Don Auler talked about Ashfall Park in eastern Nebraska. He showed a bag of loess; a fine powder made up of glacial debris. The loess soil doesn’t erode; the water goes right through. Loess is formed by the glaciers grinding the rocks into fine powder. Many of the bluffs on the Mississippi river are primarily loess. Fossils found in the park were primarily mammals. University of Nebraska has a good web site (see below).

Jeanine Milecki showed her fossils from Lone Star and Montone: She talked about how cystoids are never found with arms. She found geodes with brachiopods. She showed her conularia, an unusual rectangular fossil. She showed her Mazon Creek fossils from Braceville

Jim Fairchild showed his Calymene Trilobite from the Blombereks Flagstone quarry in Joiliet.

Bruce Galloway brought his bone found at the Lone Star Quarry in June. Michael Philips, a geology instructor at Illinois Valley Community in Oglesby has confirmed that the Galloways had found a legbone from a tetrapod (a four-legged animal that looks like a mud puppy) from the Pennsylvanian Age (286-320 million years ago). This was an unusual find as tetrapod amphibians are not normally found in underwater environments (See Web sites below)

Barrett Galloway brought his pavement tooth of a shellcrusher shark embedded in limestone found September 4 at Illinois Cement Quarry.

David Lizz talked about his trip to Canada. He visited the James Dick Quarry (Ordovician) and showed his Calymene trilobite.

Chris Cozert showed some fossils from the St. Louis area, Warsaw formation, Middle Mississippian, with crinoids, edrioasteroids and blastoids (Pentremities). Also collected Crinoid Calyx from the Burlington formation, St. Louis County area. He showed fossils from Prairie Du Long creek in Illinois. He also found rare blastoids from Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Eileen Mizek talked about her cephalopod from Blombereks.

John Catalini showed the shark’s teeth that he got from Lone Star Quarry. He also found a straight-shelled cephalopod there which is unusual for Pennsylvanian.

David and Sheila Bergmann talked about their trip to Drumheller, Canada through an elderhostel. They showed very fragile dinosaur (hadrosaurus) bones. They showed casts of dinosaur eggs. They showed some small pieces of opalized ammonite from Montana. They showed fossilized birch tree fossils (35 million years old). David is reconstructing a Dinosaur bone from fragments.

Related Web Sites

Describes the Galloway’s fossil find

Andy Hays, Jim Fairchild, Don Auler and Richard and Doris Ades talked about the Mazon Creek Open House at Burpee Museum. Dr. Jarmila Kukalova-Peck gave an excellent presentation insects. Members talked about finding insects at Mazon Creek in the past.

David and Sheila Bergmann talked about their Dinosaur dig trip to Drumheller, Canada. They arranged this thru an elderhostel.

They showed a slide program starting with the dinosaurs displayed outside of the Drumheller Park including albertosaurs and raptors. They spent four days there. Inside the lab workers were preparing a Tricerteps and a Mouisars.

The warehouse has thousands of filing cabinets with fossils of all shapes, cataloged and computerized. The next example of a dinosaur was a hadrosaur. Many of the dinosaur fossils are bodies only and do not include the head. In the early days of dinosaur collecting, the museums and universities would take the head only and leave the rest of the body.

The lab was working on a five foot crinoid from Herkimer, New York.

They showed a map of the areas in the Canadian Badlands showing all the different areas that have dinosaurs. Many of the dinosaur bones found are not recovered due to lack of resources.

The Drumheller park has four paid paleontologist.

Inside the lab, they found the environment difficult to work, in. The air abrasive machines were noisy and forced everyone to wear masks. The glue smell from superglue was very strong.

The Royal Tyrell Museum is a difficult place to photograph. The lighting is poor with everything displayed in black. David recommended high speed film, 400 ASA and above, The museum doesn’t allow cameras on a tripod.

Next, they showed a dig site in the Drumheller area. Everything is marked off in one yard increments.

They museum had numerous displays and replicas using live models; Raptors hunting Hadrosaurs (Duck-billed), Albertosaurs, rhinos from Ashfall, Nebraska, a large fish(10 feet) with a smaller fish inside, a Stegosaurs from Utah, adult Hadorsaurs standing in the matrix, small Brontosaurus and Dimetrodon (Reptile). They showed a modern day eagle compared to a raptor dinosaur. They showed the only T-Rex skull found in Canada.

David showed slides depicting work at the museum preparing exhibits. First the showed putting the fossils out of the plaster jackets. Next, they showed welders putting the framework for the skeleton. The workers used dental picks under microscopes for the bone separation.

Next, David showed pictures from their morning dinosaur dig. Dinosaur bones were everywhere., They used a little pick and a small pan brush to evacuate the fossils. They museum experts said over 1500 different dinosaurs were buried here. This was due to the area being a river bend in the past where everything got dumped.

David showed slides of the Mt. Burgess and the Walcott (Burgess Shale fossil) quarry which was under 15 feet of snow. The Burgess Shale Fossil site is not open for visitors until July due to snow conditions. They brought back videos on the Burgess Shale which will be viewed at the January 2001 Paleo Meeting. Many of the famous Cambrian fossils were displayed there.

Next, they visited Bynum, Montana near the site of Egg Mountain where the Maiasaura dinosaurs were discovered by Dr. Jack Horner. They took a tour of the site.

Related Web Sites

Dinosaur Provincial Park (Alberta Environment)

Visitors guide with maps, events, fees and trip tips

Dinosaur Provincial Park (Parks Canada)

Single page introduction with photos as part of a guide to the 12 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Canada

Renowned dinosaur museum offers public and school programs, hours, resources and a fossil encyclopedia.
http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com

The Yoho-Burgess Shale Foundation

The world’s most significant fossil find. High in the Canadian Rocky Mountains is a fossil bed that detail life on Earth – 520 million years ago.

Burgess Shale Fossils

Descriptions and photos of the famous Burgess Shale Fossils

Strange Creatures – A Burgess Shale Fossil Sampler

From the Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

Hooper Virtual Paleontological Museum

Information about the Burgess Shale, mass extinctions, and aspects of Canadian Paleontology