Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois - ESCONI

Printing Out a 3D Dinosaur

Via Forbes:

... Lacovara is working with Dr. James Tangorra to bring paleontology up to date with 3-D printing. Using 3-D scans of fossils in the University’s collection, the team is able to produce 3-D printed replicas of the fossils. Those replicas can then be used in museums, as teaching aids, and a number of other uses. One particularly fascinating use? By pairing the 3-D printed fossils with robotics, scientists are able to test how dinosaurs actually...

NASA Provides New Data about Earthquakes

Via Silicon Republic;

   Geologists have come up with a new 3D tool that studies how earthquakes change landscapes, paving the way for scientists to have more insight into how earthquakes behave. The research team studied the earthquake that struck near Mexicali, northern Mexico, on 4 April 2010.

They believe they have reported the most comprehensive before-and-after picture yet of an earthquake zone....

 

The Maxberg Archaeopteryx - Location A Mystery

Via NewScientist:

Fossils have been forgotten in storerooms, pilfered from digs and sunk in shipwrecks. But none can match the charisma and mystery of the missing Maxberg Archaeopteryx. This skeleton was hoarded for years by a cantankerous quarry manager. When he died in 1991, it vanished...

300 Million Year Old Fossil Forest Found in China

Via SciNews:

... At the discovered site, located near Wuda in Inner Mongolia, China, the plants were preserved as they fell, in many cases in the exact locations where they grew, because volcanic ash covered them over the course of only a few days.

“It’s marvelously preserved,” said Hermann Pfefferkorn, a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a co-author on the study. “We can stand there and find a branch with the leaves attached, and then we find the next branch and the next branch and the next branch. And then we find the stump from the same tree. That’s really exciting.”

The researchers date the ash layer to approximately 298 million years ago that falls at the beginning of Permian, during which Earth’s continental plates were still moving toward each other to form the supercontinent Pangea.

The researchers also found some smaller trees with leaves, branches, trunk and cones intact, preserved in their entirety. They were able to examine a total of 1,000 m² of the ash layer in three different sites located near one another....

This news was also explained in the Science Magazine's podcast. Good Listening!

And the published paper from PNAS  (hat tip - Don B.) 

Are You an Ape or a Fish, Both or Neither?

Via Wired:

... Saying “humans are apes” or “birds are dinosaurs” still sounds strange enough that such statements demand evidence and provide opportunities for engagement, in addition to being a reflection of recent revisions to evolutionary trees.

And the words we choose depend upon how specific we wish to be. In an evolutionary context, I am simultaneously an ape, a monkey, a primate, a mammal, a therapsid, a synapsid, an amniote, a tetrapod, and, to pick an arbitrary stopping point that suits this post’s purpose, a fish. You are a fish, too..

 

Hell Creek Field Trip with Burpee Museum

Spaces are still available for Burpee Museum's Highway to Hell Creek Expeditions. See the flyer below or visit our Expeditions Page (http://www.burpee.org/education/expeditions.asp) for more details. 

Possibly the Largest single-time-period fossil forest found - Where? Illinois

Via Smithsonian:

Smithsonian paleontologist Bill DiMichele and colleagues Howard Falcon-Lang (University of Bristol), John Nelson and Scott Elrick (Illinois State Geological Survey), and Phil Ames (Peabody Coal Company) discovered the remains of one of the world's oldest tropical rainforests, preserved in the ceiling of a coal mine 250 feet below the surface. Their discovery was recently published in the journal "Geology" entitled “Ecological Gradients Within a Pennsylvanian Mire Forest.”

The rainforest extends over more than four square miles as the roof of two adjacent underground coal mines in eastern Illinois. This may be the largest single-time-period fossil forest found in the fossil record. 

 

Gem, Mineral and Fossil Show This Weekend in Indiana

Lawrence Co. Rock Club 47th Annual Gem, Mineral & Fossil Show & Swap

Fr: 10-6:30, Sa: 9-6:30, Su: 10-4. Free admission.

Monroe County Fairgrounds, at Airport Road and Hwy. 45 near Bloomington, IN. 

Contact Dave Treffinger: (812) 295-3463

More Information - http://lawrencecountyrockclub.org/rockshow.html

History of Illinois Coal Mining Lecture 7/19

Lecture about Illinois coal mining from the Braidwood Historical Society... (hat tip Jeanine

Thursday July 19, 2012 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

"History of Area Coal Mining" - Presentation  by Dick Joyce

7pm at Braidwood City Hall

Refreshments and mingling at the Museum afterward.

Oldest Artwork

Via The Guardian:  - (hat tip Floyd)

An archaeologist says he has found the oldest piece of rock art in Australia and one of the oldest in the world: an Aboriginal work created 28,000 years ago in an outback cave.  The dating of one of the thousands of images in the Northern Territory rock shelter, known as Nawarla Gabarnmang, will be published in the next edition of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The archaeologist Bryce Barker, from the University of Southern Queensland, said he found the rock in June last year but had only recently had it dated at the radiocarbon laboratory of New Zealand's University of Waikato... more, including beautiful photographs

 

Rocks and Archaeo Items For Sale at Estate Sale

From the estate sale company,

"... many wonderful rock, mineral, and fossil specimens. You can go to estatesales.net and see more pictures. Many of the ones I took as well as other estate pictures will be refreshed this week. The house has a mold problem, so mold-sensitve shoppers beware. Thank you for getting the word out there. Your members WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED! Sincerely, Karen..." 

6/21 - 6/24 - click here for more information and photos 

Birth and History of Dolomites

Via Scientific American:

“The surface of the earth is far more beautiful and far more intricate than any lifeless world. Our planet is graced by life and one quality that sets life apart is it’s complexity.”
Carl Sagan in “Cosmos – The Persistence of Memory“

In July 1791 the French aristocrat, adventurer and naturalist Diedonnè-Silvain-Guy-Tancrede de Gvalet de Dolomieu published a short article describing a peculiar limestone he had observed during a voyage in the Alps. The white rock was very similar to common limestone, but the mineral grains forming the unusual rock showed almost no reaction with acids, unlike crystals of calcite or aragonite (the main minerals of limestone), which react violently. Three years later the naturalist  Richard Kirman introduced the Dolomite as a new mineral; the name from there became used to name the dolostone rocks and finally gave the Dolomites – referred in the past simply as the “Pale Mountains” – their actual name...

And on the same subject of dolomite creations - new research published by Cordis:

For many years scientists have been investigating how the carbonate mineral dolomite is formed but no concrete results have ever emerged... until now. Researchers in Germany, Spain and Switzerland have succeeded in shedding light on this puzzle, finding that bacteria play a key role in this mineral's formation. The results are presented in the journal Geology.

Led by the Cluster of Excellence 'The Future Ocean' and GEOMAR |Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, the team examined globally distributed marine bacteria that use sulphur compounds instead of oxygen to generate energy (i.e. sulphate respiration). They discovered that primary dolomite crystals are formed under conditions that are currently found in marine sediments.

 

Fluid Study of Drinking Water Aquifers

Via Geology.com from Platt:

'...researchers are testing whether hydraulic fracturing fluids can travel thousands of feet via geologic faults into drinking water aquifers close to the surface, a US Department of Energy official said Friday.

A fault from the Marcellus Shale formation, which is thousands of feet below the surface, could provide "a quick pathway for fracking fluids to migrate upwards," said Richard Hammack, a spokesman for the US Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory.

The experiment is being carried out at a site in Greene County in southwestern Pennsylvania where conventional shallow wells were drilled and long since capped, NETL said on its website. Drillers are now actively drilling in the county in the Marcellus Shale formation.

The study will provide regulators, landowners and the general public "an unbiased, science-based source of information which can guide decisions about shale gas development," NETL said.

The study also will help the industry "develop better methods to monitor for undesired environmental changes" and develop technology or management practices to address the changes, NETL said.

Man With Mammoth in Backyard

From ABC 5 DesMoines via ESCONI Discussion Group:

"... John enlisted expert help from the University of Iowa. The archeologists and paleontologists became excited because it's unusual to have so many different bones from one mammoth in one place.

The bones belong to John since he found them on his property. But owning a mammoth can be difficult.

"Sometimes I get tired of moving bones around from one spot to the other," he laughed. ..."

One Million Nature Observations by Citizen Scientists

Via Geology.com:

Thanks to citizen-scientists around the country, the USA National Phenology Network hit a major milestone this week by reaching its one millionth nature observation. 

Wisconsin's Role in Niagra Falls

Via WXFS:

"...Reser says geologists attribute Niagara Falls to a massive escarpment, or ridge that runs through Wisconsin, notably at High Cliff State Park near Lake Winnebago. 

"The ledge is one of those amazing little outcrops in Wisconsin that really literally shapes the state" Reser said. 

The escarpment runs nearly 1,000 miles through eastern Wisconsin where it forms the Door County peninsula, Lake Winnebago and the bay of Green Bay.  It then moves through Upper Michigan, southern Ontario and enters western New York where is appears as Niagara Falls..."  

June Mineral Shows List

From The Vug via Geology.com:  Mineral Shows Near You in June

Underseas in Jerome, Arizona

From Scientific American:

“The town and its fluctuating fortunes are a humble reminder that much of human history has been influenced by the vagaries of the geologic processes that shape the land we inhabit, form the minerals from which we construct our civilizations, and produce the riches we covet.”

-Lon Abbott and Terri Cook, Geology Underfoot in Northern Arizona.

While tourists gazed rapt into the billions of years exposed in the layer-rock-cake walls of the Grand Canyon, my mother and I would hop down to Jerome. At Grand Canyon, you have to climb down thousands of feet to touch 2 billion year-old rocks. At Jerome, all you have to do is walk up the street....

 

Lecture Tonight: New Cretaceous Allosauroids by Peter Makoviky

General Meeting: 8:00 p.m. College of Dupage, Building K, Rm 161. Peter Makoviky from the Field Museum of Natural History, speaking on "New Cretaceous Allosauroids from the Americas."

Cahokia Mounds and the Bridge

NPR - (hat tip Mary Fairchild)

Across the Mississippi River from St. Louis' famous Gateway Arch is a part of Illinois that's a post-industrial wasteland.

Some hope the construction of a new bridge across the Mississippi River will help revitalize the area. But archaeologists worry future development could destroy what's left of another neighborhood — one that flourished there almost a thousand years ago.

Working just ahead of the cranes and earth movers that are building a stretch of the interstate freeway, archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a sophisticated American Indian settlement no one knew existed.

There are remnants of more than a thousand prehistoric houses and the base of an earthen pyramid — one of dozens that would have towered above the original settlement.... more