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Throwback Thursday #91: Winter Collecting 1963
Read more: Throwback Thursday #91: Winter Collecting 1963This is Throwback Thursday #91. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! The snow this week had me looking through the newsletters looking for a winter field trips. Many of us have collected in extreme winter weather conditions. I personally have been out in pretty cold weather, say low 20’s in November with thunder snow. We already posted on a field trip to a Lemont quarry on November 19th, 1950 in Throwback Thursday #41. …
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ESCONI Funds Paleontological Society Student Research Grants
Read more: ESCONI Funds Paleontological Society Student Research GrantsESCONI is providing funds for Student Research Grants administered by the Paleontological Society. The club’s support will cover one grant for each of the next three years, 2022 through 2024. Any undergraduate or graduate student conducting research in paleontology can apply. For the ESCONI grants, priority will be given to projects involving the Paleozoic of the Midwest. More information can be found at https://www.paleosoc.org/paleontological-society-student-research-grants
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ESCONI Events January 2022
Read more: ESCONI Events January 2022Welcome back! Field trips require membership, but visitors are welcome at all meetings! Sat, Jan 8th ESCONI Junior Meeting – 7:00 PM Zoom – Topic: “Rocking on the Computer” Specifics of this meeting are available from Scott Galloway, 630-670-2591, gallowayscottf@gmail.com. Contact Scott to get the Zoom link to attend the virtual meeting and find out how to join the Juniors Club. Fri, Jan 14th ESCONI General Meeting 8:00 PM Zoom – Topic: “Through the Ages: How we Date Rocks and Geologic Processes” by Dr. Alyssa Abbey from California State University Long Beach. Zoom link Sat, Jan 15th ESCONI Paleontology Meeting…
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Trilobite Tuesday #35: Ceraurinus icarus
Read more: Trilobite Tuesday #35: Ceraurinus icarusHow about a Trilobite Tuesday post? Here is a rare species of trilobite from Indiana, Ceraurinus icarus. This specimen is from the Whitewater Formation in Union Co., Indiana. The pictures were contributed by Dan Damrow. Thanks, Dan! Awesome trilobite!
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Mazon Monday #92: Illilepas damrowi
Read more: Mazon Monday #92: Illilepas damrowiThis is Mazon Monday post #92. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Illilepas damrowi is a gooseneck barnacle from the Mazon Creek biota, found in Essex localities like Pit 11. Barnacles are crustaceans thus they are related to crabs and lobsters. They are fairly rare in the fossil record with the oldest known from the Middle Cambrian about 510 million years ago. I. damrowi was described by Frederick Schram in 1975. It is named for ESCONI member Dan Damrow, whom you might remember from his Rib River Fossil booth at ESCONI shows for many years. Originally,…
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Breathtaking Fossil of Baby Dinosaur Tucked in Its Egg Yields New Evolutionary Clues
Read more: Breathtaking Fossil of Baby Dinosaur Tucked in Its Egg Yields New Evolutionary CluesNature’s Science Alert has a story about a stunning dinosaur fossil. Found in China, a oviraptor egg has a baby dinosaur preserved in breathtaking detail. The egg dates to between 72 and 66 million years ago. The fossil was described in a paper in the journal iScience. A rare and exquisitely preserved dinosaur embryo tucked inside an egg like a baby bird has been unearthed in southern China, providing an “unprecedented glimpse” into dinosaur development. With a posture that resembles modern bird embryos close to hatching, the fossilized embryo is a remarkable find which raises the possibility that evolutionary links…
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Merry Christmas from ESCONI… Just in Time for Christmas: Knitwear Fit for a T. Rex!
Read more: Merry Christmas from ESCONI… Just in Time for Christmas: Knitwear Fit for a T. Rex!Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London New York Times has a story about a T-rex with an ugly sweater… go ahead you tell him that! The animatronic replica resides in the Natural History Museum in London. Behold the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex — all swaddled in a cozy Christmas sweater. The replica T. rex at the Natural History Museum in London is an enormous, ferocious-looking beast that was built to scale, standing about 60 percent the size of the 40-foot-long prehistoric creature. The animatronic attraction, which features roaring sound effects, often startles visitors, but on Monday, the predatory edge was somewhat softened…
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Fossil Friday #88: Trigonocarpus seeds
Read more: Fossil Friday #88: Trigonocarpus seedsThis is the “Fossil Friday” post #88. 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! Back in Mazon Monday #67, we took a look at Trigonocarpus seeds, which are the seed part of an extinct order of plant called Medullosales. The common name is seed fern. The order includes Mazon Creek species like Alethopteris, Odontopteris, Laveiniopteris, Neuropteris, and Macroneuropteris. Back in Fossil Friday #62, we highlighted an exquisite specimen from ESCONI…
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Throwback Thursday #90: The Night After a Field Trip
Read more: Throwback Thursday #90: The Night After a Field TripThis is Throwback Thursday #90. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! We have a real nice holiday themed post for today. It’s a poem called “The Night After a Field Trip” from the December 1970 newsletter. Unfortunately, no details are available on the attribution… who were ESCOMO and Gemrock? Was Gemrock a club newsletter? If you know, please tell us at esconi.info@gmail.com. We all hope you are enjoying the holiday season and resting up…
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One of Geology’s Great Mysteries May Actually Be Many Smaller Mysteries
Read more: One of Geology’s Great Mysteries May Actually Be Many Smaller MysteriesAtlas Obscura has a story about the The Great Unconformity. In geology, an unconformity is a break in the sequence of time in a continuous rock record. There is usually a large gap of missing rock layers at the contact point between a much older layer and a younger one. It’s caused by a period of erosion or a pause in sediment accumulation. The Great Unconformity is a sequence of many missing rock layers in the early Cambrian Period about 540 million years ago. It’s cause has stumped geologists all over the world as the gaps is pretty much worldwide. …
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PBS Eons: When Pterosaurs Walked
Read more: PBS Eons: When Pterosaurs WalkedPBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about pterosaurs and how they lived… when they were on the ground. If you know one thing about pterosaurs, it’s that they’re flyers. And while pterosaurs may be well-known for their domination of the skies in the Mesozoic Era, they didn’t live their entire lives in the air. So how did we figure this out? And what were they like when they finally came down?
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Mazon Monday #91: Macroneuropteris macrophylla
Read more: Mazon Monday #91: Macroneuropteris macrophyllaThis is Mazon Monday post #91. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Today, we have a seed fern species called Macroneuopteris macrophylla. It was named Neuropteris macrophylla in 1831 by Alexander Brongniart, a French chemist, mineralogist, geologist, paleontologist, and zoologist. It was mistakenly renamed as Neuropteris clarksoni by Leo Lesquereux in 1879. It seems that Lesquereux just missed the older name. N. clarksoni was carried forward by both Adolf Noe and George Langford. With the name fixed by Robert Cookall in 1959. Epidermal research led by Christopher Cleal in 1990 reclassified Neuropteris species into four genera,…
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Mammoth and Horse DNA Left in Freezer Rewrite Ice Age Extinctions
Read more: Mammoth and Horse DNA Left in Freezer Rewrite Ice Age ExtinctionsSmithsonian Magazine has a story about research that shows that woolly mammoths and other Ice Age animals survived up to about 5,000 years ago instead of the accepted 13,000 years. Frozen permafrost samples collected about 10 years ago were analyzed and they revealed DNA of wooly mammoths, wild horses, and steppe bison. The research was published in the journal Nature Communications. Most DNA samples are taken from materials like bone or hair, but soils also contain also genetic residue that animals leave behind as they move through an environment, according to Gizmodo’s Isaac Schultz. The soil samples sat in a freezer…
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PBS Eons: The Fossil Record In Your Mouth
Read more: PBS Eons: The Fossil Record In Your MouthPBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about fossils in your mouth! Ever have your teeth cleaned? The hardened residue scraped off your teeth at the dentist is called your dental calculus, and your dental calculus is the only part of your body that actually fossilizes while you’re alive! And scientists have figured out how to study & trace the evolutionary history of these microbes over tens of millions of years.
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Fossil Friday #87: Neuropteris vermicularis from Knob Noster
Read more: Fossil Friday #87: Neuropteris vermicularis from Knob NosterThis is the “Fossil Friday” post #87. 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’ve got a Pennsylvanian seed fern for today’s fossil. You might guess that means another Mazon Creek fossil, but that would be wrong. This species of seed fern, Neuropteris vermicularis, is known from Mazon Creek, but this particular specimen comes from a fossil deposit in Knob Noster, Missouri. The Knob Noster locality…
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Throwback Thursday #89: A B C’s Of What One Can Do With Rocks
Read more: Throwback Thursday #89: A B C’s Of What One Can Do With RocksThis is Throwback Thursday #89. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! This week we have sort of a poem, but at least a list about what else… rocks! This list piece appeared in the September 1997 issue of the newsletter. The attribution is to “Cross Timber Talk 4/97”. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much about that phrase on the internet. Only reference that seemed relevant was to a column in “Jewelry Making Gems…
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Roy Plotnick: I found a fossil!! (or did I?)
Read more: Roy Plotnick: I found a fossil!! (or did I?)Roy Plotnick has a new post over on Medium. In this one, he gives some great tips for those occasions when you’re out on a walk and find a rock and hope it’s a fossil. You are walking along a creek bed when you see an oddly shaped and colored rock. You pick it up and think “this must be a fossil!” So, you immediately take a few fuzzy photos, email them to a professional paleontologist whose name you found online, and ask them to identify it. Maybe they will also tell how old it is and if it is worth…
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Never-before-seen ammonite muscles revealed in 3D from Jurassic fossil
Read more: Never-before-seen ammonite muscles revealed in 3D from Jurassic fossilPhys.org has a story about an amazing ammonite fossil. The 165 million year old fossil has revealed never-before-seen soft body detail in an ammonite. It was found about 20 years ago in Gloucestershire, UK. Researchers at Cardiff University and Imperial College London, who published their study in the journal Geology, found evidence of muscles and organs by using 3D imaging. The findings add insight into how ammonites lived and are evidence that coleoids, the sub-group of animals containing squid, octopuses, and cuttlefish, might be evolutionarily closer to ammonites than previously thought. Study co-author Dr. Alan Spencer, from Imperial’s Department of…
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Mazon Monday #90: Video for ESCONI December 2021 General Meeting – “The Life and Death of the Herrin Peat Swamp – Whys, Whens, and Hows”
Read more: Mazon Monday #90: Video for ESCONI December 2021 General Meeting – “The Life and Death of the Herrin Peat Swamp – Whys, Whens, and Hows”This is Mazon Monday post #90. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at esconi.info@gmail.com. For December 2021, the presentation by Scott Elrick provided context for the Danville, IL spoil pile fossils. Scott also discussed coal formation in Illinois during the Pennsylvanian. Additionally, he mentioned where the Colchester #2 Coal, associated with Mazon Creek, fits into the paleo-environment of the Pennsylvanian. The speaker at our December 3, 2021 meeting was Scott Elrick, Head of the Coal, Bedrock and Industrial Minerals Section of ISGS. The topic of his talk via Zoom was paleoecology of the Herrin Coal roof shales including…
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PBS Eons: Why the Paleo Diet Couldn’t Save the Neanderthals
Read more: PBS Eons: Why the Paleo Diet Couldn’t Save the NeanderthalsPBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about Neanderthals and their diet and how it ultimately affected their fate. These relatives of ours lived in Eurasia for more than 300,000 years. They were expert toolmakers, using materials like stone, wood, and animal bone. They were also skilled hunters and foragers, and may even have created cave art. So what caused the decline and disappearance of their population? Well, in a way… it could’ve been us. But maybe not in the way you might’ve heard.
ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show
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- Ancient bees found nesting inside fossil bones in rare cave discovery
Science Daily has a post about a recent paper that looked at novel bee nesting behavior. Researchers working on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola discovered a rare and unusual fossil interaction in a cave, ancient bees used fossilized bones as nesting sites.
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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 |