Tag: trilobites
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Trilobite Tuesday #36: 7th International Conference on Trilobites & Their Relatives – Cincinnati July 14th to 18th, 2022
The Cincinnati Museum Center is sponsoring the 7th International Conference on Trilobites & Their Relatives from July 14th to 18th, 2022. There are field trips both before and after the conference. A Warm Welcome! Welcome to the 7th International Conference on Trilobites & Their Relatives to be held at Cincinnati Museum Center in Cincinnati, Ohio,…
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Throwback Thursday #91: Winter Collecting 1963
This is Throwback Thursday #91. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! The snow this week had me looking through the newsletters looking for a winter field trips. Many of…
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Trilobite Tuesday #35: Ceraurinus icarus
How about a Trilobite Tuesday post? Here is a rare species of trilobite from Indiana, Ceraurinus icarus. This specimen is from the Whitewater Formation in Union Co., Indiana. The pictures were contributed by Dan Damrow. Thanks, Dan! Awesome trilobite!
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Video for ESCONI September 2021 General Meeting – “Exploring evolutionary patterns and processes in trilobites”
The speaker at our September 10th general meeting was Dr. Mark Webster from the Department of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. The topic was Cambrian trilobites. Here’s a link to his page at the university: https://geosci.uchicago.edu/people/mark-webster/
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ESCONI September 2021 General Meeting – September 10th, 2021 at 8:00 PM via Zoom – “Exploring evolutionary patterns and processes in trilobites”
The speaker at our September 10th general meeting will be Dr. Mark Webster from the Department of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. The topic will be Cambrian trilobites. Here’s a link to his page at the university: https://geosci.uchicago.edu/people/mark-webster/ Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/89231990376?pwd=RUVPTHlwTWNPRTJnV0ovckZZdk1QUT09 Meeting ID: 892 3199 0376Passcode: 916465 One tap mobile+13126266799,,89231990376#,,,,*916465# US…
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Digging up fun and fossils at Penn Dixie Fossil Park
The Buffalo News has a story about the Penn Dixie Fossil Park. Want to visit the beach this summer? Why not a Devonian beach in New York? If you love fossils, step back in time and collect fossils from an old cement quarry that is absolutely chock full of fossils. Brachiopods, horn corals, and trilobites…
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A Mysterious Crater’s Age May Add Clues to the Dinosaur Extinction
The New York Times Trilobites column has a story about a mysterious crater in Ukraine. Scientists have long questioned when the 15 mile wide Boltysh crater was formed, either before or after the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan Peninsula, which caused the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous Period. A…
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Fossil Friday #60: Calymene celebra
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #60. 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 trilobite for…
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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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Trilobite Tuesday #34: 450-million-year-old sea creatures had a leg up on breathing
Science Daily has a story about trilobite gills. A paper in Science Advances looked at the limbs of trilobites and found that the biramous legs of the trilobites Triarthrus eatoni and Olenoides serratus functioned as gills in a manner similar to the gills of horseshoe crabs. A new study has found the first evidence of…
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Trilobite Tuesday #33: Some trilobites crushed their prey to death with their legs
The Science News column from the Natural History Museum in London has a story about trilobites. A new paper by Dr. Greg Edgecombe, a researcher at the museum who focuses on the evolutionary history of arthropods, about how some trilobites fed was published in the Royal Society B. Instead of teeth, it appears that these…
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Trilobite Tuesday #32: They Put the Bite in Trilobite
The New York Times Trilobites column has an article about predatory trilobites. While we have learned much about trilobites over the many years of study, there are some aspects of their life that we still don’t know. Those unknowns are mostly associated with soft parts like the guts and delicate parts like the legs and…
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Throwback Thursday #42: A Trilobite Tale
This is Throwback Thursday #42. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! We have another poem out the stacks of past ESCONI newsletters. This one is from January 1960. It’s…
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Throwback Thursday #41: Lemont Trilobites November 19th, 1950
This is Throwback Thursday #41. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! Today, we will revisit Flashback Friday #40. It was posted originally as a Lemont Quarry trip in 1952. …
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Trilobite Tuesday #31: Sexual Dimorphism / Trilobite Eggs
For many types of animals, there are differences between males and females, sometimes it’s size, sometimes color, and sometimes structure – either or both soft and hard body structures. Unfortunately, color and soft-body structures aren’t usually preserved and even when it’s preserved it doesn’t leave enough information in the fossil record. For size and hard…
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Trilobite Tuesday #30: How to hunt for fossils in Ohio
Here’s a page that lists some places to find fossils in Ohio. I’m not sure the trilobite on the page is correct… looks like an Elrathia kingii. The one above is from Ohio and is a Flexicalymene. But, the page has a nice list of places to go and what you can find. Trilobites are…
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Trilobite Tuesday #29: Why did trilobites go extinct?
LiveScience has a piece about the extinction of the trilobites. Trilobites existed on Earth for about 270 million years from the early Cambrian until the Permian Mass Extinction. Many organisms went extinct during that time… perhaps upward of 90% of species. But, it’s still an open question that has not been completely answered. During their…
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Throwback Thursday #33: Field Trip Sylvania, OH in 1959
This is Throwback Thursday #33. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! Sylvania, OH has long been a destination to collect great fossils. Back in May 2020, we did Fossil…
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Trilobite Tuesday #28: A new middle Cambrian trilobite with a specialized cephalon from Shandong Province, North China
Acta Palaeontologica Polonica has a that describes newly discovered trilobites from the Middle Cambrian of Northern China. These trilobites had a strangely lobed cephalon that suggests “rabbit ears”. Actually, the species name Phantaspis auritus comes from the Latin aurītus, having ears; in reference to the cranidium having a pair of long “ears”. Trilobites achieved their maximum generic…
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Fossil Friday #30: Flexicalymene from St. Leon, IN
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #30. 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 trilobite from…
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Trilobite Tuesday #29: Enrolled Isotelus
“Fossil Friday” post #29 is about an enrolled Isotelus. For this Fossil Friday, we are highlighting a specimen of Isotelus . Isotelus is a genus of asaphid trilobites that lived during the middle and upper Ordovician period. This little guy is enrolled and hails from the state of Ohio, where this species, Isotelus maximus, is the state fossil. One of the…
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Fossil Friday #29: Enrolled Isotelus
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #29. 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 Fossil Friday, we are highlighting…
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Trilobite Tuesday #27: 10 Terrific Facts About Trilobites
Mental Floss has a post about trilobites. Here are some highlights. Check out the details here!
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Fossil Friday #26: Elrathia kingii from the Cambrian of Utah
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #26. 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 an Elrathia kingii trilobite. It…
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Trilobite Tuesday #26: Trilobite Enrollment
As we’ve said previously, the AMNH has an awesome Trilobite website. Today, we want to highlight the one about Trilobite Enrollment. It is generally accepted that trilobites enrolled to protect themselves from predators and other potentially other events in the surrounding environment. This page has a good discussion about the history and the usefulness of…
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Fossil Friday #25: Asaphicus wheeleri from the Cambrian of Utah
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #25. 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 an Asaphiscus wheeleri trilobite…
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Trilobite Tuesday #25: Fossils of New Trilobite Species Found in Tasmania
SciNews has a piece about a new species of trilobites from Tasmania. A new species of the genus Gravicalymene has been named. It’s called Gravicalymene bakeri after the actor Thomas Stewart Baker, the fourth actor to play the title character in the television series “Doctor Who”. This animal lived about 450 million years ago during…
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Trilobite Tuesday #24: Fossils In Millard County, Utah by Rich Holm
While doing some research during my recent trip to Utah, I ran across a very interesting page on the fossils of Millard County, Utah. It’s a great report of a couple field trips in this area of Utah. We stayed in Delta, Utah, which is a great place to stay to explore this area. The…
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Trilobite Tuesday #23: AMNH: Trilobites on Land
It’s been generally accepted that trilobites were marine animals, living only in the ocean. However, there are some specimens that might hint that some of them crawled out of the sea. The American Museum of Natural History (in New York) has a page about this. Here is a paper from Nature that also proposes that…
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Trilobite Tuesday #22: Trilobites of the Wheeler Shale, Utah
Trilobites.info has a page about the trilobites of the Wheeler Shale in Utah. The Wheeler Shale dates to the Middle Cambrian, about 505 million years ago. The formation is known for a diverse group of soft bodied animals, many of which are the same taxa found in the Burgess Shale (508 million years ago). It…
