Tag: fossils
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St. Paul Field Trip – Friday, March 27th 2015
There will be a field trip to the St. Paul Stone Quarry on March 27th. We will meet at the quarry office at 8:45 am eastern time (7:45 am Chicago time) to sign waivers. Participation is limited to 20 and you must be 18 years old (quarry policy). You also must be a paid member…
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Preview: 2015 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show, March 21-22, 2015
The 2015 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show will be held on March 21st and 22nd, 2015 at the DuPage County fairgrounds. There will be vendors, demonstrations, and both silent and live auctions. Don’t miss it, there will be fun for the whole family! Here is a sampling of the auction specimens. Amethyst Belotelson
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500 million years ago, this critter had a really bad day
The Globe and Mail has a fantastic piece on the newest fossil discoveries of animals that lived during the “Cambian Explosion” in British Columbia. The new locality has been dubbed “Marble Canyon”. It features a slightly different assemblage of animals than what was found in the “Burgess Shale”. The exact location has been kept secret;…
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Ancient teeth may help solve a monkey mystery
According to a recent story published in the journal Nature, monkeys have lived in South America for 36 million years. The team of researchers, from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, discovered four molars in Eastern Peru. These molars have been dated to 36 million years ago, which is 10 million years older…
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PBS NOVA: Bigger Than T-Rex… Spinosaurus
The Spinosaurus NOVA documentary is over on YouTube. Check it out if you missed it last fall on PBS. There are discussions on the new fossil find in Egypt and the aquatic nature of Spinosaurus, which appeared in an article in the National Geographic Magazine back in September 2014. Enjoy!
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Fossil Friday: Find the Trilobite
Here's a little puzzle… find the trilobite. It's a small enrolled Ditomopyge from the Permian of Kansas.
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CBS Sunday Morning has a story about Stonehenge
On CBS Sunday Morning today (January 25th, 2015), there is a story about the archaeological work which is working to discover the secrets of Stonehenge. The story discusses newer techniques using underground imaging to reveal never before seen details of what Stonehendge was back when it was built. These techniques have shown the positions of…
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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…
