Tag: Carboniferous
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Mazon Monday #8: Testajapyx thomasi
This is Mazon Monday post #8. Testajapyx thomasi is the subject of this Species Spotlight, You may recognize the name of this species. It is named for ESCONI member, Tom Testa. Tom is a prolific, some might even say legendary, Mazon Creek collector. A great part of his collection resides in the Field Museum and…
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Fossil Friday #6: Fossils From The Mazon River
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #6. 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! Here are various Mazon Creek fossils from…
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Mazon Monday #7: Ancient ‘Tully monster’ was a vertebrate, not a spineless blob, study claims
This is Mazon Monday post #7. This is about one of the favorite Mazon animals, the Tully monster. Phys.org has an article about some new research about the Tully Monster. The Tully Monster was first discovered by Francis Tully in 1955. He was fossil hunting in Pit 11 of the old Peabody Coal Company’s strip…
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Fossil Friday #5: Esconites zelus
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #5. 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…
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Mazon Monday #6: Esconites zelus
This is Mazon Monday post #6. A fellow member sent me some pictures of some recently opened Esconites zelus. Got interested in where and when it was first described, here are some highlights. Esconites zelus, Species Spotlight Esconites Temporal range: Carboniferous Scientific classification Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Annelida Class: Polychaeta Order: Eunicida Family: Eunicidae Genus: †Esconites…
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Mazon Monday #5: The Mazon Creek Project
This is Mazon Monday post #5. Some of the information in this post was provided by John Liskey, former ESCONI member, who has generously donated fossil, mineral, and assorted junior material. Thanks, John! ———————————————————– The Mazon Creek Project was a program sponsored by Northeastern Illinois University. Founded in the 1960s, by the late Eugene Richardson…
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Mazon Monday #4: Belotelson Shrimp
This is Mazon Monday post #4. These pictures are of a specimen of Belotelson magister collected by ESCONI member Rich Holm in late summer 2019 in Mazonia South Pit 11. It is a crustacean that lived about 307 mya. It was first described by Packard in 1886 from Mazon Creek material. Description: The Mazon Creek…
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Mazon Monday #3: Mazon Creek Fossils
This is Mazon Monday post #3. The following article by Mary Fairchild first appeared here. It’s a great historical summary of collecting Mazon Creek Fossils. Additionally, the slideshows of fossils hold some amazing specimens. There’s mention of everyone from George Langford Sr. to Eugene Richardson to Jack Wittry and many other notable researchers in between. …
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Mazon Monday #2: The Vanishing Mother Lode of Mazon Creek
The Friday, July 2nd, 2004 edition of The Reader featured an article titled “The Vanishing Mother Lode of Mazon Creek”. The full text of the article is available online. Unfortunately, it doesn’t include the pictures. This article was written by Mike Sula, no relation to long time ESCONI member Rob Sula. The article does a…
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Mazon Monday #1: The Tully Monster
The Tully Monster, or Tullimonstrum gregarium, has long been one of the most popular Mazon Creek fossil specimens. The reasons are unclear… maybe it’s the strange shape of the animal, or that it’s the State Fossil of Illinois, or the questions and controversy as to what type of animal it is. It is fairly rare,…
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #41: George Langford Night 1958
As part of the celebration of ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary, here is Flashback Friday post #41. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! The release of the first Langford book, “The Wilmington Coal Flora from a Pennsylvannian Deposit in Will County, Illinois”, occurred in June 1958. On June…
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #35: Dresden Lakes Field Trip June 1976
As part of the celebration of ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary, here is Flashback Friday post #35. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! Here are pictures from a field trip to Dresden Lakes in 1976. Dresden Lakes is known for larger concretions with detailed fossils in dark colors,…
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In Defense of Plants: The Rise and Fall of the Scale Trees
I recently ran into an interesting post on the blog “In Defense of Plants”. It’s called “The Rise and Fall of the Scale Trees”. If you collect or are familiar with Mazon Creek fossils, you probably have heard of Lepidodendron, Stigmaria, Psaronius, Cyperites. etc. You might even have a few of these fossils. Some of…
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #32: Collecting Mazon Creek Concretions In The 1950s and 1960s
As part of the celebration of ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary, here is Flashback Friday post #32. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! Enjoy some old photos of the Coal City, Braidwood, and Wilmington area spoil piles in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s too bad some of those…
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Ancient ‘coal dragon’ is now the oldest parareptile ever found
CBC has a story about an interesting new species of ancient parareptile. Named Carbonodraco lundi, this animal lived about 306 million years ago in what is now Linton, Ohio. This is the same time period as the famous fossils from Illinois’ Mazon Creek biota. The details were recently published in the journal Royal Society Open…
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #28: Mazon Creek Open House Report 2002
As part of the celebration of ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary, here is Flashback Friday post #28. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! Here is the announcement of the 2002 Mazon Creek Project Open House. From the sound of the report that follows, it very surely an interesting…
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #25: Ode to a Blob
As part of the run up to ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary, here is Flashback Friday post #25. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! Rob Sula wrote this poem back in 2002. Rob as 1st Vice-President from 2008-2014. The poem is about Essexella asherae, the iconic Mazon Creek…
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #18: So, Where’s The Shrimp? By Andy Jansen
As 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…
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ESCONI Field Report: Starved Rock Clay Pit, Saturday August 17th, 2019
Trip Report: Starved Rock Clay Pit, August 17, 2019 By Dave Carlson Email: fossil54@att.net “You gotta go in the mud sometimes to figure who you are” – Andy Irons. “Madness….madness.” – Major Clipton, “Bridge on the River Kwai”. Who goes into a clay pit during a rain storm? Rock and fossil collectors, of course! Technically,…
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #9: Illinois State Fossil – The Tully Monster
As part of the run up to ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary, here is Flashback Friday post #9. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! The following article appeared in the 50th Anniversary issue of the newsletter. Unfortunately, Francis Tully (yes! an ESCONI member!) didn’t live to see it,…
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #6: Field Trip to Pit 11 September 1976
As part of the run up to ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary. Here is Flashback Friday post #6. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! Kathy Dedina had some great pictures from past ESCONI events. Here are a series of pictures from a Pit 11 field trip in September…
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #5: Dinner With Dr. Frederick Schram in August, 2011
As part of the run up to ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary. Here is Flashback Friday post #4. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! Mary Fairchild did an excellent report about her dinner with Dr. Frederick Schram in August, 2011. There is much to enjoy in the report,…
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Infernovenator steenae, a new serpentine recumbirostran from the ‘Mazon Creek’ Lagertätte further clarifies lysorophian origins
The Zoological Journal has another new paper describing a Mazon Creek vertebrate. This one is called Infernovenator steenae. The paper is authored by Arjan Mann, Jason D Pardo, and Hillary C Maddin of the Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, CA. Earlier this year, Mann and Maddin published a description of a…
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Flashback Friday #4: Braceville Trip 05/16/2009
As part of the run up to ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary. Here is Flashback Friday post #4. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! Sometimes referred to as “Worm Hill”, the Braceville spoil pile dates to at least the 1880s. ESCONI hasn’t been going here since then, but…
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Diabloroter bolti, a short-bodied recumbirostran ‘microsaur’ from the Francis Creek Shale, Mazon Creek, Illinois
The Zoological Journal has a new paper describing a Mazon Creek “Microsaur” Diabloroter bolti. The paper is authored by Arjan Mann and Hillary C Maddin of the Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, CA. The sculpture in the picture was created by David Duck, who has been an ESCONI member. Congrats! The…
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Book Review – Carboniferous Giants and Mass Extinction: The Late Paleozoic Ice Age World
The Inquisitive Biologist has an interesting (and complete!) book review of “Carboniferous Giants and Mass Extinction: The Late Paleozoic Ice Age World” by George R McGhee, Jr. It caused me to run out (ok, click) and buy the ebook. So far, it’s very good. The ebook is available at all the usual book sites, Amazon,…
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Palaeocast Episode 94: Joggins Fossil Cliffs
Palaeocast has a new episode. The topic is the Joggins Fossil Cliffs, which is a rich fossil deposit from the Carboniferous Period. The locality is in Nova Scotia, Canada and dates to about 300 million years ago, which makes it contemporary in time with Mazon Creek. There is a wide variety of fossils, both plants…
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Palaeocast Episode 86: Coal
There’s a new Palaeocast podcast, episode 86. It is called Coal. It discusses the origin and composition of Coal. The Carboniferous Period “coal bearing” is named for the sheer amount of coal produced during that time period. Current theories are discussed as to why this happened. For this interview, we asked Standford University’s Prof. Kevin…
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Rainforest collapse 307 million years ago impacted the evolution of early land vertebrates
Phys.org has a story about a mass extinction in plants that occurred during the Pennsylvannian Period. Researchers from the University of Birmingham published a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The mass extinction seems to have been caused by the onset of a drier climate 307 million years ago. This led to…
