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Happy 300th Birthday, James Hutton!
Read more: Happy 300th Birthday, James Hutton!Today marks the 300th Birthday of James Hutton (1726-1797), a Scottish geologist, argiculturist, chemical manufacturer, naturalist, and physician. He is widely considered to be the “Father of Modern Geology”. Hutton was born on June 3rd, 1726 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
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Wait, Is That Poison Ivy?
Read more: Wait, Is That Poison Ivy?It’s that time of year again. You’re out working in the garden, or hiking through the woods, looking for fossils (of course!), and there it is… Poison Ivy! The New York Times had an article about poison ivy identification a few weeks ago. Hopefully, it will help you, so you don’t have to endure a few weeks of intense itching…
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Mazon Monday #324: Stepwise loss of complexity in hagfish eyes prior to deep sea colonization
Read more: Mazon Monday #324: Stepwise loss of complexity in hagfish eyes prior to deep sea colonizationMazon Creek hagfish made headlines again last week. New research led by Victoria McCoy, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, was published in the journal Biology Letters. In the paper, “Stepwise Loss of Complexity in Hagfish Eyes Prior to Deep-Sea Colonization,” McCoy collaborated with several familiar names… Arjan Mann and Jason Pardo of the Field Museum of Natural History, René and Bruce Lauer of the Lauer Foundation for Paleontology, Science and Education, Andrew Young of the David and Sandra Douglass Collection, and Tetsuto Miyashita of the University of Ottawa.
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490-Million-Year-Old Arthropod Fossil Fills Puzzling Gap in Fossil Record
Read more: 490-Million-Year-Old Arthropod Fossil Fills Puzzling Gap in Fossil RecordSciNews has a story about the discovery of an important arthropod. Magnicornaspis garwoodi lived between 497 and 487 million years ago in the area of Quebec, Canada. The animal is important because it fills in the gap between the Cambian Explosion and the Great Ordovician Biodiversition Event (GOBE). It’s discovery hints that the source of this gap is sampling bias not an actual drop in biodiversity. This research was published in the paper “New exceptionally preserved arthropod from the Furongian of Canada” in the journal BMC Biology.
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PBS Eons: The Second-to-Last Mammoths Ever
Read more: PBS Eons: The Second-to-Last Mammoths EverPBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about some of the last Mammoths on Earth.
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Fossil Friday #319: First Tully!
Read more: Fossil Friday #319: First Tully!Back in late March, I went fossil collecting with a couple Field Museum researchers, including Lazaro Viñola López (see “Ancient bees found nesting inside fossil bones in rare cave discovery” for some of his recent work), a postdoctoral researcher. This was his first trip to Pit 11. Bet you can guess where this is headed…
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Throwback Thursday #319: Happy 150th Birthday, George Langford!
Read more: Throwback Thursday #319: Happy 150th Birthday, George Langford!May 26th, 2026 marks George Langford’s 150th birthday! He was born on May 26th, 1876 in Denver, Colorado. George Langford Sr. is giant in the history of Mazon Creek. Before Jack Wittry’s books, George’s books were the go-to source of information about Mazon Creek. George wrote three books about Mazon Creek fossils. The first was published in 1958 and the second in 1963. Unfortunately, the third was published well after his death in the 1990s (Mazon Monday #74).
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Microcoprolite morphotypes from the Revueltian (Upper Triassic:Norian) age Homestead Site, Garita Creek Formation, east-centralNew Mexico, USA
Read more: Microcoprolite morphotypes from the Revueltian (Upper Triassic:Norian) age Homestead Site, Garita Creek Formation, east-centralNew Mexico, USAThe Lauers are back with more science! The paper “Microcoprolite morphotypes from the Revueltian (Upper Triassic: Norian) age Homestead Site, Garita Creek Formation, east-central New Mexico, USA” was published in the journal Ichnos, which is an international journal for plant and animal traces.
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Sundays on the Boulevard
Read more: Sundays on the BoulevardESCONI’s mission is to promote interest in the Earth sciences, both through programs and publications aimed at ESCONI members and through events aimed at the larger community, like the ESCONI and CGMA shows. Recently, thanks to the efforts of ESCONI volunteers like Jim Bigler and Jodi Gosain [and others?], we’ve expanded ESCONI’s outreach efforts by taking Earth Science activities to STEM events organized by schools and libraries in Chicago’s western suburbs. This summer ESCONI will be reaching out to new audiences in the city of Chicago by participating in Sundays on the Boulevard in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood.
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Mazon Monday #323: Mazon Creek at the 2026 CGMA Show
Read more: Mazon Monday #323: Mazon Creek at the 2026 CGMA ShowJack Wittry had a breathtaking display at the 2026 CGMA Show at the Kane County Fairgrounds this past weekend. It featured Mazon Creek fossils named for ESCONI members.
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Archaeologists Find Egyptian Mummy Buried With the ‘Iliad’
Read more: Archaeologists Find Egyptian Mummy Buried With the ‘Iliad’The New York Times has an interesting post about a discovery in Egypt. A 2,000 year old mummy in the burial site known as Oxyrhynchus had a papyrus fragment of the Homeric epic “Iliad” in a clay packet outside its wrappings. The mummy was a non-royal male,
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The Pokémon Fossil Museum at the Field Museum is now Open!
Read more: The Pokémon Fossil Museum at the Field Museum is now Open!The Pokémon Fossil Museum at the Field Museum opened on Wednesday, May 20th, 2026. Tickets can be purchased here. Tickets are required for entry and should be purchased in advance. Here is the FAQ page.
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Fossil Friday #318: Rex, the Wonder Amphibian
Read more: Fossil Friday #318: Rex, the Wonder AmphibianWe have something very interesting this week… The specimen’s label says “Rex, the Wonder Amphibian”. It’s an early tetrapod from the Mississippian of Iowa, some 340 million years ago. Whatcheeria deltae was described by R. Eric Lombard and John R. Bolt in 1985 in the paper “A new primitive tetrapod, Whatcheeria deltae, from the Lower Carboniferous of Iowa”.
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Throwback Thursday #318: 2001 Chicagoland Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show
Read more: Throwback Thursday #318: 2001 Chicagoland Gem, Mineral, and Fossil ShowThe 2001 Chicagoland Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show was held at the DuPage County Fairgrounds. This was the 25th year for the show. Back then, the show spanned three days, for 2001, that was May 26th, 27th, and 28th, 2001.
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Reminder: 49th Annual CGMA Show – May 23rd and 24th, 2026
Read more: Reminder: 49th Annual CGMA Show – May 23rd and 24th, 2026The 49th Annual CGMA Show will be held May 23rd and 24th, 2026 at the Expo Center of the Kane County Fairgrounds.
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Video for ESCONI May 2026 Paleontology Study Group Meeting – “An Ordovician Konzentrat Lagerstätte: The Dixon Mifflin Residuum Fauna”
Read more: Video for ESCONI May 2026 Paleontology Study Group Meeting – “An Ordovician Konzentrat Lagerstätte: The Dixon Mifflin Residuum Fauna”The program then concentrates on the Mifflin Member of the Platteville Formation and the exceptional preservation of the Dixon Lagerstätte. To appreciate the remarkable preservation of the Dixon material a standard fauna is needed for comparison. Fortunately, a Mifflin dolostone super-site is (was) located only 10 miles southeast of Dixon: the Lee Center Quarry. The two sites are examined in detail as to location, lithology, and faunal lists.
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Video for ESCONI May 2026 General Meeting – “Seeing Beneath the Ground: Geophysics and Archaeological Explorations in Illinois”
Read more: Video for ESCONI May 2026 General Meeting – “Seeing Beneath the Ground: Geophysics and Archaeological Explorations in Illinois”Thomas Loebel from the Illinois State Archaeological Survey will present “Seeing Beneath the Ground: Geophysics and Archaeological Explorations in Illinois”. Thomas will explain how archaeologists find sites, specifically how they use geophysics or remote sensing to locate sites for testing and preservation purposes.
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Mazon Monday #322: Asterophyllites longifolius
Read more: Mazon Monday #322: Asterophyllites longifoliusAsterophyllites longifolius like its sister taxon Asterophyllites equisetiformis (see Mazon Monday #103), formed part of the foliage of the giant horsetail-like plant Calamites. Both species are known from Mazon Creek, but while A. equisetiformis is common, A. longifolius is a very rare. One distinguishing characteristic of A. longifolius is that the leaves are longer than the distance between the internodes. There are nearly twenty species of Asterophyllites, although only a few are known from Mazon Creek.
ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show
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- Throwback Thursday #317: Looking Back At ESCONI For June 2026
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Field trips require membership, but visitors are welcome at all meetings!
| Friday, June 12th | General Meeting – 8:00 PM via Zoom. Adrienne Stroup of The Field Museum will present “At the Intersection of Art and Science: Outreach in Natural History Museums”. |
| Saturday, June 20th | Paleontology Study Group – 7:30 PM via Zoom. Emily Hillan will present “New insights from Tiktaalik roseae: The role of legs before the origin of limbs”. |
| No meeting this month | Junior Study Group Meeting |
| No meeting this month | Mineralogy Study Group |
