E.S.C.O.N.I.

       PALEONTOLOGY STUDY GROUP MEETING

                                January , 2002

Chairman John Good called the meeting to order and mentioned that it was a special night and we were also celebrating the 84^th birthday of member Don Auler (mercifully, there was no singing). Show Chairman Dave Bergmann then gave a report of the March Show saying that we had about 26 cases signed up, which is low. Sheila mentioned that she will need help with security before the Show opens on Saturday and Sunday morning as people try to get in for coffee before the Show opens at 10:00 am both days. He needs more. Lizzadro and The Field Museum are signed on so far and he is waiting to hear from Burpee. The Show will be March 2 and 3 with set up on March 1 from noon or 1:00 pm until 8:00 pm at the latest. Our Paleontology Study Group usually does two cases and John asked for ideas for this year. Possible ideas were a case from Nebraska and S. Dakota and one for Illinois fossils other than Mazon Creek. Field Trip Chairman John Good reported that our first field trip would be to Rockford for the Burpee Museum Out of the Rock Paleo Fest February 23 and 24. ESCONI will have a table to publicize the Club like last year. John is working on setting up trips to Braceville, Braidwood, Lone Star, Kentucky for fluorite (several members indicated an interest in returning there) and Sylvania Ohio. Andy Hay reported that Braidwood was still closed off behind the fence as it has been since September 11. He has been trying to get them to till some of the area to bring more nodules up, but has not been successful to date. The fishermen might help open up some of the site in March. John suggested that the April 20 Paleontology meeting be cancelled because of the big MAPS (Mid-America Paleontology Society) meeting April 12-14 in Macomb Illinois. Most members will be at that meeting which is also our field trip for April. The big summer field trip will probably be to South Dakota and Nebraska (although John can only go for one week, the third week of June, and will need help with the other week). It would start in Rapid City where there are museums to see (while we are still clean).

Future Paleontology Group Meetings

February 16      Ammonites with John Catalani

March 16           Traces (to coincide with MAPS topic)

April 20               CANCELED; NO MEETING!!

May 18               Fish

Karen Nordquist mentioned that copies of our new "Creature Corner" are available at $5.00 a book tonight. A get well card was circulated for Tom Peterson. Then John turned the program over to Dave and Sheila Bergmann and Rob Sula.

Fossils of South Dakota and Nebraska

Dave started with a slide show showing their trip to the field last June. They started at the Hudson-Meng Bison Bonebed at Oglala National Grassland. It is a huge bed with hundreds of bison skeletons with no predator bones. They have been digging over 10 years and there are buffalo of all ages together. They surmised that they were herded into a hollow by a fire and then suffocated there from the smoke. Kansas University is doing work there now. Just over a mile from there is the collection site where they will be working. One area had two saber cat teeth and many turtles.

Dave and Sheila then met up with Rob Sula with Paleo Prospectors. Their dig site was next to a fence that separated them from private Native American land. The site contained a large mososaur that was found by the resident rancher from just a few parts of exposed vertebrae. They found three of the four paddles of the animal and the long tail is cleanly broken and bent away (probably broken after death). All the vertebrae were found. The animal is 98% complete and is about 25 feet long with a 3-foot skull. It lived about 90 MYA in the Cretaceous. The soil (marine shale) was pretty easy to work with, but the bones had to be stabilized to keep from crumbling. These animals had two sets of jaws and teeth, one inside the other. The skull has been fully prepped out now and Rob circulated a photo of it. The eye socket would hold a small grapefruit. Sheila also found several vertebrae from a nearby location, which were better preserved. However no other bones were found of this second mososaur. They jacketed the bones with plaster and fiberglass over aluminum foil. They found 3 paddles in the field and parts of the fourth in the lab, no pelvis, and a small shoulder girdle.

Dave and Sheila then traveled to the Big Horn Mountains and Yellowstone Park and ran into a blizzard on June 14! They saw antelope (shedding their outer shell of horn), deer (that shed their entire horn), buffalo, elk, a grizzly bear at its kill (from a distance) and white pelicans. There were a lot of babies that they stayed away from when they were with their mothers. In Yellowstone Lake you can catch and keep all the lake trout you want because they are taking over. They visited several of the Yellowstone geysers, some of which changed their schedules after an earthquake. Old Faithful now blows about every 90 minutes instead of 60. After the fire of 1988 there were only a few areas with green trees left. Yellowstone Park is the middle of a large caldera that is elevating about an inch a year. It may blow sometime in the future. Dave showed some of the fossils that they picked up on the trip including rhino parts, antelope teeth) like oreodont teeth), a fang from a saber tooth cat, rabbit parts, coprolites with pieces of bone inside, turtle claws, and fossilized wood (can not collect it in the park). They also had a piece of triceratops frill, crocodile vertebra, blue gar scales (indicator fossil in microsites), and amber (rare in that area and found in charcoal).

Rob mentioned that the center of their work is in Bowman, North Dakota. They collected in the Hell Creek Formation of Late Cretaceous dates of 68 to 65 MYA. They found nice leaves in 3 sites along with maple seeds.

Sheila showed us some of the fossils that she found which included many vertebrae of the mososaur, part of an unidentified skull, raptor material, and camel pieces (they were very small then). These materials are about 30 MYA in the Oligocene Period. She also found some light small bones that turned out to be modern. Rob said a test to tell age is by putting a match to it and if it smells like burning hair, it is modern (1,000 years old or less). She also had part of a hyena jaw with sharp teeth. Rob talked to Karen Chin and she said 80% of coprolites are from carnivores and 80% of them are from fish. This is an aquatic environment and there is a lot of phosphorus in them.

Rob showed us some of his great artwork on dinosaurs (T rex, Spinosaurus, Giganotosaurus and Deinosuchus) and showed us a rare fossil duck egg (from Oligocene), part of a hadrosaur toe, a theropod tail vertebra, part of a very worn porous T rex vertebra, a vertebra from a Thescelosaur and a huge Edmontosaurus toe bone.

The meeting was adjourned for special birthday refreshments.

Respectfully Submitted Karen Nordquist, Secretary

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