Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois - ESCONI

Multiple Museum Fossil Database - The Paleontology Portal

UCMP, USGS, Paleosociety, SVP and NSF put together a comprehensive database of the fossils from multiple museums - the home page is named, The Paleontology Portal.

New Chinese T-Rex Relative Found: Xiongguanlong baimoensis

BBC News via Geology.com

"Uncovered near the city of Jiayuguan, the fossil finds come from a novel tyrannosaur dubbed Xiongguanlong baimoensis.

The fossils date from the middle of the Cretaceous period, and may be a "missing link", tying the familiar big T rex to its much smaller ancestors...."

Details for Braceville Field Trip Saturday, May 16th 2009

Collecting Mazon Creek Fossils:

Meet at 9:00 A.M. Saturday at the BP Amoco in Coal City by taking I-55 to Exit 236 (Coal City.Take a right onto Highway 113 (Division Street).Go west to Broadway Street and Division in Coal City. (photo by John Good)

No Age Limit. Hard Hats not required.

We will be collecting Mazon Creek concretions from an old spoil pile on private property. Boots are recommended. An Estwing rock hammer is the best tool. A small shovel or pick is helpful. Knee pads, backpacks, fanny packs, extra clothes (you will get wet and muddy) are also a plus. Bring a bucket for the fossils. Also bring insect repellent.

Contact John Good at (630) 483-2363 or e-mail at esconi@hotmail.com for reservations

Reflections on the Paleo Group Meeting of 4-18-09, by Andrew Young

                           

Having been born on the East Coast and schooled in the West, I always lived in some proximity to oceans or mountains. Once I moved to the Midwest, the nature activities I knew as a child – mainly shell collecting – seemed absent. Our region has its huge lakes and evident glacial features in the north, but little did I know that we inhabitants of the center of this continent are also standing on millions of years of accumulated marine sediments. “Shell collecting,” as I knew it, that impulse to discover, sort and identify elements of our surroundings, is actually very apparent, here, just shifted somewhat by age. And the “beaches” are less active boundaries between water and earth, rather fossil preservations of ancient aquatic landscapes.

On the evening of April 18th, Dave Dolak, ESCONI member and professor at Columbia College, delivered a fascinating lecture on the paleontological history of Northeastern Illinois. Just in the last three years, I have had the privilege to venture into some of the rock quarries of our state and collect just as I did as a child on Cape Cod. Of course, fossils become apparent to us more often in areas of disturbance:  quarries, mines and road cuts. It’s somewhat ironic, actually, that a variably destructive action on the environment can bring as an indirect effect the most interesting evidence of prehistoric ecology. We fossilers are in constant lookout for the newest construction site, the next access to a giant hole in the ground, or permission to explore a gully or river bed on private property. The prizes, I suppose, are the specimens, of which there were many for show-and-tell at this gathering, but to contextualize the individual pieces in the larger environment makes it all the more rich.

                                     

Mr. Dolak did an excellent job of presenting not only compelling aerial and ground level images of the canyons and quarries themselves – the finds from these sources now in cotton-white boxes with accompanying labels – but provided chart geologic reconstructions of the sites as they once were, oh, 400 plus million years ago. My favorite of all, and I think a project that takes most people’s breath away, is the Thorton Quarry south of Chicago, bisected by highway 80. Driving over the middle of the crater, who can’t help but think of fossils, or at least the set of a science fiction movie. Having scuba dived over my lifetime on reefs and pinnacles, I was mesmerized by the scale of what had been discovered and diagramed to be an enormous, mountainous coral head, the frequency of fossils indicating exactly its orientation to rougher waters. My only thought from that point on was to imagine standing inside the place, staring at the blasted walls.

Glaciers, I’m learning, did us a favor in a way to scrape off some layers of sedimentary stone and reveal others of varying ages throughout Illinois. I have lived in the city of Chicago for some years, but never fully grasped that just below the surface is this quiet, patient ocean tomb so ancient we can hardly fathom it. We reconstruct its biology, its geology, its evolution. And, we take small treasures from its edges. Mines and quarries are like wounds in the landscape, but - like Nature herself – they deliver to our curiosity and imagination. Saturday’s meeting was a wonderful collection of specimens of the Silurian Period, rejoined after dislocation, but also a cluster of enthusiasts, a community whose members each must ponder what is, both, almost inconceivably old and right under our feet.

                
To see more pictures from the Paleontology meeting, click on the Group Meeting title in Photo Albums.

Archeology Meeting, 7:30 Sat, 4/25, Settlers of Williamsburg

Archaeology Meeting, 7:30 pm, College of Dupage, Building K, Rm 131, "Settlers of Williamsburg", Virginia by Marge Brazda, Vickie and Lexie Kiamco.

Stonehenge Revisited

A retired construction worker shows how Stonehenge could have been made by one person with no mechanical help.  *slap on the head - of course!*

Volcano Sports

Volcanoes are no longer just for vulcanologists... Skydiver parachutes into the active Mutnovsky volcano and snowboarders ski down the ashes of a Nicaraguan active volcano.

Field Trip Info: Braidwood, Sun. 5/17

If you are planning on attending the Braidwood field trip, please download the required registration form and mail in. The form also includes information about the trip.  Download Braidwood Registration Form

Paleontology Meeting - Saturday, 4/18, 7:30 - Silurian Fossils in NE IL

Paleontology Meeting, Silurian Period in Northeastern Illinois by Dave Dolak, Esconi Member.  7:30 pm, College of Dupage, Building K - Rm 131.

All are welcome! Bring your Silurian fossils.

Excerpt from the Field Museum: "Life landed ashore during the Silurian & Devonian periods. Plants colonized the continents, creating habitats for the ancestors of today’s animals..."

Excerpt from the Illinois State Museum:  "443 - 417 Million Years Ago — Silurian PeriodA shallow, tropical sea covered Illinois (then south of the equator) during the Silurian. Reefs, corals, crinoids, and shelled invertebrates flourished in the sea..."

The Role of Collapsing Mountains in Italy's Recent Earthquake

NPR Podcast: "The quake that struck L'Aquila in central Italy early Monday morning is a symptom of an unusual phenomenon: collapsing mountains..."

Photo of Gran Sasso and Campo Imperatore:Ekki01 via Wikipedia.

Oldest Stone Blades Uncovered

"CHICAGO, ILLINOIS--Paleoanthropologists working in Africa have discovered stone blades more than a half-million years old. That pushes the date of the earliest known blades back a remarkable 150,000 years and raises a question: What human ancestor made them? ...."  (Science Now via Geology.com)

MicroMineral Meeting: Mineral Oddities, Sat. 4/11, 7:30 pm

MicroMineral Meeting, Mineral Oddities in Honor of the Tuscon Gem Show 2009, 7:30 pm, College of Dupage, Building K - Rm 131. Bring your mineral oddities.

General Meeting: Friday, April 10, 8 pm: Hadrosaur Find by Bucky Gates

On Friday, April 10th, at 8:00 pm in Room #131 Building K, College of Dupage, Bucky Gates, Assistant Professor at Lake Forest College, will speak about "New Hadrosaur Find and Their Bearing on Cretaceous Land Bridges and Macroevolutionary Trends of the Group".  (1st Photo: Lake Forest College)
(2nd photo: Utah Museum of Natural History.)