Tag: MazonMonday
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Mazon Monday #84: Chowder Flats
This is Mazon Monday post #84. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. During the ESCONI Sale back in October, a member noticed a booklet called “A Guide to the Coal Fossils of Chowder Flats, Morris, Illinois”. It was written by Robert J. Reich in 1982, who was advisor to the Botany…
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Mazon Monday #83: George Langford at the Illinois State Museum
This is Mazon Monday post #83. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. As part of the trip to the 2021 MAPS Expo in Springfield, IL this past weekend, a few ESCONI members took the opportunity to visit the Mazon Creek exhibit at the Illinois State Museum. George Langford donated a large…
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Mazon Monday #82: Peachocaris strongi
This is Mazon Monday post #82. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. We’ve already looked at a few shrimp species from the Mazon Creek biota – Today, we are going to look at yet another… Peachocaris strongi. It was initially described in 1962 by H.K. Brooks and placed in the genus…
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Mazon Monday #81: Laveineopteris rarinervis
One of the common seed ferns that we haven’t mentioned yet is Laveineopteris rarinervis. For Fossil Friday #77, we showed a beautiful specimen from the Mazon River. L. rarinervis is common and found across all of the terrestrial Mazon Creek localities. It’s also known from the marine Pit 11 and Braceville spoil pile localities. With…
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Mazon Monday #80: Book “Coal Age Fossils From Mazon Creek”
This is Mazon Monday post #80. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. The book “Coal Age Fossils From Mazon Creek” was published in 1979 by the Illinois State Museum. The ISM has a long history publishing science books. This one is volume III of the scientific papers series. It is a…
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Mazon Monday #79: Braceville Field Trip (Mazon Creek) Report
This is Mazon Monday post #79. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Here is the field trip report for the Braceville Fall Field Trip, written by ESCONI President Keith Robitschek. The September field trips to the Braceville spoil pile started with Saturday and Sunday being mostly sunny and rather warm for…
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Mazon Monday #78: Amynilyspes wortheni
This is Mazon Monday post #78. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Today, we are having a look at Amynilyspes wortheni, an extinct species of pill millipede. A. wortheni was described by Samuel Hubbard Scudder in 1882, a giant in the field of fossil insects and other arthropods during the 1800’s. The…
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Mazon Monday #77: Care and Feeding of Your Mazon Creek Concretions
This is Mazon Monday post #77. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. —————————————————– Today, we have a repost of Mazon Monday #27 – “Care and Feeding of Your Mazon Creek Concretions”. We are posting it to help the new members and collectors we met on the Braceville spoil pile this past…
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Fossil Friday #73: Mazon Creek Pill Millipede
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #73. 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! Mazon Creek is back this week and…
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Mazon Monday #76: Spring Braceville Field Trip Report by AJ Templer
This is Mazon Monday post #76. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. ESCONI’s mission is one of education and we love to get the kids interested in our Earth Science passions. In this case, it’s paleontology and we are hunting for Mazon Creek fossils. In order to get us ready for the…
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Mazon Monday #75: Arthrolycosa danielsi
This is Mazon Monday post #75. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. After posting James Alann’s outstanding specimen of Arthrolycosa danielsi, I was curious and had to know a little more, so I spent some time digging… The name Arthrolycosa means “wolf spider”. Specimens have been also found in the Kirov…
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Mazon Monday #74: Langford Book 3
This is Mazon Monday post #74. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. We recently ran across an interesting article in the July/August 1996 edition of the ESCONI newsletter that details the story of the donation of the original notebook manuscripts of the two original Langford books and the unpublished book three. …
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Mazon Monday #73: Architarbus rotundatus
This is Mazon Monday post #73. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. For this week, we are going to cover the same species of spider we featured in our recent Fossil Friday #69, Architarbus rotundatus. Paleozoic spider-like arachnids are an interesting group. Most lack the ability to produce silk and so…
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Mazon Monday #72: Index of Posts
This is Mazon Monday post #72. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. We’ve been doing Mazon Monday posts for almost 1.5 years now. And. it seems like an index of posts would be helpful. Hard to believe all the topics we have covered! Let is know your favorite and any suggestions…
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Mazon Monday #71: Fossil Brains From a Horseshoe Crab
This is Mazon Monday post #71. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Mazon Creek is categorized as a Lagerstatte due to the extraordinary preservation. For Mazon Creek, this presentation quite often includes soft bodied animals and soft tissues. Last week, there were a whole bunch of stories about a fossilized brain…
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Mazon Monday #70: New Mazon Creek Vertebrate – Joemungandr bolti
This is Mazon Monday post #70. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Arjan Mann gave a presentation at the November 2020 ESCONI General Meeting about Mazon Creek vertebrates. Now, he’s out with a paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science that describes a new Mazon Creek tetrapod. The paper…
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Mazon Monday #69: Cyperites bicarinatus
This is Mazon Monday post #69. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Cyperites bicarinatus is a common plant found in the Mazon Creek fossil biota. They are grass-like with a rounded attachment at one end and a point at the other. The Field Museum has a specimen that is about 40…
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Mazon Monday #68: Dryptoscolex matthiesae
This is Mazon Monday post #68. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Dryptoscolex matthiesae is an annelid worm, which are part of class Polychaeta. It is known informally as the “Rat Worm”. Ida Thompson described D. matthiesae in 1979 in the paper “Errant polychaetes (Annelida) from the Pennsylvanian Essex Fauna of Northern…
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Mazon Monday #67: Trigonocarpus sp.
This is Mazon Monday post #67. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Trigonocarpus sp. was described in 1825, by Alexandre Brongniart, who was a French chemist, mineralogist, geologist, paleontologist, and zoologist back in the early 1800’s. It is the seed part of an extinct order of plants called Medullosales. In the…
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Mazon Monday #66: Video for June 2021 Paleontology Meeting – “Collecting Mazon Creek Fossils”
This is Mazon Monday post #66. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. The topic of our Paleontology Study Group meeting was “Collecting Mazon Creek Fossils”. It was presented by ESCONI President Keith Robitschek. The presentation included State Park Links, Maps, Surface Collecting Concretions, Concretion Storage, Opening, Cleaning, and Care.
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Mazon Monday #65: Palaeocaris typus
This is Mazon Monday post #65. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Another shrimp is up for this week’s Mazon Monday.  We have Palaeocaris typus. P. typus was described way back in 1865 by Meek and Worthen. Fielding Bradford Meek (1817 – 1876) was an American geologist and paleontologist, who…
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Mazon Monday #64: Essoidea epiceron
This is Mazon Monday post #64. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. For Mazon Monday this week, we have a small filter feeding shrimp, which is one of the smallest known from the Mazon Creek fossil biota, Essoidea epiceron, was described in 1974 by Dr. Frederick Schram, who has described many…
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Mazon Monday #63: Braceville Field Trip Report
This is Mazon Monday post #63. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. This spring’s field trip to the Braceville spoil pile started as a cool, cloudy day with a chance of rain. 45 members chanced the weather to collect Mazon Creek fossil concretions. Around 10:30, a steady, but light, drizzle fell…
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Mazon Monday #62: Common Descent Podcast Episode 110 – Mazon Creek Fossil Beds
This is Mazon Monday post #62. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. “Common Descent” is a podcast about paleontology, biology, and evolution. The hosts are David Moscato and Will Harris, who are paleontologists and science communicators. As it says on their website, they “love talking about fossils, evolution, and life history” …
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Mazon Monday #61: Video for May Paleontology Meeting – “A Historical Perspective on Collecting Mazon Creek and Pit 11” by Peter Kruty
This is Mazon Monday post #61. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. We are very excited to post the video of Peter Kruty’s presentation for the May 2021 Paleontology Meeting. The title of his talk was “A historical Perspective on Collecting Mazon Creek and Pit 11”. It was a very interesting…
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Mazon Monday #60: Annularia inflata
This is Mazon Monday post #60. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. —————————————————– This week, we are looking at a species of Annularia. Annularia is actually the foliage of a plant called Calamites. Calamites is classified as a Sphenopsid, which is a primitive vascular plant characterized by jointed ribbed stems and small…
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Mazon Monday #59: Cyclopteris orbicularis
This is Mazon Monday post #59. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. —————————————————– This week, we visit an interesting plant fossil called Cyclopteris orbicularis, which is a circular leaf associated with the seed ferns Laveineopteris, Neuropteris, Reticulopteris, Odontopteris, and Macroneuropteris. The Cyclopteris leaves are attached to the lower parts of the…
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Mazon Monday #58: Arthropleura sp.
This is Mazon Monday post #58. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. —————————————————– Arthropleura is a genus of extinct millipedes. Their size ranged from about 0.3 meters to about 2.5 meters long. They are the largest known land invertebrates. Fossils are known from North America and Scotland, and are thought to…
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Mazon Monday #57: Alethopteris serlii
This is Mazon Monday post #57. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. —————————————————– If you’ve seen one, you know that Alethopteris serlii can have breathtaking beauty. Whether from the Mazon River or one of the other more terrestrial localities, like its sister taxa Alethopteris sullivantii, it is generally bold in preservation. …
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Mazon Monday #56: Didontogaster cordylina
This is Mazon Monday post #56. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. —————————————————– The first format descriptions of the Polychaete worms of the Mazon Creek biota didn’t happen until 1979. One of the first was Didontogaster cordylina, commonly known as the tummy tooth worm. D. cordylina was described by Ida Thompson…
