Tag: Roy Plotnick
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Paleontology Is Far More Than New Fossil Discoveries: Understanding the ancient past is critical to responding to challenges we face in the future
Roy Plotnick has a new article over on Medium. It details the importance of Paleontology in the pantheon of science. Paleontology isn’t just fossils and dinosaurs…. it’s critical science needed to understand how the planet has and is changing. In this time of climate change, the knowledge it provides is vital to understanding of where…
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“I Know Dino” podcast
Roy Plotnick, long time ESCONI member and friend appears in a recent episode (#377) of the podcast “I Know Dino”. They usually discuss dinosaurs, but with Roy, they discuss paleontology in general and his book “Explorers of Deep Time: Paleontologists and the History of Life”. Roy gives ESCONI and rock clubs in general a very…
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Roy Plotnick: I found a fossil!! (or did I?)
Roy Plotnick has a new post over on Medium. In this one, he gives some great tips for those occasions when you’re out on a walk and find a rock and hope it’s a fossil. You are walking along a creek bed when you see an oddly shaped and colored rock. You pick it up…
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Roy Plotnick: Alien technology on Earth!
Roy Plotnick has a new post over on Medium. In this one, he ponders the possibility of alien life and whether it could have visited Earth… I had not been able to get out into the field for months, so on the first warm day of spring, I headed to a nearby outcrop of Ordovician…
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Roy Plotnick: The Real Monsters of the Midway: Mammoths and Mastodons of the Chicago Region
Roy Plotnick has a new article over on Medium. This time he’s written about Mammoths and Mastodons discovered in the Chicago area. I knew there were a bunch found, but wow! On October 25, 1880, workers putting in a sewer line along Fowler Ave. (now Schiller St.) just west of Wicker Park on the north side…
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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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Roy Plotnick: Looking back, looking forward: Chicago and the Anthropocene
Our friend, Roy Plotnick has a new article over on Medium. This one is a summary of the changes to the natural geology of Chicago from the last ice age about 20,000 years ago until the present. As always, it’s a good read! About 20,000 years ago, where I am sitting in Chicago was covered…
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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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Roy Plotnick: Existence Locates a Path
Roy Plotnick has a new post over on Medium. The post is about extinction… mass extinction. We have a roll in the current and a past extinction. Time for action! Mass extinctions and their causes are topics of intense interest. Nearly forty years after the 1980 paper on the end-Cretaceous impact, significant new research on…
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Roy Plotnick: Who knows where the time flows?
Roy Plotnick has a new post over on Medium. The topic is clear representation of data. Whether the topic is geology, chemistry, physics, or economics, it’s important to present data clearly and during a presentation or paper to describe it for all to understand. When I was a graduate student, my fellow student Anne Raymond…
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Roy Plotnick: The First Day of the Rest of Life
Roy Plotnick has a great post about of the last day of the Mesozoic Era (or the first day of the Cenozoic Era). It would have been a very bad day, indeed! On a day some sixty-six million years ago, life was Earth was suddenly and irreversibly altered. An enormous asteroid or comet struck the…
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Roy Plotnick: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Roy Plotnick has an insightful post over on Medium. It’s about the 6th mass extinction. News flash, just in case you’ve been hiding in a hole somewhere, it’s happening now. He is commenting on a recent paper in the journal science. This past summer, my wife and I took a lovely walk around Echo Lake…
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Roy Plotnick: Forehead Aliens, Rishathra, and the Ecology of Alien Worlds
Roy Plotnick has another insightful post on Medium. This one is about evolutionary biology. As a Star Trek fan, I appreciate the writers attempt to explain within their universe what were actually constraints produced by the need to use human actors and save on CGI. Personally, I don’t think it was necessary (don’t get me…
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Roy Plotnick: Epigraphs of taphonomy (or prolegomenon to a future book)
Roy Plotnick has another interesting blog post over on Medium. In this post, he discusses some future plans for a possible book. Make sure you follow him on Medium. He doesn’t post very often, but all his articles are worth reading! When I first thought of writing a popular science book, one option I considered…
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Roy Plotnick: Beyond the hammer and whisk broom: the technology of paleontology
Roy Plotnick has a new blog post over on Medium. In this post, he discusses modern paleontology. Here’s a hint… it’s not your grandfather’s paleontology. The tools and the analysis have changed much over time and technology is more and more important in understanding the history of life. Paleontology, like most other fields of science,…
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Roy Plotnick: I’m not lying
Roy Plotnick has yet another insightful blog post over on Medium. Take his advice, get out and experience nature first hand! I began teaching physical geology in Fall 1982. Like all other instructors of this type of course, I would discuss a wide variety of landforms and show textbook provided slides (you know, pieces of…
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Roy Plotnick: I am not Indiana Jones or why I am writing a book (it’s not for the money)
Roy Plotnick has an insightful blog post over on Medium. He discusses perceptions of paleontologists and Paleontology in general – who they are, what they do, and why it’s important. Check it out! If you’ve read any of his previous posts, you’ll know it’s a great read! The confusion with archaeologists is of somewhat understandable;…
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Roy Plotnick: The things we leave behind (and shouldn’t)
Roy has another post over on Medium. It’s an insightful post about returning what you’ve borrowed. The e-mail from the daughter of a long-retired colleague was unexpected. A paleontologist in a different department from mine, he was now in his early eighties and suffering from dementia. His daughter asked if I would be willing to…
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Roy Plotnick: High impact paleontology
Roy Plotnick has another interesting article on Medium. In this one, he discusses the recent New Yorker article about “Tanis” site in the Hell Creek Formation. There is a good summary of the backstory of the actual discovery of the site. It was found by an old ESCONI member Rob Sula! Also mentioned are Paleo…
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Roy Plotnick: A Fossil Park for Illinois
Roy Plotnick has a great post on Medium about the Fossil Park proposal for the old Lone Star Quarry in Oglesby, IL. Anyone that visited the site in the past remembers the abundant fossils to be had. Brachiopods were just spilling out of the ground. The quarry was recently acquired by the Illinois Department of…
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Medium: More than dinosaurs
Roy Plotnick has an interesting article published at Medium. Paleontology is much, much more than dinosaurs. Enjoy! It happened again today. I was asked what it is do and when I said I was a paleontologist, the response was “cool.” This is the common reaction, often followed by (if we are not confused with archeologists),…
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Reminder October 2016 General Meeting: Roy Plotnick “Jurassic Pork: What Could a Jewish Time Traveler Eat?”
Octobers’s General Meeting will feature a presentation by Roy Plotnick. The presentation is entitled “Jurassic Pork: What Could a Jewish Time Traveler Eat?” Roy has spoken to us many times in the past. All of his presentations are very interesting and this one sounds just a provocative as all of the previous ones! It all…
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October 2016 General Meeting: Roy Plotnick “Jurassic Pork: What Could a Jewish Time Traveler Eat?”
Octobers’s General Meeting will feature a presentation by Roy Plotnick. The presentation is entitled “Jurassic Pork: What Could a Jewish Time Traveler Eat?” Roy has spoken to us many times in the past. All of his presentations are very interesting and this one sounds just a provocative as all of the previous ones! It all…
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Roy Plotnick to Speak on Experimental Paleontology This Fri
ESCONI General Meeting 8:00 p.m. College of Dupage, – Tech Ed (TEC) Building, Room 1038B (Map) Roy Plotnick, Phd, University of Illinois Chicago Geology Department, will speak on Experimental Paleontology – Paleontology is usually viewed as the antithesis of an experimental science. But in at least two areas, fossil preservation and functional morphology, there is a long…
