Tag: paleobotany
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Mysterious fruit found to be the oldest known fossils of the Frankincense and Myrrh family
Phys.org has a story about the identification of some Indian plant fossils as ancestors of the Frankincense and Myrrh family. The fossils were discovered in an Indian village in the early 1970’s. Recently. researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History performed CT scans on these fossils. The scans revealed pyrenes. Pyrenes are woody dispersal…
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ESCONI December 2023 General Meeting – Friday, December 8th, 2023 at 8:00 PM via Zoom – “Ancient Forest Pests: Plant-Insect Interactions in the Fossil Record”
The December 8, 2023 General Meeting presentation will be held via Zoom: Michael Donovan, Collections Manager, Paleobotany at the Field Museum will present “Ancient Forest Pests: Plant-Insect Interactions in the Fossil Record”. Description: Plants and insects are the most diverse multicellular organisms on Earth, and their abundant interactions are fundamental components of ecosystems on land.…
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New study shows ancient Europe was not all forest, half was covered in grassland
Palaeoartistic reconstructions of Last Interglacial landscapes in the European temperate forest biome, consistent with our pollen-based estimates of vegetation structure. Credit: Brennan Stokkermans Phys.org has a story about ancient Europe. A recent paper in the journal Science Advances looked at pollen samples from various sites across Europe to determine the distribution of plants during the…
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Fossil Friday #189: Alethopteris serlii
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #189. 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 beautiful…
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Wyoming Couple Finds Forest of Gigantic 60 Million-Year-Old Petrified Trees
Examples of metasequoia trees similar to the petrified specimen found by a Wyoming couple recently on their property. (Photo by Erik Herman, Harvard.edu) Cowboy State Daily has a story about the discovery of some gigantic petrified trees near Buffalo, Wyoming. The fossil tree trunks were found while building an RV park. The fossils date to…
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Fossil Friday #182: Lepidodendron Bark
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #182. 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! Lepidodendron, also known as “scale tree”, is…
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Fossil Friday #181: Macroneuropteris scheuchzeri
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #181. 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, we have a rather nice…
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Mystery of ‘living fossil’ tree frozen in time for 66 million years finally solved
Live Science has a story about the Wollemi pine. Thought extinct, the Wollemi pine was “rediscovered” in 1994 by some hikers near Sydney, Australia. Wollemia nobilis is pretty much unchanged since the Cretaceous Peiod. A group of scientists from Australia, the US, and Italy have recently published the plant’s genome. The genome gives insight into…
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Fossil Friday #179: Reticulopteris munsterii
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #179. 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 have a Pit 3 Reticulopteris munsterii…
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Fossil Friday #178: Radicites
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #178. 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 have something different from Mazon Creek…
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Fossil Friday #171: Mazon Creek Annularia
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #171. 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 comes from long time ESCONI…
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Fossil Friday #169: Odontopteris subcuneata
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #169. 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! Odontopteris subcuneata is an uncommon form that…
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Fossil Friday #168: Ivy Leaf from the Green River
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #168. 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! Something different today… How about a fossil…
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Fossil Friday #167: Reticulopteris munsterii
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #167. 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! I don’t know about you guys, but…
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Fossil Friday #162: J.C. Carr Mazon Creek Fern
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #162. 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 fossil…
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Fossil Friday #159: Danville Callipteridium
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #159. 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 Friday, we have…
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Fossil Friday #157: Danville Cone
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #157. 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! Last Saturday, April 15th, 2023, ESCONI had…
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Fossil Friday #153: UK Neuropteris
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #153. 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! —————————————————– Now for something completely… well slightly……
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Fossil Friday #151: Lepidostrobophyllum Pair from Indiana
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #151. 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 pair of large…
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The Fossil Flowers That Rewrote the History of Life
The New Yorker has an interesting piece about some special flower fossils. When and where did the flowering plant evolve? It’s a question that been pursued by paleobotanists for a long time. Even Charles Darwin called it the “abominable mystery” due to how flowers seems to spring fully formed in the fossil record. The centerpiece…
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Fossil Friday #139: Lobatopteris tenuinervis from Danville
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #139. 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! ESCONI member Phil Anderson sent us a…
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Fossil Friday #130: Mariopteris nervosa
This is “Fossil Friday” post #130. 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 multiple Mariopteris nervosa seed fern…
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Fossil Friday #129: Cyclopteris orbicularis
This is “Fossil Friday” post #129. 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 large Cyclopteris…
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Fossil Friday #126: Sphenopteris sp. from Danville
This is “Fossil Friday” post #126. 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! ESCONI member Maarten Vonhof sent us these photos…
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Exquisite Fossils Show an Entire Rain Forest Ecosystem
Scientific American has a story about a fossil deposit in New Zealand. The deposit formed around a shallow-sided volcanic crater about 23 million years ago during the Miocene epoch. This site is about an hour’s drive from the city of Dunedin in New Zealand. There are fossils of plants and animals and the preservation is…
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Fossil Friday #121: Alethopteris from Danville
This is “Fossil Friday” post #121. 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 post is an Alethopteris…
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New prehistoric plant discovery highlights the unexpected diversity of non-flowering plants
The Conversation has an interesting post about non-flowering plants. A new genus of non-flowering plants discovered in the Apple Bay fossil locality of northern Vancouver Island is shedding light on the evolutionary relationships between the major lineages of seed plants. The new plant, Xadzigacalix quatsinoensis, probably also represents yet another order of extinct plants. The name…
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Fossil Friday #113: Alethopteris serlii
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #113. 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, in its many forms, is a…
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Fossil Friday #107: Annularia from Vigo County, IN
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #107. 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 again Annularia. …
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Fossil Friday #105: Annularia annulariafolius
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #105. 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! A gorgeous Annularia annulariafolius is our Fossil…
