Tag: paleobotany
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2026 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show – Preview #23: Macroneuropteris scheuchzeri terminal pinnule
Preview 23 is a nice terminal end of a Macroneuropteris scheuchzeri from Mazon Creek. To learn more see Mazon Monday #39. Saturday will be here before you know it…
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PBS Eons: 130 Million Years Ago, the World Caught Fire
PBS Eons has a new video. This one is about the evolution of flowering plants. It seems that for flowering plants to take over the world, first they may have had to help burn the old one away…and then put those fires out.
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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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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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This Fossil Is Rewriting the Story of How Plants Spread across the Planet
Scientific American Magazine has an interesting story about the spread of terrestrial plants during the Early Devonian Period. A paper in the journal Science Advances looked at the origin of lichens. Did they appear before or after the rise of vascular plants? Lichens, which are a composite organism resulting from a symbiotic relationship between a…
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Fossil Friday #293: Mazon Creek Lepidodendron Cones from the River
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #293. 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 couple rare and beautiful cones from the…
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Fossil Friday #282: Crossotheca sagittata
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #282. 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 Bluesky/Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! Today, we have a very nice Crossotheca sagittata.…
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ESCONI Field Trip to Danville Shale Pile Fossils – Saturday, September 27th, 2025
Danville Field Trip Rules for Saturday, September 27th, 2025 An ESCONI field trip to the Danville IL Shale Pile for Pennsylvanian fossils is scheduled for Saturday September 27, 2025 starting at 10 AM. This is on private property and there is an attendance limit of 25 people. The gate will be secured once we are…
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Fossil Friday #275: Crenulopteris acadica
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #275. 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, we have some very…
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Fossil Friday #237: Sphenophyllym emarginatum from Indiana
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #237. 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! Ths week’s Fossil Friday is a sweet…
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Fossil Friday #236: Cyathocarpus arborea from the Mazon Creek River
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #236. 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! We looked at Cyathocarpus arborea just a few…
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Fossil Friday #235: Alethopteris serlii from the Field Museum
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #235. 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, we have…
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Fossil Friday #234: Neuropteris ovata from the Mazon River
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #234. 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! Today’s fossil is a sweet little Neuropteris…
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Fossil Friday #233: Diplazites unita
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #233. 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! Diplazites unita is one of the most…
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Fossil Friday #232: Knob Noster Fossils
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #232. 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! Knob Noster is a fossil deposit contemporaneous…
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Fossil Friday #228: Mazon Creek Annularia inflata
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #228. 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! This week’s Fossil Friday is a beautiful…
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Fossil Friday #224: Alethopteris serlii
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #224. 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! —————————————————– Alethopteris serlii is always a favorite. …
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Field Museum: Sixty-million-year-old grape seeds reveal how the death of the dinosaurs may have paved the way for grapes to spread
Lithouva – the earliest fossil grape from the Western Hemisphere, ~60 million years old from Colombia. Top figure shows fossil accompanied with CT scan reconstruction. Bottom shows artist reconstruction. Photos by Fabiany Herrera, art by Pollyanna von Knorring. The Field Museum scientists have been busy… first a giant salamander-like creature and now finely aged wine,…
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Fossil Friday #219: Neuropteris vermicularis – Terminal Pinnule
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #219. 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! Neuropteris vermicularis is a seed fern (see…
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Fossil Friday #217: Cordaites borassifolius
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #217. 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 is a nice Cordaites borassifolius…
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Fossil Friday #216: Lycopodites meekii
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #216. 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, we have a foliaged…
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Fossil Friday #214: Alethopteris sullivanti
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #214. 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! Today, we have a very large single…
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Fossil Friday #212: Mazon Creek Crenulopteris acadica
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #212. 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! —————————————————– This week’s contribution comes from a…
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Fossil Friday #207: Fossils from the Permian of Jordan
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #207. 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! On a recent field trip to a…
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390 million-year-old fossilized forest is the oldest ever discovered
LiveScience has a story about the discovery of a very old fossil forest. Found in southwestern England, this ancient forest dates to around 390 million years ago, during the Devonian Period. That makes it the oldest known fossil forest, about 4 million years older than the Gilboa fossil forest in New York. A description of the…
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Fossil Friday #204: Annularia inflata
This is Mazon Monday post #204. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! Fossil Friday is here with a beautiful Annularia inflata. A. inflata is the foliage for Calamites, a genus of extinct horsetail “trees”. They lived in the coal swamps of the Carboniferous and Permian periods and provide much of the…
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Fossil Friday #202: Pecopteris fontainei
This is Mazon Monday post #202. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! This week’s Fossil Friday is a beautiful Pecopteris fontainei. P. fontainei is a tree fern from the Mazon Creek fossil deposit. P. fontainei was named by Leo Lesquereux in 1889. Lesquereux worked with a multiple state geologic surveys, eventually…
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Fossil Friday #201: Crenulopteris acadica
This is Mazon Monday post #201. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! We have a nice Crenulopteris acadica (see Mazon Monday #115) for today’s Fossil Friday. Sometimes, they don’t come out of the freeze/thaw in one piece. Unfortunately, this one needed a little repair. It’s not as obvious from the fossil…
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Rare 3D fossils show that some early trees had forms unlike any you’ve ever seen before
Phys.org has a story about the discovery of an amazingly preserved “tree” from New Brunswick, Canada. The fossils, which date to about 350 million years ago during the Mississippian Period, consist of multiple specimens with one preserving how the “leaves” were distributed in the crown of the tree. Usually, just the trunk of trees are…
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Video for ESCONI December 2023 General Meeting – “Ancient Forest Pests: Plant-Insect Interactions in the Fossil Record”
The December 8, 2023 General Meeting presentation was held via Zoom. It was presented by Michael Donovan, Collections Manager, Paleobotany at the Field Museum will present “Ancient Forest Pests: Plant-Insect Interactions in the Fossil Record”. Plants and insects are the most diverse multicellular organisms on Earth, and their abundant interactions are fundamental components of ecosystems…
