General Meetings – 2007
January 12, 2007 GENERAL MEETING
College of DuPage Bldg. K Building, Rm 107 8:00 P.M.
"Pearls" by Jodie Diegel ,Certified gemologist."
PEARLS: Download Powerpoint Presentation
February 9, 2007 GENERAL MEETING
College of DuPage Bldg. K, Rm 161 8:00 P.M
"Trace Fossils and the Evolution of Animals"
Dr.
Roy Plotnick who currently teaches geology and invertebrate paleontology at the
University of Illinois at Chicago will present the slide program. Visitors are
welcome. Refreshments will be served. His web site is http://tigger.uic.edu/~plotnick/plotnick.htm
April 13, 2007 GENERAL MEETING
College of
DuPage Bldg. Rm 161 8:00 P.M.
“Dinosaur Fossil Preparation Techniques.” by Bob Masek
Bob is head fossil preparator at U. of C. under Paul Sereno and former lead preparator of Sue.
May 11, 2007 GENERAL MEETING
College of DuPage Bldg. K, Rm 107 8:00 P.M
Tyler Keillor, The paleo-artist who created the reconstruction of Tiktaalik, the transitional fish/amphibian fossil that was found recently in the Canadian Arctic".
June 8, 2007 GENERAL MEETING
College of DuPage Bldg. K, Rm 107 8:00 P.M
Iron Country Microminerals by Dan Behnke,
The
native copper deposits of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the iron ore
deposits of northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan have been of major
importance in the economic history of the country going back 100 - 150 years.
Wherever mineral deposits are found mineral collectors are not far behind. As
micro mineral collectors know the specimen material available from the Copper
Country is well documented but little has been written about the availability
and variety of specimens found as micro crystals in the iron belts. I hope that
this presentation will spark a bit of interest in the micro minerals from the
Iron Country and that even though
The majority are dark brown to black the variety of forms makes searching for
them worthwhile.
The
iron ore deposits of the Lake Superior region are Precambrian in age. The early
Precambrian deposits are found on the Vermillion range in Minnesota as cherty
iron formations. The middle Precambrian deposits are found on the Mesabi and
Cuyuna ranges in Minnesota, the Gogebic range in Wisconsin and the Marquette and
Menominee ranges in Michigan.
The ores are grouped roughly into six types based on the mineral and chemical
composition, the ore structure and the geologic occurrences: soft ores; hard
ores; conglomerate ore; siliceous ore; magnetite taconite ore and jasper ore.
The species that have been found in some of these deposits are as follows:
Iron oxides: goethite; hematite; and lepidocrocite
Manganese oxides: groutite; hausmannite; magnetite; manganite; pyrolusite and
. Ramsdellite
Manganese borate: seamanite
Carbonates: calcite; kutnohorite; rhodochrosite; siderite; grunerite; and
dolomite Silicates: quartz; mica; chamosite; and talc
Sulfates: shigaite; and gypsum
Sulfides/sulfosalts: pyrite; jamesonite; and chalcopyrite
Phosphates: apatite
Further collecting and study I am sure will yield many more species as was the
case in the Copper Country once collectors began looking at the microcrystals
from that area.
Background Information
Dan Behnke
Dan Behnke of Northbrook, Illinois has been collecting and photographing micro
minerals since 1973. Micro minerals are mineral crystals that require
magnification through a microscope for viewing. Typically the crystals are less
than 2.0 millimeters and special photographic equipment is required to
photograph them. '.
He has a collection of micro minerals which numbers over 15,000 specimens
representing over 750 species from numerous localities throughout the world. His
photographs of the collection are used to present illustrated programs on
mineralogy to a variety of groups across the United States and Canada. He is a
guest lecturer qn photomacrography at Columbia College (Chicago).
His photographs are also used to illustrate articles appearing in periodicals
such as The Mineralogical Record, Earth Science, Rocks and Minerals, and
Mineralien Welt and Lapis(both in German). A number of his photos also appeared
in the second edition (1990) of "The Encyclopedia of Minerals" published by Van
Nostrand Reinhold; in "The Handbook of Microminerals" published in 1993 by The
Mineralogical Record; in the third edition (1995) of "The Mineralogy of Arizona"
published by the University of Arizona Press; and in the 1997 edition of "The
Minerals of Colorado" published by the Colorado Chapter of the Friends of
Mineralogy. '
Dan is the author of "Copper Country Microminerals", an illustrated article on
the minerals of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan which appeared in the July, 1983
issue of The Mineralogical Record. He also authored "Photomacrography of
Microminerals" which appeared in the November, 1991 issue of the same
periodical.
Tom Rosemeyer, author of the "Through the Scope" column which appears in Rocks
and Minerals interviewed Dan for an illustrated article about his micromineral
Collection and his photography for the March, 1991 issue.
Dan is an Associate Photographer of both The MineraloQical Record and Rocks and
Minerals magazines. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Friends of
Mineralogy from 1990 to 1993. He served as the micromount chairman of the
Midwest Federation from 1981 to 1988 and has served several terms as chairman of
the micromount study group of the Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois (ESCONI).
He was elected to the Baltimore Mineral Society's Micromounter's Hall of Fame in
2006.
Over 3,000 of his micromineral images are featured in a recently issued DVD on
minerals published by the Los Angeles (CA) County Museum.
Visitors are welcome. Refreshments will be served.
General Meeting in Adobe Acrobat PDF format
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