Tag: fossils
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A Paleo Reader: 22 Books for Fossil Lovers
Good story over on the NMNH blog. Many good books listed. Here’s just a few highlights: If you’ve got some time over the holidays (or the upcoming cold months), grab some good reading!
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The FOSSIL Project eNewsletter Volume 1, Issue 4
The next issue of the FOSSIL Project eNewsletter is here. Get it (or subscribe) here. Their website is at http://www.myfossil.org/, find them on Facebook at TheFossilProject, or on Twitter at @projectFOSSIL.
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Mazon Creek Fossils Will Be Sold at General Meeting
5 flats of opened but uncleaned fossils along with 7 bags of unopened concretions (each bag would fill a small flat) will be available for sale at the General Meeting this Friday.
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Luprisca incuba
From Scientific American, Tiny, Ancient Crustacean Preserved in Fool’s Gold, Legs, Eggs and All, By Jennifer Frazer, March 27, 2014 … Incredibly, the paper describing these new fossils notes that the arrangement of some of the structures on the first antenna is the same as that of the group of living ostracods they are hypothesized…
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Burpee Paleofest Speaker Schedule
Paleofest – Burpee Museum of Natural History – to purchase tickets Download PaleoFest Speaker Schedule (.pdf) Saturday March 8, 2014 Time Sunday March 9, 2014 Opening Comments 9:00-9:30 Megalodon: How Did the World’s Largest Shark Live? Dana Ehret Ph.D., Curator of Paleontology, Alabama Museum of Natural History The Beginning of the Age of Mammals in…
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New Book on Hell Creek Formation from GSA
From the Geological Society of America: Full Title: Through the End of the Cretaceous in the Type Locality of the Hell Creek Formation in Montana and Adjacent Areas Editors: Gregory P. Wilson, William A. Clemens, John R. Horner, and Joseph H. Hartman Description: For over a century, the Hell Creek and Fort Union formations and their constituent…
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Trilobite Fakes
Roy Plotnick post on the ESCONI Facebook Page to let us know about a new Facebook page about Trilobite Fakes and Restorations.
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ESCONI Field Trip in September 2013 – Ordovician Paleonotology
ESCONI Field Trip: Irene Quarry near Belvidere, 9AM to 2PM This is the third visit by ESCONI to this site. The rock is Ordovician, Galena Group. This is a “hard-rock” quarry (limestone or dolostone), not shale like Vulcan. The site is owned by William Charles Construction. This is a good place to find Receptaculites and…
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A Few Earth Science Vendors
A few vendor web sites came to our attention in the past month: – Need abrasives for lapidary or rock polishing? You may wish to check out Panadyne Abrasives – Looking for information about buying gems? You may wish to check out gemstoneguru.com – Going to Tucson? You may wish to check out SpiriferMinerals.com –…
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ESCONI Gem, Mineral & Fossil Show, March 16 & 17, 2013
New location!(Old location undergoing construction) Dupage County Fairgrounds Wheaton, IL Home Economics Buildingclick for directions View Larger Map Saturday, March 16 – 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, March 17 – 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free admittance and parking ! Exploreyour interests Shop for jewelry, gems, fossils, minerals from world-class vendors Mineral…
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Saber-tooth Cat Extinction
Vanderbilt University: (hat tip, Dave Carlson, ESCONI Discussion Group) In the period just before they went extinct, the American lions and saber-toothed cats that roamed North America in the late Pleistocene were living well off the fat of the land. That is the conclusion of the latest study of the microscopic wear patterns on the…
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Spider Kills Wasp a 100 Million Years Ago
From Sci-News: (hat tip via Dave at ESCONI Yahoo Group) This piece of amber preserved the event in remarkable detail, an action that took place some 100 million years ago in the Hukawng Valley of Myanmar. The fossil also contains the body of a male spider in the same web. This provides the oldest evidence of…
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Mazon Creek Field Trip
Saturday and Sunday, 9/22 and 9/23 , meet at 8:00 A.M. Saturday at the BP Amoco in Coal City. No Age Limit. Hard Hats not required. Take I-55 to Exit 236 (Coal City). Take a right onto Highway 113 (Division Street). Go west to Broadway Street and Division in Coal City. We will be collecting…
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Field Museum’s Podcast: What the Fish?
The Field Museum has a new podcast called What the Fish? “… 2.5 million specimens don’t collect themselves! The Field Museum’s Division of Fishes houses approximately 2.5 million specimens of fish, including whole specimens in alcohol, skeletal specimens, tissue samples, and cleared and stained material. That is a lot of fishes! But the fishes did not…
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Oldest-ever bugs found preserved in amber
From Discover Magazine: (hat tip Floyd) Three tiny creatures from the Triassic period are the oldest ever to be discovered preserved in amber – about 100 million years older than any other amber arthropod ever collected…. … But even though arthropods are more than 400 million years old, until now the oldest record of the…
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Travel and Trilobites
Nice article from Scientific American on Travel and Trilobites: …. Still today the Silurian (some 443,7-416 milion years ago) is one of the most enigmatic epochs in the history of earth; marked by glaciations at the beginning, it was at the end of this period that the landmasses, until then barren deserts, became colonized by…
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English Fossil Auction Coming June 2
From Skinner Auctions: The Natural History collection featured in the June Science, Technology & Clocks auction comprises over 125 lots of ancient history, including complete dinosaur skeletons, eggs and other bone fragments, a wooly mammoth tusk, fossilized fish, shark’s teeth, a sea scorpion, ammonites, trilobites, crinoids and more. Many lots of classic Jurassic fossils from…
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Turtle the Size of a Small Car
Via NC State University: (hat tip Floyd) – “… A prehistoric turtle big enough to eat crocodiles has been discovered in Columbia. The turtle lived about 60-million-years ago, and was about the size of a small car. The fossils were discovered in a coal mine in northern Colombia, in 2005. And has thusly been named…
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New Paper on Trilobites of Utah
Over at the Yahoo ESCONI discussion group, Don Baumgartner posted: “… Please find this at the below web site for a free download. This was posted a while back off the Trilobite Jam Facebook page. http://kuscholarwor ks.ku.edu/ dspace/handle/ 1808/8543…”
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3-D Printing of Dinosaur Bones
Via ABC News (Feb 22) … For all the digging of dinosaur fossils, all the magnificent reconstructions in museums and all the research that has been devoted to them, the great beasts remain mostly a mystery to us, and paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara of Drexel University in Philadelphia says our ways of studying them have not…
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Oldest Organism with Skeleton Found in Australia
Via PhysOrg: …Coronacollina resembles the Cambrian fossil sponge, Choia. The three raised points on the rim are evident, with a central hollow and four spicules extending from the cone rim…. the organism is between 560 million and 550 million years old, which places it in the Ediacaran period, before the explosion of life and diversification of…
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34th Mid America Paleontology Society Show This Weekend!
Nice article about the MAPS Expo via the Canton Daily Ledger: The National MAPS Show returns to Western Illinois University-Macomb Friday-Sunday, March 30-April 1. This year’s theme is the Pennsylvanian Period. The expo, tagged the world’s largest fossil-only show, will be held in Western Hall from 8 a.m.-5p.m. Friday- Saturday, March 30-31 and from 8 a.m.-12 p.m.…
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2012 ESCONI Gem, Mineral and Fossil Show – March 17 & 18
Yea!!! It is time for the annual show!!! Articles in the Chicago Tribune. Come out to see new fossil and mineral finds being sold by vendors and at auction, one-of-a-kind hand-made jewelry, gorgeous and amazing mineral specimens and beads! Demonstrations of jewelry making and geode cracking and collections from private collectors as well as…
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Lyme Disease Discussion
Anyone who collects fossils and minerals outside could be bitten by a tick and be infected by Lymes disease. So it is good to keep up to date on the subject matter. This informative radio show from Diane Rehm questions as to whether chronic Lyme disease exists, how to test for it, and how to treat…
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Are Mass Extinctions Always Sudden Events?
Via National Science Foundation: …The deadliest mass extinction of all took a long time to kill 90 percent of Earth’s marine life–and it killed in stages–according to a newly published report. It shows that mass extinctions need not be sudden events. Thomas Algeo, a geologist at the University of Cincinnati, and 13 colleagues have produced…
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Oldest Dinosaurs Found: Evidence of Organized Nesting
Image: Nobu Tamura, www.palaeocritti.com Article except via The Guardian: (click link to see beautiful photograph of fossils) Oldest dinosaur nests discovered in South Africa Massospondylus nesting site – with fossilised eggs and tiny footprints – is 100m years older than any previously discovered – A dinosaur nesting site older than any discovered before suggests that the creatures…
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Preserved Dino Feathers found in Amber
From Science via NatureNews: The amber samples are between 70 and 85 million years old, and come from a site called Grassy Lake in western Canada that was once home to a conifer forest. The site is well known for the wide range of insects found preserved in its amber. Palaeontologist Ryan McKellar and his…
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Paleobiology Database
The Paleobiology Database seeks to provide researchers and the public with information about the entire fossil record. You can use the site to find out about fossil collections, individual plants and animals, taxonomic groups, references to publications, stratigraphic units, time scales, and time intervals. All of our data can be downloaded, including collection, occurrence, or…
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Ancient Seas May Have Poisoned Life
Via Science News: Soon after complex animals made their first great strides onto the stage of life, the oceans brewed up a toxic chemical mix that put the brakes on evolutionary innovation, suggests a paper in the Jan. 6 Nature. The culprits? Too little oxygen and too much sulfur dissolved in coastal waters, reports a…
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Dinosaur Bone Hunting: Excavating Fossils With Paleo Prospectors
By Mary Fairchild (2011, private ranch near New Castle, Wyoming.) To collect, conserve, curate and display extraordinary geological and natural history specimens that have the power to educate, enlighten, and excite people about the wonders of the natural world.–The Black Hills Museum of Natural History’s mission statement When dinosaurs walked the earth, a vast inland…
