From the Ottawa Citizen: In 1997, amateur paleontologist Nathan Isotalo found a fossilized worm the ROM now says is rare and important, writes Zev Singer. For an amateur paleontologist, it was the big find: Nathan Isotalo was chipping through a large rock from an Ottawa construction site in 1997 and found an extremely rare and significant fossil. But when he hit this jackpot, no bells rang and no lights flashed. There was just silence — for 13 years…. more

Via Cleveland.com: …But if you discover a new kind of ancient clam, as College of Wooster geologist Mark Wilson has done – and not just a previously unknown species, but a whole new family of clam species, from a pivotal time 240 million years ago when Earth was recovering from the near extinction of all life – what do you get?..

Via Student Life: Nearly 1,000 years ago, the ancient city of Cahokia flourished only 20 minutes away from modern St. Louis in the floodplains of the Mississippi River. Today, the discovery of a copper workshop by a team of researchers led by John Kelly, Washington University archeology professor, and James Brown of Northwestern University will provide insight into the lives of the mysterious Cahokians…

National Geographic shows us a beautiful photograph of a fossil.

Interesting change that is part of the Millennial generation – they share information more than other generations… and they share notes of earth science courses at iSearchNotes.

Via Montana State University: A Montana State University geologist is part of a team that has won a national award for a Web site they created to improve undergraduate education. David Mogk and three collaborators from other institutions won a 2009 Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE) for their Web site, titled “On the Cutting Edge.”

Via Mineweb: Petra Diamonds sold a 507-carat diamond for $35.3 million on Friday, breaking a record as the highest price ever paid for a rough diamond….

Via New Scientist: Two rocks found together in Antarctica are chunks of a dwarf planet that was smashed apart early in the solar system’s history, detailed studies suggest. Other remnants of the proto-world may still be floating around in the asteroid belt, and might be identifiable by the spectrum of the sunlight they reflect….

What are you doing this summer – Geology Field Camps? And for the younger set… Project Exploration.

Interesting site about archaeology news – Archaeo News They have a podcast too – review of their podcast.

Reckoning at Eagle Creek (strip mining in Illinois) author interviewed by WNYC: Cultural historian Jeff Biggers gives an account of how strip-mining has destroyed his family’s nearly 200-year-old hillside homestead in southern Illinois. In Reckoning at Eagle Creek, he chronicles the legacy of coal outside of Appalachia.

Via BBC: A colossal red granite head of one of Egypt’s most famous pharaohs has been unearthed in the southern city of Luxor,officials said. The 3,000-year-old head of Amenhotep III – grandfather of Tutankhamun – was dug out of the ruins of the pharaoh’s mortuary temple.

Via Chicago Tribune: …It was a giant plankton-eating fish that had been overlooked or misidentified for 140 years, one of two discoveries that have garnered Kenshu Shimada, a professor at DePaul University, worldwide attention in recent weeks. The other find is a 30-foot shark that he now knows was vastly larger than previously thought….

Via Science Daily: Focusing on a controversial hypothesis that ice existed at the equator some 300 million years ago during the late Paleozoic Period, two University of Oklahoma researchers originated a project in search of clues to Earth’s climate system… In the entertaining book, Snowball Earth, the author explains another geological theory of ice at the equator 600 million years ago.