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PBS Eons: How the Smallest Animal Got So Simple
Read more: PBS Eons: How the Smallest Animal Got So SimplePBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about mxyozoans, the simplest known animals. They are an example of how the process of evolution can produce some big (or small in this case) surprises.
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TRIP FULL! – ESCONI Field Trip to Braceville, IL for Mazon Creek Fossils – Saturday, May 14th and Sunday May 15th, 2022
Read more: TRIP FULL! – ESCONI Field Trip to Braceville, IL for Mazon Creek Fossils – Saturday, May 14th and Sunday May 15th, 2022The trip is full! It filled up in just a couple of days! We are still accepting requests, which will place you on the waiting list. Please let us know if you can’t make it, as it makes room for those on the waiting list. Thanks! Braceville Field Trip Rules May 2022 The ESCONI field trips to Braceville for Mazon Creek fossils are set for May 14 and 15, 2022 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 to…
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Video for ESCONI April 2022 General Meeting – “Devonian plants from the famous Red Hill location”
Read more: Video for ESCONI April 2022 General Meeting – “Devonian plants from the famous Red Hill location”The April 2022 General Meeting was held on Friday, April 8th, 2022. The presentation was “Seeing the Forest for the Fossil Trees – Plants at Red Hill” by Dr. Walt Cressler of West Chester University in Pennsylvania. Red Hill is known for the First Modern Tree and a bunch of very early vertebrates. For information about Red Hill plants, see this page at the Devonian Times. The First Modern Tree Archaeopteris spp. account for slightly more than half of the identifiable plant fossils collected at the floodplain pond facies of Red Hill; the pre-fern Rhacophyton accounted for most of the rest. Typically, these fossils…
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Fossil Friday #104: Dasyleptis brongniarti
Read more: Fossil Friday #104: Dasyleptis brongniartiThis is the “Fossil Friday” post #104. 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 Mazon Creek insect. This animal is Dasyleptis brongniarti a wingless insect similar to bristletails and silverfish. We covered these animals back in Mazon Monday #44. In that piece, we quoted Andy Hay in the “Creature Corner” book. Also, included in that article were pictures from Don Auler.…
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Throwback Thursday #106: Rebellious Bones Poem from 1957
Read more: Throwback Thursday #106: Rebellious Bones Poem from 1957This is Throwback Thursday #106. 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! Our throwback for this week is a poem from Donnafred Hoff, the wife of Dr. Wilbur Hoff, who you might remember from the “Mid-century Mazon Creek” in Mazon Monday #104. This poem, entitled “Rebellious Bones”, was published in the June 1957 edition of the newsletter. Rebellious Bones While contemplating ancient ferns and coralsAnd bones of men and apes, their loves and morals, I…
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Paleontologists Find Evolutionary Link between Ediacaran and Early Cambrian Multicellular Animals
Read more: Paleontologists Find Evolutionary Link between Ediacaran and Early Cambrian Multicellular AnimalsSciNews has a story about a fossil that links the animals of the Ediacaran and the Cambrian periods. The fossils, which date to about 547 million years ago, were found by University of Edinburgh’s Professor Rachel Wood as she did field work in Namibia, in Africa. The fossil preserves soft tissue from an animal called Namacalathus hermanastes. The research was published in the journal Science Advances. Until recently, little was known about the origins of animals that evolved during the Cambrian explosion event because of a lack of well-preserved fossil evidence. The mysterious origins of animals that evolved at this…
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Trilobite Tuesday #37: Trilobite Fossils Suggest Cannibalism Is More Ancient Than Once Thought
Read more: Trilobite Tuesday #37: Trilobite Fossils Suggest Cannibalism Is More Ancient Than Once ThoughtThe New York Times Trilobites column has a story about cannibalism among trilobites. A new study published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology found evidence of cannibalism in 512 million year old fossils from Emu Bay on Kangaroo Island off the south Australia coast. Cannibalism is common among the millions of modern arthropod species. A praying mantis consumes her mate after copulation, termites suck blood out of wounded peers, and mosquitoes snack on larvae. But how far back does this gruesome mode of dining go in the history of life feeding on life? Previous studies place the earliest cannibalism about 450 million years ago in the…
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Mazon Monday #107: Book Inscription in Nitecki’s “Mazon Creek Fossils”
Read more: Mazon Monday #107: Book Inscription in Nitecki’s “Mazon Creek Fossils”This is Mazon Monday post #107. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Back in Mazon Monday #18, we posted some interesting book inscriptions from the Langford Mazon Creek books. The highlights were Bill Allaway’s book owned by Dave Carlson and John McLuckie’s book owned by Jack Wittry. This week, I received a photo of an interesting inscription from a copy of the book “Mazon Creek Fossils” by Matthew Nitecki. We looked at that book back in Mazon Monday #42. It contains the proceedings of a symposium at the University of Michigan during the annual meeting of…
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Wisconsin Rocks and Minerals
Read more: Wisconsin Rocks and MineralsCurious about rock, minerals, and fossils in Wisconsin? There’s a new interactive website by the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey, is something you should check out! There’s explanation of sedimenary, metamorphic, and igneous rocks. And, information about dolomite, granite, sandstone, and more. Oh…. and also some very beautiful pictures. Check it out!
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Tanis: Fossil of dinosaur killed in asteroid strike found, scientists claim
Read more: Tanis: Fossil of dinosaur killed in asteroid strike found, scientists claimArtwork: The thinking is that a water surge buried all the creatures at Tanis The BBC has an article about a fossil site that preserves a snapshot of what may have been the last day of the non-avian dinosaurs. Nicknamed Tanis and located in North Dakota, the site has fossils of exquisite detail that are seem to have been deposited at the same time. Recently, the site’s primary researcher, Robert DePalma, gave a talk at the NASA’s Goddard Space Center. For more information, see “Shards of Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs May Have Been Found in Fossil Site” in the…
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TRIP FULL! – ESCONI Field Trip to Vulcan DeKalb Quarry Field Trip May 7, 2022
Read more: TRIP FULL! – ESCONI Field Trip to Vulcan DeKalb Quarry Field Trip May 7, 2022The trip is full! It filled up in about a day! We are still accepting requests, which will place you on the waiting list. Please let us know if you can’t make it, as it makes room for those on the waiting list. Thanks! Vulcan DeKalb Quarry Field Trip May 7, 2022 There will be an ESCONI Field Trip to the Vulcan DeKalb (aka Larson) Quarry on Saturday May 7, 2022 from 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM. The quarry is located at 15622 Barber Green Road. The rock at this location is predominantly Ordovician from the Maquoketa and Galena formations.…
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Fossil Friday #103: Mariopteris sphenopteroides
Read more: Fossil Friday #103: Mariopteris sphenopteroidesThis is the “Fossil Friday” post #103. 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! Well, we’ve made it to another Fossil Friday… after a long week, sometimes it feels like we all need a whole lot more Fossils and Fridays in our lives! For this edition, we have a very colorful specimen of the seed fern Mariopteris sphenopteroides from Marie Angkuw. Marie is an avid Mazon…
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Throwback Thursday #105: Looking Back at ESCONI for April 2022
Read more: Throwback Thursday #105: Looking Back at ESCONI for April 2022This is Throwback Thursday #105. 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! 25 Years Ago – April 1997 50 Years Ago – April 1972 70 Years Ago – April 1952
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How did cockroaches survive the dino-killing asteroid strike?
Read more: How did cockroaches survive the dino-killing asteroid strike?Live Science has an article that discusses the heartiness of roaches. Three quarters of all plant and animal species went extinct after the meteor struck Chicxulub at the end of the Cretaceous Period, how is that roaches made it through the extinction that followed? When the rock now known as the Chicxulub impactor plummeted from outer space and slammed into the Earth 66 million years ago, cockroaches were there. The impact caused a massive earthquake, and scientists think it also triggered volcanic eruptions thousands of miles from the impact site. Three-quarters of plants and animals on Earth died, including all dinosaurs, except for some species that were ancestors…
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ESCONI April 2022 General Meeting – April 8th, 2022 at 8:00 PM In-person/Zoom – “Devonian plants from the famous Red Hill location”
Read more: ESCONI April 2022 General Meeting – April 8th, 2022 at 8:00 PM In-person/Zoom – “Devonian plants from the famous Red Hill location”The April 2022 General Meeting will be held at 8:00 PM on Friday, April 8th, 2022. We will be meeting both via Zoom and in person at the College of DuPage in Room 1038B of the Tech Ed (TEC) Building (Map). The presentation will be given by Dr. Walt Cressler of West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He will speaking about Devonian plants from the famous Red Hill location. Red Hill is known for the First Modern Tree and a bunch of very early vertebrates. For information about Red Hill plants, see this page at the Devonian Times. The First Modern…
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Mazon Monday #106: Video for Arjan Mann’s “Revisiting the exceptional tetrapod fauna of Mazon Creek, Illinois”
Read more: Mazon Monday #106: Video for Arjan Mann’s “Revisiting the exceptional tetrapod fauna of Mazon Creek, Illinois”This is Mazon Monday post #106. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Back in November 2020, Arjan Mann spoke at the ESCONI General Meeting about Mazon Creek tetrapods. Due to some research that had yet to be published, we couldn’t post the video of his excellent presentation, which was entitled “Revisiting the exceptional tetrapod fauna of Mazon Creek, Illinois”. Arjan visited us back in early March 2022 and I had the pleasure of taking him on a tour of Pit 11, Braceville, and the surrounding area. He is planning to return for the trip to Danville…
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Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Read more: Between a Rock and a Hard PlaceThe Field Museum has an interesting post about Mary Anning. There’s a good summary about her life, her work, and her accomplishments and contributions to paleontology when women couldn’t really participate. Even today, she is inspiring to many of the many talented women in science. It’s quite a testament to her life and achievements that, 223 years after her birth, we’re still talking about Mary Anning. She discovered and collected many fossils of iconic Jurassic reptiles, including the first Plesiosaurus known to science, and the first pterosaur species found in England. Her life is a tale of struggle against poverty and misogyny—particularly…
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ESCONI Events April 2022
Read more: ESCONI Events April 2022Welcome back! Field trips require membership, but visitors are welcome at all meetings! Fri, Apr 8th ESCONI General Meeting 8:00 PM Zoom – Topic: “Devonian plants from the famous Red Hill location” by Dr. Walt Cressler of West Chester University in Pennsylvania. This meeting will be hybrid with both Zoom and in person available at the College of DuPage Tech Ed (TEC) Building, Room 1038B (Map). Zoom Link Sat, Apr 9th ESCONI Junior Meeting – 7:00 PM at College of DuPage – Topic: “Fossil and Mineral Identification” Specifics of this meeting are available from Scott Galloway, 630-670-2591, gallowayscottf@gmail.com. The meeting…
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PBS Eons: The Extreme Hyenas That Didn’t Last
Read more: PBS Eons: The Extreme Hyenas That Didn’t LastThere's a new episode of PBS Eons. This one is about how we got the modern hyenas. Did you know they are more closely related to cats than dogs?
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Fossil Friday #102: Kellibrooksia macrogaster x 3!
Read more: Fossil Friday #102: Kellibrooksia macrogaster x 3!This is the “Fossil Friday” post #102. 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 three specimens of Kellibrooksia macrogaster. We spotlighted K. macrogaster in a recent Mazon Monday. K. macrogaster is an ancestor to modern day Mantis Shrimps. It was named for Harold Kelly Brooks, who published the first well-illustrated modern account of Mazon Creek crustaceans. These photos were sent in by ESCONI…
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 |