Tag: paleontology
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Smithsonian: Pterosaur Tooth Found in Rare Ancient Squid Fossil
Smithsonian.com has a story about a unique fossil find. About 150 million years ago, there was a hungry pterosaur looking for a meal. It saw an appetizing cephalopod and went for it. Unfortunately, we don’t know if it ate that day, but we do know that this particular bit of calamari got away. The fossil…
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Meet the New Monopoly Tokens: A Rubber Ducky, a T-rex and a Penguin
Apparently, I don’t pay attention to events in the board game world… even when they touch the paleontology world. A co-worker recently made me aware that there is now a T-rex piece in every Monopoly game, which is very cool! This change happened about 3 years ago in 2017. The NY Times even did a…
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Favorite Science Museum contest – Field Museum… Please Vote!
Photo courtesy of ©Field Museum We’re excited to announce that the Field Museum has been nominated in the 2020 USA Today’s 10Best Readers’ Choice travel awards in the “Favorite science museum in North America” category. From now until Monday, February 17, individuals can vote once daily at this link: https://www.10best.com/awards/travel/best-science-museum/
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PBS Eons: The Giant Dinosaur That Was Missing a Body
PBS Eons has a new video. This one is about Deinonychus, whose name means horrible hand. From end to end, its forelimbs alone measured an incredible 2.4 meters long and were tipped with big, comma-shaped claws. But other than its bizarre arms, very little material from this dinosaur had been found: no skull, no…
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Roy Plotnick: What is a fossil?
Roy Plotnick has another informative post over on Medium. This time he tackles the question “What is a fossil?”. If you aren’t following him yet, go ahead and click the Follow button. He posts regularly and his posts are very interesting, and he’ll always leave you thinking… In a Peanuts comic that had a place…
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New species of Allosaurus discovered in Utah
Phys.org has a story about a new Allosaurus species discovered in Utah. The first specimen of the new species of Allosaur, called Allosaurus jimmadseni, was discovered back in the early 1990s in Dinosaur National Monument in northeastern Utah. It lived between 152 and 175 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period. It differs from the…
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Happy Birthday Jan. 26, 1884: Roy Chapman Andrews
Photo from Parade of Life Through The Ages, by Charles Knight, Nat. Geo., Feb. 1942. From the American Museum of Natural History web site: Adventurer, administrator, and Museum promoter — Andrews (Jan. 26, 1884 – March 11, 1960) spent his entire career at the American Museum of Natural History, where he rose through the ranks from departmental assistant, to expedition organizer,…
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LiveScience: Are Birds Dinosaurs?
LiveScience has an interesting story that explains how and why birds are dinosaurs. What do sparrows, geese and owls have in common with a velociraptor or the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex? All can trace their origins to a bipedal, mostly meat-eating group of dinosaurs called theropods (“beast-footed”) that first appeared around 231 million years ago, during the…
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #37: Andy Hay Speaks at Lizzadro on Mazon Creek Plants – March 10th, 2001
As part of the celebration of ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary, here is Flashback Friday post #37. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! Andy Hay was a long time ESCONI member. He joined in 1976 and was a member to the very end. He wrote the Creature Corner…
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PBS Eons: The Neanderthals That Taught Us About Humanity
Checkout the new episode of PBS Eons. It’s about Neanderthals and how they weren’t much different than us. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Neandertals were thought to have been…primitive. Unintelligent, hunched-over cavemen, for lack of a better word. But the discoveries made in that Iraqi cave provided some of the earliest…
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #36: SUE at the Field Museum
As part of the celebration of ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary, here is Flashback Friday post #36. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! SUE had her Grand Opening at the Field Museum on May 17th, 2000. Here is a link to the ESCONI page to document the event. …
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100 million years in amber: Researchers discover oldest fossilized slime mold
100 million-year-old amber piece with lizard leg and mycomycete (arrow). Credit: Alexander Schmidt, University of Göttingen and Scientific Reports Phys.org has a story about some very old slime. Many fossils have been found amber, including dinosaur tail feathers a few years ago. This time it’s some very old fungi. In this case, a mycomycete and it’s…
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World Atlas: What Is The Difference Between Paleontology And Archeology?
Check out this article in the World Atlas. I hear this all the time when I mention fossil hunting… quite often they say something like “I love archeology” or “When did you get interested in archeology” or even “Where do archeologists find dinosaur bones?” Hopefully, this will clear up the concepts, paleontologists study dinosaurs and…
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Scientists Argue a ‘Corpse Signal’ Will Be Left in The Fossil Record of Our Time
Science Alert has an interesting story about whether humans will leave a signature in the fossil record. We have had a huge impact on the current direction of life on Earth, but will any of that impact be preserved in the fossil record… that is subject to much debate. Today, the vast majority of scientists…
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PBS Eons: That Time the Mediterranean Sea Disappeared
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one combines paleontology and geology to discuss the history of the Mediterranean Sea. How could a body of water as big as the Mediterranean just…disappear? It would take decades and more than 1,000 research studies to even start to figure out the cause — or causes —…
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #35: Dresden Lakes Field Trip June 1976
As part of the celebration of ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary, here is Flashback Friday post #35. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! Here are pictures from a field trip to Dresden Lakes in 1976. Dresden Lakes is known for larger concretions with detailed fossils in dark colors,…
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In Upstate New York, Ancient Arthropods Can Get Turned Into (Fool’s) Gold
Atlas Obscura has a piece about trilobites… golden trilobites. Trilobites are some of the most desirable fossils and highly detailed, pyritized trilobites are especially desirable. “Beecher’s Bed” is a famous trilobite quarry discovered and named for Charles Emerson Beecher, a paleontologist a the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University. It is made of…
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Teenage T. Rex Fossils Reveal Haphazard Growth Spurts
Smithsonian Magazine has an article about teenage T. rex fossils. The article discusses a recent paper that appeared in Science Advances. That paper readdresses the two sleek, and slender tyrannosaurs, nicknamed Jane and Petey, at the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Illinois and concludes that the two specimens are juvenile T. rexes, not…
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #34: Pictures From a Fossil Field Trip To Indiana May 4-5, 1957
As part of the celebration of ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary, here is Flashback Friday post #34. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! Here are some pictures from a field trip to a few localities in Indiana May 4-5, 1957. No hard hats and check out those clothes!…
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LiveScience: The 100 Best Science Photos of 2019
Live Science has an interesting post, which includes 100 awesome science photos from 2019. Check it out… a great way to relax on New Years Day! Happy New Year from us at ESCONI! About 99 million years ago, a Cretaceous millipede scampered over the forest floor in what is now Southeast Asia, avoiding being squished…
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SciNews: 305-Million-Year-Old Fossil Shows Parent Caring for Its Offspring
SciNews has a piece about an ancient synapsid with evidence that it cared for its young. The animal, called Dendromaia unamakiensis, lived about 305 million years ago in what is now Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. This find consists of both an adult and an associated juvenile which were found inside a fossilized tree stump. …
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SciNews: Paleontologists Uncover Fossilized Remains of Baby Ornithopod Dinosaurs in Australia
SciNews has a story about the fossils of baby Ornithopod dinosaurs discovered in Australia. The animals are baby Weewarrasaurus pobeni dinosaurs, that lived about 100 million years ago during the middle Cretaceous period. Southeastern Australia, where these dinosaurs lived, was much closer to the South Pole at the time. These specimens reveal important insights into…
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FOSSIL Project Fall 2019 Newsletter
Volume 6, Issue 3, Fall 2019| FOSSIL Project Newsletter Fall 2019
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NatGeo: Earth has had more major mass extinctions than we realized
National Geographic has a story about Earth’s mass extinctions. The current biodiversity crisis is usually referred to as the “sixth mass extinction”. There is even a book by that name. Of the five previous extinctions, the worst was the one at the end of the Permian. In a paper in the journal Historical Biology, Michael…
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #33: Plant Life Through The Ages
As part of the celebration of ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary, here is Flashback Friday post #33. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! The “Plant Life Through The Ages” display was created by ESCONI members during the 1950s. Here is a description from Kathy Dedina, who was president…
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365-Million-Year-Old Lungfish Unearthed in South Africa
Sci-News has a story about a recently discovered Lungfish from South Africa. The new fish, called Isityumzi mlomomde, lived about 365 million years ago during the Devonian period in what is now modern day South Africa. Lungfish origins stretch back about 410 million years ago to the early Devonian. Details on this new find can…
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A ‘Jackalope’ of an ancient spider fossil deemed a hoax, unmasked as a crayfish
Phys.org has a post about a crayfish masquerading as a spider. It seems someone painted legs on a poorly preserved crayfish fossil from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of China. You can read about their detective work in a paper published in the journal Paleoentomology. The locals sold the fossil to scientists at the Dalian…
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In Defense of Plants: The Rise and Fall of the Scale Trees
I recently ran into an interesting post on the blog “In Defense of Plants”. It’s called “The Rise and Fall of the Scale Trees”. If you collect or are familiar with Mazon Creek fossils, you probably have heard of Lepidodendron, Stigmaria, Psaronius, Cyperites. etc. You might even have a few of these fossils. Some of…
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World’s Oldest Fossil Forest Unearthed
SciNews has a post about the oldest forest ever discovered. Located in Cairo, NY, near the Devonian fossil forest found near Gilboa, this forest has been dated to about 386 million years old, which is a couple million years older. Details can be found in a paper which was recently published in the journal Current…
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PBS Eons: Life, Sex & Death Among the Dire Wolves
There’s a new episode of PBS’s Eons. It’s about wolves and the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. This is not a Game of Thrones fan fiction episode. Dire wolves were real! And thousands of them died in the same spot in California. Their remains have taught us volumes about how they lived,…
