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ESCONI May 2023 General Meeting – May 12th, 2023 at 8:00 PM Via Zoom – “About the Falls of the Ohio State Park”
Read more: ESCONI May 2023 General Meeting – May 12th, 2023 at 8:00 PM Via Zoom – “About the Falls of the Ohio State Park”The title of the presentation at the May 2023 General Meeting is “About the Falls of the Ohio State Park”. It will be given by Dr. Alan Goldstein. As a Park Paleontologist and Interpretive naturalist, Dr. Goldstein has worked at the Falls of the Ohio State Park’s Interpretive Center since it opened in January 1994. Additionally, Dr. Goldstein has also been the curator of the Gerald Troost collection at the Louisville Science Center. He has been investigating, collecting, and writing about the Illinois-Kentucky fluorspar district since 1982. His article on the fluorspar district published in 1997 won the Friends of Mineralogy…
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Mazon Monday #163: Neuropteris flexuosa
Read more: Mazon Monday #163: Neuropteris flexuosaThis is Mazon Monday post #163. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Today, we have a different variety of Neuropteris – Neuropteris flexuosa. N. flexuosa is more rare than N. vermicularis. One distinguishing feature is a very large terminal pinnule. It also tends to have denser veins than N. vermicularis. This species has been found in other localities, including Okmulgee, Oklahoma, Alabama, and its type locality in Germany. N. vermicularis was described by Kaspar Maria von Sternberg (1761-1838) in 1826. He was a leading scientist in Europe during the early 1800’s, who knew and worked with Alexander von Humboldt. …
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462 million-year-old fossilized eyes and brains uncovered in ‘secret’ Welsh fossil site
Read more: 462 million-year-old fossilized eyes and brains uncovered in ‘secret’ Welsh fossil siteLive Science has an article about the exciting discovery of a new fossil site in Wales, UK. The locality is being called “Castle Bank” and could rank among the world’s most important. It dates to the Ordovician Period about 462 million years ago. “Castle Bank” preserves a variety of soft bodied animals with exquisite preservation, including internal organs. Many of the new animals were described in a recent paper in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. Hosting a myriad of soft-bodied marine creatures and their organs, which are scarcely preserved in the fossil record, the site resembles the world-renowned Cambrian…
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PBS Eons: The Invisible Barrier Keeping Two Worlds Apart
Read more: PBS Eons: The Invisible Barrier Keeping Two Worlds ApartPBS Eons has a new episode on Youtube. This one is about the Wallace Line, named for its discoverer… Alfred Russel Wallace. In between two of the islands of Indonesia, there’s an ancient line that is both real and…not real.
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Fossil Friday #159: Danville Callipteridium
Read more: Fossil Friday #159: Danville CallipteridiumThis is the “Fossil Friday” post #159. 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’s Fossil Friday, we have an absolutely gorgeous plate of Callipteridium sp. plate from our Danville spoil pile field trip back on April 15th. Callipteridium is a extinct genus of seed fern. It is known from Mazon Creek, but is considered very rare. This beauty was found by Steve Buss. …
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Throwback Thursday #160: Hey, Field Museum… Happy 102nd Birthday!
Read more: Throwback Thursday #160: Hey, Field Museum… Happy 102nd Birthday!This is Throwback Thursday #160. 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! On May 2nd, 1921, the Field Museum opened its doors to the public at its current home. Happy 102nd Birthday! Originally, it was called the Columbian Museum of Chicago, as much of the initial collection came from the 1893 World Columbian Exposition. The museum was established by Marshall Field, its later namesake. It occupied the former Palace of Fine Arts Building in Jackson…
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‘Golden’ fossils reveal origins of exceptional preservation
Read more: ‘Golden’ fossils reveal origins of exceptional preservationPhys.org has an article about “golden” fossils. Germany’s Posidonia shale, which dates to the early Jurassic, was thought to contain pyritized fossils of sea life. New research by a team at the University of Texas at Austin have found that the golden shine actually comes from phosphate minerals with yellow calcite. Additionally, the chemical composition hints at how the fossils were formed. The research was published in the journal Earth Science Reviews. The fossils of the Posidonia Shale date back to 183 million years ago, and include rare soft-bodied specimens such as ichthyosaur embryos, squids with ink-sacs, and lobsters. To…
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Ants took over the world by following flowering plants out of prehistoric forests
Read more: Ants took over the world by following flowering plants out of prehistoric forestsThe Field Museum has a press release about research performed at the museum. The research looked at the evolutionary relationship of ants and flowering plants. Ants took advantage of the diversification of flowering plants, which led to the thousands of species of modern ants which exist today. A paper detailing the research can be found in the journal Evolutionary Letters. Ants are pretty much everywhere. There are more than 14,000 different species, spread over every continent except Antarctica, and researchers have estimated that there are more than four quadrillion individual ants on Earth– that’s 4,000,000,000,000,000. But how ants evolved to take over…
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Mazon Monday #162: Field Trip Report for Danville Spoil Pile
Read more: Mazon Monday #162: Field Trip Report for Danville Spoil PileThis is Mazon Monday post #162. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. This was our fifth field trip to the Danville spoil pile. It’s been a very productive locality over the last couple years. The trips have been very popular, with every trip filling up quickly, even though the site is a 3 hour drive from the Chicago area. Not much information is available about the Herrin coal fossils, but thankfully Jack Wittry compiled a handy “Herrin Coal Fossil Guide, which we posted for Mazon Monday #86. Here is a list of prior trips. Saturday, April…
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Dino-Sore: Smithsonian Paleontologist Diagnoses Ancient Ailments in the Museum’s Dinosaurs
Read more: Dino-Sore: Smithsonian Paleontologist Diagnoses Ancient Ailments in the Museum’s DinosaursSmithsonian Magazine has an interesting post about dinosaur injuries. Not injuries to humans, although getting dinosaur bones out of the ground can be physically challenging, but injuries to dinosaurs evident in their bones long after they have died. SUE, the T. rex at the Field Museum in Chicago, has numerous bone pathologies including broken ribs, arthritic vertebrae, a fibula that probably suffered from infection, and much more. Sometimes time doesn’t heal all wounds. Between mangled shoulder blades, fused vertebrae and hollowed out hips, several of the National Museum of Natural History’s dinosaur specimens still display the signs of diseases and injuries that…
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PBS Eons: It’s Becoming Very Clear That Birds Are Not Normal
Read more: PBS Eons: It’s Becoming Very Clear That Birds Are Not NormalPBS Eons has a new video over on Youtube. Birds are wierd. A new discovery raises an important question: from an evolutionary perspective, who really has the stranger wings?
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ESCONI Events May 2023
Read more: ESCONI Events May 2023Field trips require membership, but visitors are welcome at all meetings! Sat, May 6th ESCONI Field Trip to Braceville, IL for Mazon Creek Fossils. ***Trip Full*** Details are here. Sun, May 7th ESCONI Field Trip to Braceville, IL for Mazon Creek Fossils. ***Trip Full*** Details are here. Fri, May 12th ESCONI General Meeting 8:00 PM – Topic: “About the Falls of the Ohio State Park” by Alan Goldstein, Park Interpretive Naturalist and Paleontologist. Zoom link Sat, May 13th ESCONI Junior Meeting – 6:30 PM at College of DuPage – Topic: TBA Specifics of this meeting are available from Scott Galloway, 630-670-2591,…
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Fossil Friday #158: Helen Asher Cnidarian
Read more: Fossil Friday #158: Helen Asher CnidarianThis is the “Fossil Friday” post #158. 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 historically significant Mazon Creek fossil. If you visit Pit 11, it’s almost a given that you will find an Essexella asherae. Whether it’s a jellyfish or an anemone, it’s a common Pit 11 fossil. Both are extremely rare in the fossil record. They have no hard parts, being…
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Throwback Thursday #159: Field Museum Photo Archives
Read more: Throwback Thursday #159: Field Museum Photo ArchivesThis is Throwback Thursday #159. 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! Here’s a few photos from the Field Museum Photo Archives over on Tumbler. Unfortunately, the photo blog hasn’t updated since 2015, but there are still many good photos to browse! Dinosaurs this time… Fossil Friday Triceratops. © The Field Museum, CSGEO17032, Photographer Charles Carpenter. Triceratops skull. Late Cretaceous, on exhibit. Geology specimen P12003. Field Columbian Museum.8×10 glass negative1905 International Dinosaur Month!!! Fossil Friday, Anchiceratops. Anchiceratops is…
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The Story Behind the Smithsonian’s Newest Gem: the Exquisite Lion of Merelani
Read more: The Story Behind the Smithsonian’s Newest Gem: the Exquisite Lion of MerelaniSmithsonian Magazine has an article about the Museum’s new gemstone. The Lion of Merelani is the world’s largest square-cushion tsavorite gem. It has 177 stunning facets. This gorgeous stone will take up residence in the Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals next to the Hope Diamond, the Whitney Flame Topaz, and the Carmen Lucia Ruby. All are breathtaking stones! With more than 10,000 gems, the Smithsonian’s National Gem Collection is brimming with breathtaking stones like the scintillating Whitney Flame Topaz, the radiant Carmen Lúcia Ruby and the iconic Hope Diamond. But mineralogist Jeffrey Post, the National Museum of Natural History’s curator-in-charge of gems and minerals, thinks…
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Fossils reveal the long-term relationship between feathered dinosaurs and feather-feeding beetles
Read more: Fossils reveal the long-term relationship between feathered dinosaurs and feather-feeding beetlesPhys.org has a story about an discovery in Mesozoic amber. The amber reveals a parasitic beetle feeding on some feathers. The researchers were unable to determine if the relationship was one of mutual benefit or one-sided. The amber is about 105 million years old from a Spanish locality near San Just. The paper was published in the journal PNAS. The main amber fragments studied, from the Spanish locality of San Just (Teruel), contain larval molts of small beetle larvae tightly surrounded by portions of downy feathers. The feathers belonged to an unknown theropod dinosaur, either avian (a term referring to…
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Mazon Monday #161: Is the Tully Monster a vertebrate?
Read more: Mazon Monday #161: Is the Tully Monster a vertebrate?This is Mazon Monday post #161. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Phys.org has a story about the new Tully Monster paper that was published in the journal Paleontology last week. The Tully Monster is the State Fossil of Illinois. And, although it is a popular animal, its evolutionary ancestry has been problematic. Since it’s discovery in 1958 by Francis Tully, numerous theories of its evolutionary affinity have been proposed including arthropods, worms, vertebrates, mollusks, even conodonts. For more than half a century, the Tully monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium), an enigmatic animal that lived about 300 million…
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Starting small and simple was key to success for evolution of mammals, reveals new study
Read more: Starting small and simple was key to success for evolution of mammals, reveals new studyPhys.org has a story about the evolution of mammals. A new paper in the journal Communications Biology, found that being small led to more efficient feeding, The international team of paleontologists used computer analysis and stress analysis to understand the process of skull simplification in early mammals. In mamy vertebrate groups, like fish and reptiles, the skull and lower jaw is comprised of numerous bones. Mammals reduced the number of skull bones during the Mesozoic from around 150 to 100 million years ago. Lead author Dr. Stephan Lautenschlager, Senior Lecturer for Palaeobiology at the University of Birmingham, commented, “Reducing the…
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Happy Earth Day 2023
Read more: Happy Earth Day 2023Happy Earth Day 2023! Earth day is the culmination of a week long celebration. The first Earth Day was held in 1970. Since the, over 1 billion people in 190+ countries modilize for action every year on Earthday. The Field Museum and other Chicago area museums are free today!
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Fossil Friday #157: Danville Cone
Read more: Fossil Friday #157: Danville ConeThis is the “Fossil Friday” post #157. 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! Last Saturday, April 15th, 2023, ESCONI had a field trip to a coal mine spoil pile near Danville, IL. The deposit is about 1.5 million years earlier than Mazon Creek. We’ve found quite a few nice fossils at this locality over the 6 field trips we’ve had there. For Mazon Monday #86,…
ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show
Most Recent Post
- ESCONI April 2026 General Meeting via Zoom – “Life in the Devonian Period, The Age of Fishes”
The April 2026 General Meeting will be held on April 10th, 2026 at 8:00 via Zoom. At the meeting, Jessica Hull will present “Life in the Devonian Period, The Age of Fishes.” The Devonian Period was a crucial moment in the history of life. In this presentation, Jessica Hull will bring fossils to life by describing how they would have lived based on the most up to date research. Dunkleosteus fans won’t want to miss this!
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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 |