl of the Lance Formation”. You can attend in-person at the College of DuPage, TEC, Room 1038B (Map). The meeting will also be available via Zoom.
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Field trips require membership, but visitors are welcome at all meetings!
| 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 |