Tag: fossils
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NPR Short Wave: The dinosaur secrets found in the archives of a natural history museum
NPR’s Short Wave show has an episode about dinosaurs at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. What happens behind the scenes of a dinosaur exhibit? Short Wave host Regina Barber got to find out … by taking a trip to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. In the museum’s basement, she talked to…
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The Year in Neanderthals
The New York Times has a nice article that highlights new understanding into who the Neanderthals were. Neanderthals lived across Eurasia for hundreds of thousands of years before going extinct some 40,000 years ago. A bunch of new high profile studies were published in 2025. Barely three decades ago, these ancient hominids were still being…
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Fossil Friday #299: Annularia sphenophylloides
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #299. Expect this to be a regular feature of the website. We will post fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Bluesky/Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! Today, we have another beautiful contribution from George Witaczek. This time…
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WHY DINOSAURS? Award-Winning Dinosaur Documentary!
The award winning documentary “Why Dinosaurs” is now available on Youtube! The documentary covers quite a bit of the history and the science of paleontology. Did I mention that ESCONI’s own Rob Sula has his own segment? Oh, there’s also a great website – whydinosaurs.com. The website has extended interviews and other extras! Check it…
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ESCONI January 2026 General Meeting – January 9th, 2026 at 8:00 PM – “Fossil Birds of Wyoming”
Jean-Pierre Cavigelli, of Casper College in Casper, WY, will present “Fossil Birds of Wyoming”. Wyoming is well known for its fossils of all kinds. Dinosaurs are probably the most famous. They were first discovered here in the late 1800’s and are still being uncovered and studied nowadays. Fossil fishes from the southwest corner of the…
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Mazon Monday #303: Happy 60th Birthday, Tully Monster!
Happy 60th Birthday to the Tully Monster! Well, actually tomorrow is the day. And, I guess technically it’s really been 307 – 309 million years, but who’s really counting. Eugene Richardson, Jr., who first called it “Mr. Tully’s monster”, described the animal in the paper “Pennsylvanian invertebrates of the Mazon Creek Area, Illinois: the morphology…
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PRI’s Wonderful Life
Here’s a followup to the New York Times’ post about the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) and the Museum of the Earth’s financial woes… they found funding and will continue operation! By late summer, although gifts continued to arrive at roughly twice the rate of previous “normal” years, larger gifts had slowed and we were still…
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Fossil Friday #298: Seed Fern Fiddlehead – Spiropteris
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #298. Expect this to be a regular feature of the website. We will post fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Bluesky/Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! This week’s Fossil Friday features a fiddlehead — the coiled…
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Throwback Thursday #298: Looking Back At ESCONI For January 2026
A look back at January 1956, 1976, and 2001
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Spinosaurus relative longer than a pickup truck stalked Thailand’s rivers 125 million years ago
LiveScience has a story about a spinosaur that lived in Thailand 125 million years ago, during the early Cretaceous Period. The animal was about 25 feet long (7-8 meters) and likely ate the fish that swam in the rivers. The new dinosaur has yet to be named and was discovered in the Sam Ran locality…
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Ancient oceans were ruled by super predators unlike anything today
ScienceDaily has a story about the top predators of the past. Researchers from McGill University looked at Colombia’s Paja Formation, which dates to the early Cretaceous Period, some 122 million years ago. That formation preserves the ancient marine ecosystem, which had a very complex food chain, more so than the modern oceans. The paper was published…
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Mazon Monday #302: The Wreck of the 5560
This is Mazon Monday post #302. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. The Marion Power Shovel Company was an American company that designed, manufactured, and built steam shovels, power shovels, blast hole drills, excavators, and dragline excavators. The company was headquartered in Marion, Ohio and operated from 1884 to 1997, when it…
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Giant sea monsters lived in rivers at the end of the dinosaur age
ScienceDaily has a story about mosasaurs. It seems that giant mosasaurs didn’t just live in the oceans… they also prowled rivers. A large tooth found in a North Dakota deposit along with a Tyrannosaurus rex tooth and a jawbone from a crocodylian revealed an isotope signature consistent with a live in fresh water. See the…
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An Engine of Fossil Discovery Fights Its Own Extinction
The New York Times has a story about the financial troubles at the Museum of the Earth and the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, N.Y. The institution was establish almost 100 years ago and has amassed one of the largest collections of fossils in North America. “No one has ever experienced trying to rehouse a…
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Fossil Friday #297: Alethopteris serlii
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #297. Expect this to be a regular feature of the website. We will post fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Bluesky/Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! This week’s Fossil Friday is a favorite of many…
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Throwback Thursday #297: Season’s Greetings from the Langfords!
In 1939, their Christmas card included a photo of the “Fossil Gardens of Northern Illinois”. The picture is a view of the strip mines about 1 mile south of Wilmington, IL, at a place that was not far from where Cinder Ridge Golf Course is today.
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2026 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show – Preview #1: Tully Monsters
This is the preview post #1 for the 2026 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show Live Auction. The ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show for 2026 will be held on March 21th and 22nd at the DuPage Fairgrounds in Wheaton, IL, which is the same location as last year. All details can be found here.…
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Mazon Monday #301: Cordaianthus ovatus
This is Mazon Monday post #301. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Cordaianthus ovatus is thought to be the fertile structure for Cordaites borassifolius (see Mazon Monday #299), an extinct genus of early gymnosperms. Cordaites probably grew to more than 100 feet tall in swampy conditions, forming forests similar to modern day mangroves. Cordaianthus…
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“Bones Almost on Top of Each Other” – Extraordinary Dinosaur Fossil Site Discovered in the Hațeg Basin
SciTechDaily has a story about an extraordinary dinosaur fossils site in Transylvania. The Hateg Basin is famous for its dinosaur fossils. The site dates to the late Cretaceous Period, some 72 million years ago. So far, thousands of fossils have been found, including bones of amphibians, turtles, crocodiles, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and mammals. A recent paper in…
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Fossil Friday #296: Roachoid Wing from the Creek
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #296. Expect this to be a regular feature of the website. We will post fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Bluesky/Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! This beautiful roachoid wing was collected from the Mazon…
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Mazon Monday #300: Mazon Creek horseshoe crab fossil shows evidence of ancient algal or parasitic infestation
This is Mazon Monday post #300. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. The Lauer Foundation just won’t let the Mazon Creek horseshoe crabs alone… first it was Euproops danae remains in bromalites (see Mazon Monday #283), now they’ve found evidence of ancient algal or parasitic infestation in another Euproops danae fossil from the…
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Video for ESCONI December 2025 General Meeting – “Fossils of the Comanche National Grasslands located in southeastern Colorado”
The ESCONI December 2025 General Meeting was held on December 12th, 2025 at 8:00 PM via Zoom. The presenter was Steve Miller of the Western Interior Paleontological Society (WIPS). His topic is “Fossils of the Comanche National Grasslands located in southeastern Colorado”. Fossils of the Comanche National Grasslands located in southeastern Colorado The area offers…
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A Day at the Beach Hunting Mammoths
The New York Times has an interesting story about “citizen paleontologists” in the Netherlands. The beaches around Rotterdam’s port, the largest harbor in Europe, are loaded in Pleistocene fossils from the dredging of the North Sea floor. The beach where van den Berg was hunting, called Maasvlakte 2, is a particularly popular destination for fossil…
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Fossil Friday #295: Juvenile Dvinosaur From Mazon Creek
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #295. Expect this to be a regular feature of the website. We will post fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Bluesky/Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! We have a particularly special Mazon Creek fossil to share…
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ESCONI December 2025 General Meeting – “Fossils of the Comanche National Grasslands located in southeastern Colorado”
The ESCONI December 2025 General Meeting will be held on December 12th, 2025 at 8:00 PM via Zoom. The presenter is Steve Miller of the Western Interior Paleontological Society (WIPS). His topic is “Fossils of the Comanche National Grasslands located in southeastern Colorado”. Fossils of the Comanche National Grasslands located in southeastern Colorado The area…
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PBS Eons: What Was Greenland Like When it Was Green
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about 2 million year old DNA from Greenland. It made the front page of the New York Times. Ancient DNA over 2 million years old, retrieved from the frozen dirt of Greenland. It reached back further in time than many scientists used to think was even…
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Mazon Monday #299: Cordaites borassifolius
This is Mazon Monday post #299. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Cordaites borassifolius is an extinct genus of early gymnosperms. Cordaites probably grew maybe 100 feet tall in the drier areas of the Carboniferous swamps. They had stilt-like roots, forming forests similar to modern day mangroves. Cordaites is relatively rare in the Mazon…
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CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks… Smaller tyrannosaur solves decades-long debate about the T. Rex
CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks has a great segment about Nanotyrannus. There’s an interview with James Napoli of Stony Brook University, who was coauthor on “Nanotyrannus and Tyrannosaurus coexisted at the close of the Cretaceous”, which was published in the journal Nature. Small tyrannosaur fossils belonging to a dinosaur about half the size and a tenth…
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Fossil Friday #294: Phenopterum briggsi
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #294. Expect this to be a regular feature of the website. We will post fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Bluesky/Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! Phenopterum briggsi is a grylloblattidan species of insect from the…
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ESCONI 2026 Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show – March 21st and 22nd, 2026
The ESCONI 2026 Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show will be held on March 21st and 22nd, 2026 at the DuPage County Fairgrounds.
