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This is Mazon Monday post #89. What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com.
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Of all the millions (yes, millions!) of Mazon concretions that have opened over the years, only two specimens of Jeletzkya douglassae are known. That might make it the rarest of species in the Mazon Creek biota. It's considered to be a squid. Talk about soft bodied animals... its only hard parts are the radula and the pen. For as rare as it is, it has a Wikipedia page!
It was described in 1968 by Ralph Gordon Johnson and Eugene S. Richardson, Jr. The description appeared in the journal Science "Ten Armed Fossil Cephalopod from the Pennsylvanian of Illinois". Both men are giants in Mazon Creek paleontology. At that time, they worked at the Field Museum in Chicago and fostered relationships with amateur collectors who were all to happy to show them what they had found.
Abstract
Jeletzkya douglassae Johnson and Richardson is described as the oldest known representative of an extant squid group. The species is known from a single specimen from the Middle Pennsylvanian of Illinois. This very unusual fossil consists of the complete tentacular crown and a fragile shell. The arms bear hooks in double rows.
The animal is named for June Douglass, the mother of Dave Douglass who would eventually open "Dave's Down to Earth Rock Shop" in Evanston, IL in 1970. June and her family, husband Lincoln and son Dave, started collecting Mazon Creek fossils in 1958. All three of them have species named for them. Lincoln has Mischoptera douglassi, a winged insect that Eugene Richardson called "one of the most important fossil insects ever found." And, Dave was the namesake for Titanoscorpio douglassi, a 3 inch scorpion claw. When June found the squid fossil in Pit 11, it pushed back the fossil history of squid 100 million years to the Pennsylvanian Period. The original specimen is on display in the basement museum at Dave's.
The other specimen was donated to the Field Museum by amateur collector Dave Young.
J. douglassae appears in "The Mazon Creek Fossil Fauna" by Jack Wittry.
Jeletzkya douglassae is generally considered to be a squid, though it has been argued that it may be a belemnite. Assignment remains problematic. It has ten arms, and an internal shell similar to the gladius (pen) of present-day squid. Made of a chiton-like material, the pen is a feather-shaped internal structure that supports the squid's mantle and serves as a site for muscle attachment. However, the double rows of hooks on each arm may be a feature more similar to belemnites. It has been suggested that the internal shell rep resents a belemnitid prostracum with only the final phragmocone chamber attached. The radular pattern of J. douglassae is the same as modern coleoids, though belemnoid radulae are not known. Single rows of arm hooks occur in modern squid, and it has been thought that perhaps double rows as well as undifferentiated arms are primitive characteristics of these coleoid cephalopods. Fossil ink sacs are are found in the Essex Biota, but are known from both squid and belemnoids.
A rare Mazon Creek cephalopod, J. douglassae was erected based on the two fossils shown below. The first is the holotype, which displays the nine elements of the radula, and ten equal-sized arms, each having two rows of hooks. The second is of an internal shell that is missing part of the apex. This area at the apex is still not well known. The internal shell is decorated with longitudinal parallel lines near the apex.
Specimens
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The simple coin design was quickly replaced, leaving only 40 or so surviving specimens today. Courtesy of Morton and Eden
The Cool Finds column at Smithsonian Magazine has a story about a remarkable find. A one shilling coin minted in 1652 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony was found in a candy tin. One of 40 known to exist, it was sold at auction for $351,912.
A silver coin minted in colonial Boston in 1652 has sold for $351,912. The one shilling coin is one of just 40 of its kind known to survive today, the Associated Press (AP) reports.
“I am not surprised at the amount of interest this exceptional coin attracted,” says James Morton, a coin specialist with London-based auction house Morton and Eden, in a statement. “The price paid ... reflects its extraordinary historic significance and outstanding original state of preservation. The fact that it was previously completely unknown, together with its distinguished provenance, simply added to its appeal.”
Morton and Eden sold the coin on behalf of Wentworth “Wenty” Beaumont, a descendant of early New England settler William Wentworth. Beaumont’s father recently discovered the artifact in a candy tin containing hundreds of old coins at the family’s estate in Northumberland, England.
“I can only assume that the shilling was brought back from America years ago by one of my forebears,” says Beaumont in the statement.
After the long-forgotten tin resurfaced, Beaumont brought it to Morton, who realized that the container included specimens from all over the world, spanning the ancient era through the 1970s, reports Sophie Corcoran for PA Media.
“I could see straight away that there were plenty of interesting pieces alongside some ordinary modern coins, but there was one simple silver disc which immediately jumped out at me,” says Morton in a separate Morton and Eden statement. “I could hardly believe my eyes when I realized that it was an excellent example of a New England shilling, struck by John Hull in 1652 in Boston for use as currency by early settlers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.”
ESCONI member William Morgan, a retired professor from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, has a new book called "Collector's Guide to Fort Payne Crinoids and Blastoids". The Fort Payne Formation of Kentucky dates to the early Mississippian Period.
Collector's Guide to Fort Payne Crinoids and Blastoids is the first comprehensive guide for identifying the fossils of echinoderms from hundreds of millions of years ago, when North America was covered by a warm, equatorial sea.
Crinoids and blastoids, echinoderms (the same family of marine animals to include starfish, sea urchins, and sand dollars) from the Fort Payne Formation in Kentucky, are rarely seen at gem, mineral, and fossil shows, nor are they regularly displayed at major museums. By combining high-quality color photographs and an accompanying descriptive text, William W. Morgan provides the first comprehensive identification guide to these fascinating fossils.
Collector's Guide to Fort Payne Crinoids and Blastoids features photographs, often offering more than one view, of the best-quality specimens curated in the Smithsonian and other prominent invertebrate fossil museums. Morgan includes photographs that are unlabeled so that readers can test themselves to see whether they can differentiate some of the more subtle features that may be necessary for accurate identification.
This is the "Fossil Friday" post #85. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world!
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You might recall that this year ESCONI had a couple field trips to a Danville, IL area spoil pile to collect fossils. There was a spring and a fall trip and we expect to return next spring. They were productive trips with many new and exciting finds for everyone. Most of the fossils were found in "red dog" shale, which is shale that was baked to a hardness when the spoil pile caught fire years ago. However, there were also fossil bearing concretions. Some were found open and others were collected for the freeze/thaw processing common with Mazon Creek concretions.
Earlier this week, one popped open! This is a Callipteridium neuropteroides, a seed fern similar to Alethoperis and Neuropteris. It has been in an out of the freezer since July, maybe 30 - 35 cycles.
Here is a photo of the outside of the concretion. Not as smooth as those found in the Mazon Creek deposits,
Open concretion.
This is Throwback Thursday #87. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc ...), please sent them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks!
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Field & Street was a column in the Chicago Reader from at least 1984 until April 2004. For most of its existence, it was written by Jerry Sullivan and ran bi-weekly. The Reader has an archive of many of the columns on their website. In case you haven't heard of the Chicago Reader, it's a free Chicago weekly newspaper that has been published since 1971. They bill themselves as "Chicago's alternative nonprofit newsroom". The Chicago Reader is the paper that published the "The Vanishing Mother Lode of Mazon Creek" in 2004.
Jerry Sullivan (1938-2000) was a career naturalist and journalist, who besides writing the "Field & Stream" column, served as the associate director for land management with the Forest Preserve District of Cook County until his untimely death in 2000. The University of Chicago Press has a book that contains a collection of his columns. It's an interesting read.
A selection of savvy observations on urban ecology from one of the Midwest’s foremost authorities on the subject, Hunting for Frogs on Elston collects the best of naturalist Jerry Sullivan’s weekly Field & Street columns, originally published in the Chicago Reader. Engaging, opinionated, inspiring, and occasionally irreverent, Hunting for Frogs on Elston pays tribute to Chicago’s natural history while celebrating one of its greatest champions.
Published in association with the Chicago Wilderness coalition, Hunting for Frogs on Elston comprehensively chronicles Chicagoland’s unique urban ecology, from its indigenous prairie and oft-delayed seasons to its urban coyotes and passenger pigeons. In witty, informed prose, Sullivan evokes his adventures netting dog-faced butterflies, hunting rattlesnakes, and watching fireflies mate. Inspired by regional flora and fauna, Sullivan ventures throughout the metropolis and its environs in search of sludge worms, gyrfalcons, and wild onions. In reporting his findings to otherwise oblivious urbanites, Sullivan endeavors to make “alienated, atomized, postmodern people feel at home, connected to something beyond ourselves.“
In the sprawling Chicagoland region, where an urban ecosystem teeming with remarkable life evolves between skyscrapers and train tracks, no writer chronicled the delicate balance of nature and industry more vividly than Jerry Sullivan. An homage to the urban ecology Sullivan loved so dearly, Hunting for Frogs on Elston is his fitting legacy as well as a lasting gift to the urban naturalist in us all.
What brings me to this post is a particular column he wrote for the May 30th, 1991 edition of his column. In the article, he documents a field trip he took to Pit 11 with the Field Museum. I remember the Field Museum trips. I never took one to Pit 11, but did manage to visit the Elmer Larson Quarry near DeKalb, IL. on a few occasions to collect Silurian fossils. Dave Dolak guided many of these trips. I think there was even a bus trip to southern Indiana to visit the famous Route 1 road cut.
Often, the Field Museum would take a bus to an area called ESCONI Hill, which unfortunately is pretty overgrown now. Back in the day, it probably looked something like this.
Ralph Jewell on the Fossil Forum
Unfortunately, it was raining on the day of his trip. Oh, for a chance to collect the bare slopes of Pit 11 he describes!
What I needed was a mentor. Starting my first-ever fossil hunt, I was wandering without coherent aim, staring at the muddy ground with a hopeless expression. Wanting this to be easy, certain that it would be very hard, I felt like a man looking behind the bureau for his car keys when he knows perfectly well he left them locked in the car. If you want to find fossils, I thought, attach yourself to somebody who knows how to look for them. There must be a technique, a knack, a secret that separates the adept from the ignorant.
Did I mention that it was raining? Very hard, in fact. When it rains, the bare earth on the steep slopes of piles of strip-mine spoils gets very slippery. But the bare slopes are where the action is, because there is nothing green and leafy to block your view of the fossils.
The bare slopes were striated with parallel gullies running almost straight up and down. The rain continued to fall, and the gullies became rushing streams. The waters were gray, colored by the sand and clay suspended in them. The eroded beds of these tiny, precipitous streams were where the most rocks would be exposed, and the fossils were all inside rocks.
There is a summary of the history of the area and of fossil collecting the spoil piles.
We were digging in mounds of strip-mine debris because these heaps of earth and rock are part of Mazon Creek, one of the premier fossil beds in the world. Three hundred million years ago, in the Pennsylvanian Era, the area around the towns of Braidwood, Morris, Coal City, and Essex was the edge of a river delta. The river drained lands to the north and east, and it met the sea around Braidwood. Coal formed in the coastal swamps of that delta. Silt in the ancient river flowed over the delta and out to sea. The deepening silt buried the bodies of plants and animals, buried them so soon after death that even the outlines of the soft parts of their bodies are now visible. Since the Pennsylvanian Era, the geology of northeastern Illinois has been peaceful enough to leave the delicate fossils undisturbed.
To paleontologists, the Mazon Creek fossil beds take in about 70 square miles in Will, Grundy, and Kankakee counties. The name comes from the fact that the first fossils were discovered in small bedrock outcrops along Mazon Creek (or Mazon River on contemporary maps). There weren’t many such outcrops. Most of the bedrock is buried under a deep layer of glacial debris, so it wasn’t until coal mining began around Mazon Creek that the richness of the fossil life came to be appreciated.
Coal miners sank shafts through the glacial stuff and then through a layer of soft, dark rock called the Francis Creek shale. This late Pennsylvanian shale lies directly over the coal beds, so when the first mines were dug at Braidwood, Illinois, in 1855 and in nearby Coal City in 1858, the miners pulled large piles of shale up to the surface and heaped them around the pitheads.
Local fossil collectors combed through the heaps of rock and dirt and then passed their findings along to the professional paleontologists, who published as quickly as possible. The first academic paper on Mazon Creek fossils appeared in 1864. Since then all sorts of distinguished scientists, including Edward Drinker Cope, one of the founding lunatic geniuses of paleontology in America, have published hundreds of papers on the Mazon Creek fossils. To date, about 325 species of animals and perhaps 350 species of plants have been found in Mazon Creek sites.
They have been found inside concretions, rocks that formed around the fresh dead bodies of 300 million years ago. The concretions are made of siderite, a combination of iron and carbonates that produces a reddish brown rock with a rather gritty texture. Concretions are usually flattened disks or ovals with rounded edges. They may be an inch long, or they may be a foot long.
Jerry does a good job describing the science as it was known in 1991. Although, he missed it on the name of the Tully Monster. This was just a few years after the Tully Monster was named the State Fossil of Illinois. The gregarium in Tullimonstrum gregarium actually means common.
The discoveries are extraordinary. Jellyfish are rarely found in the fossil record. In Mazon Creek there are not only two species but also hundreds of specimens of each. Mazon Creek also gave us the world’s oldest isopod fossil. Isopods are small crustaceans that are still with us today. The world’s oldest squid came from there, and the only known fossil lamprey. Other soft animals that are beautifully preserved include worms, sea cucumbers, and larval fish.
The most famous of Mazon Creek’s fossils is the Tully monster, a wormlike creature of, as they say in the journals, uncertain affinities. The first fossil of Tullimonstrum gregarium was pulled from Pit 11 about 30 years ago by Francis J. Tully, a local man who was into fossil collecting as a hobby. He took his find to Dr. Eugene Richardson at the Field Museum, and Richardson published a description in 1966, naming the fossil in honor of its discoverer.
A Tully monster could be as much as 14 inches long. It has a flattened tail and a long proboscis carrying teethlike projections. It has been shoehorned into various phyla since its discovery. Lately it is being proposed as an ancestor to the vertebrates, and it will probably be proposed as a lot of other things in the future. For the moment, it may be officially placed among the Problematica.
The second word in the Tully monster’s scientific name is revealing. The Tully monster is gregarious. It likes to hang out with the other monsters. We can believe this because hundreds of fossils of this unique creature have been found in Pit 11. There were whole schools of monsters in these waters in the Pennsylvanian Era, and parts of many of them were preserved in the amazing Francis Creek shale.
He did collect some concretions. I wonder what became of them... did they open up via freeze/thaw or did they succumb to the hammer to reveal their secrets?
I certainly have a fine collection of concretions from my collecting trip. However, I don’t know for certain that they have fossils in them. You can stand a concretion on edge and bang it with a hammer. If it is ready to split, it will split along the plane of weakness created by the fossil. So you bang a couple of times, but if it shows no signs of splitting you stop hammering. Further beating will just crush the whole rock.
To open the strong rocks–like all of those I collected–you need cycles of freezing and thawing, of water seeping into cracks in the rock and freezing. The sudden expansion widens the crack. After the next thaw water seeps into the wider crack and then freezes and expands again.
This is God’s way of breaking rocks, but he doesn’t have any deadlines. I am trying to speed up the process. I tossed my collected rocks in a bowl of water and froze them. Once they were solid, I took them out and thawed them. And then froze them again. Someday I will find out if I have a sea worm, a fern leaf, or a species of shrimp utterly new to science. It has been known to take two years to pop a rock even with accelerated freezing and thawing. In paleontology, you have to be patient.
All in all, it's a great article! Check it out if you get a chance!
The speaker at our December 3, 2021 meeting will be Scott Elrick, Head of the Coal, Bedrock and Industrial Minerals Section of ISGS. The topic of his talk via Zoom will be paleoecology of the Herrin Coal roof shales including depositional environment and climate. This talk should should add context to the fossil flora found at the Danville shale pile.
A story about Scott and the discovery of a large underground coal forest in the Smithsonian Magazine from 2009.
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer/John-Nelson-Scott-Elrick-mine-shaft-forest-fossils-631.jpg)
Finding a fossil in a coal mine is no big deal. Coal deposits, after all, are petrified peat swamps, and peat is made from decaying plants, which leave their imprints in mud and clay as it hardens into shale stone.
But it was a different thing entirely when John Nelson and Scott Elrick, geologists with the Illinois State Geological Survey, examined the Riola and Vermilion Grove coal mines in eastern Illinois. Etched into ceilings of the mine shafts is the largest intact fossil forest ever seen—at least four square miles of tropical wilderness preserved 307 million years ago. That's when an earthquake suddenly lowered the swamp 15 to 30 feet and mud and sand rushed in, covering everything with sediment and killing trees and other plants. "It must have happened in a matter of weeks," says Elrick. "What we see here is the death of a peat swamp, a moment in geologic time frozen by an accident of nature."
To see this little-known wonder, I joined Nelson and Elrick at the Vermilion Grove site, a working mine operated by St. Louis-based Peabody Energy and closed to the public. I donned a hard hat, a light, gloves and steel-toed boots. I received an oxygen bottle and a safety lecture. In case of emergency—poison gas, fire or an explosion—follow the red lights to find the way out of the mine, safety manager Mike Middlemas counseled. We could encounter "thick black smoke, and you won't be able to see anything in front of you." He said to use the lifeline running along the ceiling, a slender rope threaded through wooden cones, like floats in a swimming pool.
Time: Dec 3, 2021 07:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada), join early to commiserate before the holidays.
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The speaker at our June 2021 meeting was Charles Monson from ISGS. Charles recently published on the Glasford Illinois impact structure and its relation to the Ordovician meteor event.
WCBU, a joint service of Bradley University and Illinois State University, interviewed Charles back in November 2019. Their program is online and available for listening. His paper was published in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.
New research on a central Illinois crater suggests possible links to an Ice Age about 455 million years ago.
Charles Monson is an assistant project coordinator with the Illinois State Geological Survey. He said his team's research suggests a ancient meteor about the size of Wrigley Field struck near Glasford, 20 miles southwest of Peoria, creating a 2.5 mile wide crater that's now buried under a more than a thousand feet of sediment.
Scientists look for certain geologic signs like shatter cones (or altered rock) to prove a meteor impact is responsible for a crater, instead of another phenomenon. Monson said no one's taken a good look at the crater since its discovery more than 50 years ago. Using 21st century technology and methods, he said scientists were able to learn more.
"We've documented some of those at the Glasford structure, much more thoroughly than they've been previously documented, so you could say we are the first ones to completely prove this was a meteor impact," he said.
This is Mazon Monday post #88. What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com.
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Hesserella shermani is the earliest known isopod in the fossil record. Isopods are crustaceans, which includes shrimp, crabs, and lobsters. Modern day rolly-pollys are isopods, They have many common names like pill bugs, woodlice, and doodle bugs. They are the only crustaceans that spend their whole life on land.
H. shermani was described in 1970 by Frederick Schram, while he was at the Field Museum. Frederick Schram is an absolute giant in fossil crustaceans having written over 200 papers on the subject. He described many of the newer Mazon Creek shrimp species, including Kallidecthes, Essoidia, and more recently Lobetelson. For more on him, checkout "Dinner With Dr, Frederick Schram". The paper describing Hesserella was simply called "Isopod from the Pennsylvanian of Illinois".
Abstract
Hesslerella shermani is described as the oldest representative of the crustacean superorder Peracarida, order Isopoda, suborder Phreatoicidea. This description is based on a single specimen of exceptional preservation from the Middle Pennsylvanian of Illinois. The existence of isopods in the Pennsylvanian raises some questions concerning peracarid and eumalocostracan evolution.
H. shermani appears in Jack Wittry's "The Mazon Creek Fossil Fauna".
Hesslerella shermani is a member of the Isopods. This present-day group is composed mostly of marine and land dwelling crustaceans (woodlice, pill bugs, etc.) that live as scavengers. H. shermani has a round head with prominent eyes on the side and a single pair of long antennae. The body lacks a carapace, and the legs appear similar in size and structure.
The subgroup to which H. shermani belongs exhibits a Gondwanan distribution today, and dwells in freshwater habi tats. It appears that this animal was a near-shore sea-dweller. Most fossils have come from the marine off-shore area of Pit 11, and when found, preservation is often excellent.
The "Richardson's Guide to the Fossil Fauna of Mazon Creek" by Charles Shabica and Andrew Hay mentions H. shermani in chapter 12, which was written by Frederick R. Schram, W. D. Ian Rolfe, and Andrew A. Hay.
Hesslerella shermani Schram, 1970
Head short, antennules and antennae with long single flagella, body without a carapace covering, eyes sessile on sides of head; thoracic segments with anterior and posterior ridges, thoracic limbs equally developed and composed of one endopodal ramus except for the first limb, which is reduced to a large maxillipede; four anterior abdominal segments with rounded pleural lobes and bladelike pleopods (abdominal limbs), fifth segment large and elongate, sixth segment fused with telson and bearing a pair of biramous uropods.Though not frequently encountered in collections of Mazon Creek fossils, the quality of preservation of this species is usually excellent. The rounded head capsule with its protruding eyes on the side of the head is easily recognized. This is the earliest known isopod crustacean. It is a member of the subgroup of "pill bugs" that was widely spread in Paleozoic seas and is today restricted to habitats in Australia and Tasmania.
(CoreyFord/iStock/Getty Images)
Nature Science Alert has a story about sauropods. Some strange footprints, found near Bandera, Texas back in the 1930's, could show swimming behavior in sauropods. That theory dates to a letter written by Roland T. Bird in 1940 about front foot only prints made by sauropods. A paper in 2019 reexamined the question, but at a different locality - Coffee Hollow, part of the Glen Rose Formation. That locality was discovered in 2007 and dates to the Cretaceous Period.
"They were all typical forefeet impressions as if the animal had just been barely kicking bottom."
With time, Bird's interpretation of these manus-only tracks fell out of favor, as modern paleontology came to realize that sauropods were primarily land animals, not aquatic as was once thought.
The alternative view to explain manus-only tracks like this is that the forefeet of sauropods (supporting more of the animals' body weight) are all that leaves track marks on certain kinds of ground surfaces, as the rear limbs, supporting less weight, leave less impression on soil and sediment.
While that might now be the generally preferred interpretation of manus-only sauropod tracks, the case for dinosaurs treading through shallow, shoulder-height bodies of water on their front limbs (with their rear limbs not reaching the ground) has never been definitively ruled out.
This is the "Fossil Friday" post #84. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world!
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For the third time this year, we have a spider fossil for Fossil Friday. Spider fossils are very rare in the fossil record. Mazon Creek and the other deposits of similar age like ones in Southern Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, and Missouri have some of the earliest known specimens from the Carboniferous. For reference, spider-like animals evolved back in the middle Devonian around 380 million years ago.
Today's specimen belongs to Chuck Barlow and was up for sale at the recent MAPS expo in Springfield, IL. The fossil species is unidentified, but seems similar to species in the order Ricinulei, which do have living relatives. It's an amazing fossil with quite a bit of detail! Thanks for the contribution, Chuck!
Chuck lives in Knob Noster, where there is a fossil deposit contemporaneous with Mazon Creek, which dates to about 307 million years ago. Currently, the Knob Noster locality is thought to have resided across a large bay from the Mazon Creek locality. Both were just south of the equator in the tropical Pennsylvanian seas. The red dot below represents Wilmington, IL 300 million years ago. Looking at the outline of Missouri, Knob Noster is in the middle west portion of Missouri, just southeast of Kansas City.
Paleo Map from https://dinosaurpictures.org/
Fossils from Knob Noster are found in concretions just like Mazon Creek. The Matrix is quite a bit different, being much lighter.
This is Throwback Thursday #86. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc ...), please sent them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks!
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For this Thanksgiving Edition of Throwback Thursday, we are only going back to 2016. That year, the Field Museum had a Thanksgiving post on their blog from Paul Mayer, who is a collection manager of fossil invertebrates. Paul has worked at the Field Museum since 2008. He's also no stranger to ESCONI having done numerous presentations over the years, including Tully Monster research and the November 2019 70th Anniversary celebration.
What do Thanksgiving and a fossil ammonite have in common?
In ancient times, the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans associated the coiled horns of rams with gods, power, virility, fertility, and abundance. The cornucopia—a conical wicker basket with a never-ending supply of food flowing from it—comes from Latin cornu copiae or “horn of plenty.” The Greeks and Romans both used the cornucopia as a symbol of the harvest, prosperity, and abundance.
In paleontology, Pliny the Elder (in 79 AD) collected some strange rocks near Pompeii that he called ammonis cornua ("horns of Ammon") after the ancient Egyptian and Greek god Ammon who had tightly spiraled ram horns growing out of his head. These were fossil ammonoids, shells of an extinct marine animal related to chambered nautiloids, octopus, and squid (cephalopods). The ammonoid animal, a squid-like creature, secreted and lived in these coiled shells. Today the only cephalopod that lives in a shell is the chambered nautilus.
This specimen is the fossil ammonoid Arietites obtusus (P 2467). It was collected from Jurassic rocks near Lyme Regis, England, and is about 195 million years old. As nautiloid and ammonoid shells grow, they chamber off part of the shell with walls called septa. The septa in nautiloids are straight and smooth; in ammonoids, the septa are convoluted and resemble a fern or flame. You can see the internal septa pattern on the far right edge of this specimen, where the outside shell material has eroded away. It looks like a white line forming a pointy flame-like pattern. This specimen (not the fruit) was also on display in the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Currently, there are seven ammonoid specimens on display in our Evolving Planet exhibition including one slab that has at least 50 smaller ammonoids on it. There is also one large ammonoid specimen behind the entrance desk of the Crown Family PlayLab.
The speaker at our December 3, 2021 meeting will be Scott Elrick, Head of the Coal, Bedrock and Industrial Minerals Section of ISGS. The topic of his talk via Zoom will be paleoecology of the Herrin Coal roof shales including depositional environment and climate. This talk should should add context to the fossil flora found at the Danville shale pile.
A story about Scott and the discovery of a large underground coal forest in the Smithsonian Magazine from 2009.
Finding a fossil in a coal mine is no big deal. Coal deposits, after all, are petrified peat swamps, and peat is made from decaying plants, which leave their imprints in mud and clay as it hardens into shale stone.
But it was a different thing entirely when John Nelson and Scott Elrick, geologists with the Illinois State Geological Survey, examined the Riola and Vermilion Grove coal mines in eastern Illinois. Etched into ceilings of the mine shafts is the largest intact fossil forest ever seen—at least four square miles of tropical wilderness preserved 307 million years ago. That's when an earthquake suddenly lowered the swamp 15 to 30 feet and mud and sand rushed in, covering everything with sediment and killing trees and other plants. "It must have happened in a matter of weeks," says Elrick. "What we see here is the death of a peat swamp, a moment in geologic time frozen by an accident of nature."
To see this little-known wonder, I joined Nelson and Elrick at the Vermilion Grove site, a working mine operated by St. Louis-based Peabody Energy and closed to the public. I donned a hard hat, a light, gloves and steel-toed boots. I received an oxygen bottle and a safety lecture. In case of emergency—poison gas, fire or an explosion—follow the red lights to find the way out of the mine, safety manager Mike Middlemas counseled. We could encounter "thick black smoke, and you won't be able to see anything in front of you." He said to use the lifeline running along the ceiling, a slender rope threaded through wooden cones, like floats in a swimming pool.
(Poinar, Historical Biology, 2021)
Nature ScienceAlert has a story about a pine cone preserved in amber. The fossil, which dates to about 40 million years ago during the Eocene, shows a rare form of parental care in plants. The seeds in the pine cone can be seen to be germinating and sprouting greenery before the cone has fallen to the ground. This rare "behavior" is called "precocious germination", or "seed viviparity". See all the details in a paper in the journal Historical Biology.
Usually, pine cones fall to the ground and then open up when the climate becomes warm and dry, releasing their seeds into the soil, where they then germinate on their own.
The germination of seeds and the growing of seedlings from within the parent plant is what scientists call 'precocious germination', or 'seed viviparity'. This animal-like upbringing is usually only observed in flowering plants, and even then, it occurs in less than 0.1 percent of species.
Among gymnosperms, like conifers, it seems all but nonexistent.
That's what makes this new amber deposit so special. The images below show several embryonic stems bursting through the female parent cone.
This is Mazon Monday post #87. What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com.
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The ESCONI November 2021 Paleontology was held on Saturday, November, 20th, 2021 at 7:30 PM. The presentation was by ESCONI member Mike Payne. It's called "The Linton Ohio Coal Mine; a unique look into Carboniferous Tetrapods". The Diamond Coal Mine in Linton, OH dates to the mid 1800's and interesting fossils were collected from the shales since the very beginning. The deposit dates to around 300 million years. Over the years, thousands of specimens of Pennsylvanian vertebrates have been collected from the site. This list includes fish, amphibians, and reptiles.
The photos below were supplied by David Duck for his excellent Fossil Friday #37 submission.
Cracked.com has a story about the problems with dinosaurs in movies and on TV.
Can you believe Hollywood would lie to us about dinosaurs? We mean… How could they? How can they be so conceited as to think that dinosaurs would need their help to be cool? Dinos are much cooler than any other thing that ever walked on this planet! Yes, even cooler than George Clooney! And it’s not just about dinosaurs, either -- just take a look at these...
This is the "Fossil Friday" post #83. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world!
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This week's stunning contribution comes from long time ESCONI member Dan Damrow. You may remember him as the owner and operator of Rib River Fossils at many ESCONI shows. Here is a picture of him setting up his booth at the 2001 CGMA Show. Awesome fossils, Dan.... thanks for sharing some photos with us!
He sent in some photos of tar pit fossils. Tar pits exist in many locations around the world. This page from the Natural History Museum of LA County documents some of the sites. Dan's beautiful specimens come from three different California sites - Rancho La Brea, Maricopa, and Carpinteria. The B.R.E.A.S. (Bridging Research and Education at Asphaltic Sites) Project researches these sites.
Our mission is to foster integrative research collaborations and build capacity at asphaltic fossil localities around the world. In addition to developing high-impact research collaborations with scientists working at other global tar seeps, the B.R.E.A.S. Project aims to provide student training, technical expertise, and collections support to local institutions involved in excavating, preparing, curating, and studying fossils from these localities by sponsoring staff and student exchanges between other institutions and La Brea Tar Pits. In addition, we seek to advance research programs and engage local communities by developing education and outreach programs to support local STEM education, to conserve and communicate the importance of these localities, and to support local institutions in advocating for the protection and preservation of their national fossil resources.
This triple dragonfly specimen comes from Maricopa Brea in Kern Co., California and is Late Pleistocene in age. Rancholebrean Stage (Late Pleistocene – same as the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits. Very difficult to prep these and keep them intact.
The next specimen is a Dire Wolf skull. it's almost 12 inches long. Very massive compared to a modern timber or grey wolf. This is a very old specimen out of Rancho La Brea. Defining characteristics are the large size, massive carnassial molars, and large sagittal crest. Late Pleistocene, Rancholebrean Stage. California.
This is another La Brea Specimen. Note the comparison to a typical female grey wolf. The carnassials molars are massive. The Canis lupis is from an early archaic Bison occidentalis jump site in South Dakota.
Another neat specimen from Maricopa Brea. Raptor foot with articulated talons. Very unusual to find bird elements that are articulated. Again Late Pleistocene, Maricopa Brea, Kern Co., Ca.
Lastly, a spectacular closed-cone Pine Cone from the Carpinteria Asphalt Deposits, Late Pleistocene, Rancholeabrean Stage, nr. Santa Barbara, California.
This is Throwback Thursday #85. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc ...), please sent them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks!
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Today, we have a poem from the March 1971 edition of the newsletter. It has a simple name, "Rockhound's Poem". I'm sure there's a bunch of you out there that can identify with the content, and maybe even add a few lines. It seems like it needs mention of snow and ice or broiling summer heat!
I looked, but unfortunately couldn't find anything on Crystal Cluster or Adin W. Van Wine. If anyone knows anything, please send it to us! Thanks!
ROCKHOUND'S POEM
Climbing over rocks and crags,
Putting rocks in pockets and bags,
Walking in mud, 'til each foot weighs a ton,
Getting wet and calling it fun,
Hiking miles through brush and vines,
To hunt the dumps of abandoned mines,
Looking in holes and gravel pits,
Cracking big rocks into little bits,
Doing all this may take some guts,
But these are the reasons some call us nuts!by Adin W. Van Wine via Crystal Cluster
The ESCONI November 2021 Paleontology will be held on Saturday, November, 20th, 2021 at 7:30 PM. We are doing another hybrid in-person/Zoom meeting. The presentation is by ESCONI member Mike Payne. It's called "The Linton Ohio Coal Mine; a unique look into Carboniferous Tetrapods". The Diamond Coal Mine in Linton, OH dates to the mid 1800's and interesting fossils were collected from the shales since the very beginning. The deposit dates to around 300 million years. Over the years, thousands of specimens of Pennsylvanian vertebrates have been collected from the site. This list includes fish, amphibians, and reptiles.
The photos below were supplied by David Duck for his excellent Fossil Friday #37 submission.
Topic: Linton Ohio Mine
Presented By: Mike Payne
Time: Nov 20, 2021 07:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada)
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Reconstruction of the head of Brighstoneus simmondsi. Image credit: John Sibbick.
SciNews has a story about a newly-identified dinosaur. Named Brightstoneus simmondsi, the animal lived about 127 million years ago during the early Cretaceous Period in what is now the Isle of Wight. It weighted about 900 kg (1980 lbs) and measured about 8 meters (26 feet) long. The description was published in the journal Systematic Paleontology.
It belonged to Iguanodontia, a major group of ornithischian dinosaurs that originated in the Middle Jurassic epoch and became increasingly widespread and diverse during the Cretaceous period.
The partial skeleton of Brighstoneus simmondsi was recovered from the Wessex Formation of the Isle of Wight, southern England.
“Until now, iguanodontian material found from the Wealden Group on the Isle of Wight has usually been referred to as one of these two dinosaurs: with more gracile fossil bones assigned to Mantellisaurus and the larger and more robust material assigned to Iguanodon,” said Jeremy Lockwood, a Ph.D, student in the School of Environment, Geography and Geosciences at the University of Portsmouth and the Department of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum, London, and his colleagues.
“However, when we were examining the specimen, we came across several unique traits that distinguished it from either of these other dinosaurs.”
“For me, the number of teeth was a sign. Mantellisaurus has 23 or 24, but this has 28. It also had a bulbous nose, whereas the other species have very straight noses. Altogether, these and other small differences made it very obviously a new species.”
The discovery of Brighstoneus simmondsi suggests that there were far more iguanodontian dinosaurs in what is now the United Kingdom during the Early Cretaceous epoch than previously thought.
This is Mazon Monday post #86. What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com.
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In 2021, ESCONI had a couple field trips to collect fossils from a spoil pile of an old shaft coal mine near Danville, IL. All proved successful with many interesting specimens collected. Have a look at the following links for information about these field trips.
Here are a few pictures from the June 22nd trip.
Found by Joe Vitosky, this fossil is a Calamostachys cone.
Found by Marie Angkuw, this fossil is an Alethopteris.
Found by Sue Dibblee, these fossils are various forms of fern.
Found by Diane Bedrosian, this fossil is a form of Lepidodendron bark with leaf scars.
Found by Rob Russell, this fossil appears to be a seed.
The spoil pile dates to around the turn of the 20th century. The Dering Coal Company opened the mine in 1904. It was in operation from 1904 until 1946 by various companies, including the Peabody Coal Company which operated the mine from 1916 until 1944. This shale pile is Pennsylvanian in age about 305 million years old, which is about 2.5 million years younger than Mazon Creek's Colchester Coal No. 2. The pile is composed mostly of the Energy shale, which is just above the Herrin No. 6 coal. It contains compressions of plants, and contains concretions. The pile spontaneously combusted at some point, turning some of the gray shale into "Red Dog" shale. More information on this site can be found in the ISGS Guidebook http://library.isgs.illinois.edu/Pubs/pdfs/ftgb/ftgb2005A-kickapoo.pdf under "Stop 6".
The gob pile, an abandoned mine dump, is the accumulation of waste products from an underground mine (fig. 12). The piles are known variously as gob piles, slate dumps, boney piles, and culm banks. The gob pile stands about 150 feet above the general land surface. Excellent plant fossils have been collected from the gob pile at this mine. A second large gob pile, located southeast of this stop on the east side of the road, has been reclaimed.
The Dering Coal Company opened the No. 4 Mine here in 1904 to mine the Herrin Coal, which was reported to range from 4.5 to 10.0 feet thick and averaged 5.75 feet at a depth of 208 feet. Four feet of Danville Coal was reported to occur 100 feet from the surface. The mine shaft was located about 300 feet west of the road at the end of the gob pile. The Dering Coal Company operated the No. 4 Mine from 1904 to 1909, followed by the Brazil Block Coal Company, Brazil No. 4 mine, from 1909 to 1911. The Dering Coal Company once again operated the mine between 1911 and 1916, followed by the Peabody Coal Company, which changed the mine name to the Peabody No. 24 Mine and operated it from 1916 to 1944. The last owner was the Chicago Harrisburg Coal Company, which operated the mine from 1944 to 1946. The mine had a cumulative production of 18,054,349 tons.
The gob pile was created by dumping unwanted rocks that were removed from the mine. The early mining methods were labor intensive. Coal miners dug several inches of underclay by hand from under the coal seam so they could break the coal down and out from what is called the working face. In addition, along their haulage ways, they dug out rock above the coal to make a high tunnel so that mules pulling the mine cars could walk through. Rock that fell and sagged into the haulage ways had to be removed to keep them open. The waste rock that could not be stowed in the underground openings left after the coal was mined was brought to the surface and dumped on the pile.
The composition of the waste rock in the gob pile is from both the underclay, which is a soft gray shale, the rock the miners called “soapstone,” and the Energy Shale, the gray shale above the Herrin Coal that formed the roof of the mine and was dug down to heighten the haulage ways. Exposed to weather, the shale softened, and finally turned to mud.
These gob piles contain iron pyrite, sometimes called “fool’s gold” because of its yellow metallic luster. Pyrite is iron sulfide, which is stable buried beneath the earth surface. When exposed to water and oxygen, however, pyrite oxidizes and produces sulfuric acid, iron oxides, and hydroxides. The iron oxides and hydroxides, which are similar to common rust, tint these gob piles red. Sulfuric acid, however, pollutes both the water and the soil around the mines.
In addition, some gob piles have been known to spontaneously combust and burn for many years after the old mines were abandoned. This combustion is initiated by the oxidation of the pyrite and the absorption of oxygen. Air leaks through the pile to the coal and shale material and supplies the needed oxygen for combustion. Conditions do not allow heat to dissipate, and temperature rises, which ignites the coal and shale materials. The cooked shale makes hard brick-like chips that clink underfoot. This red deposit is nicknamed “red dog” by miners. Does the red shale remind you of the red bricks that were manufactured in the Danville area?
Less common are the plates of “blistered” black shale. The miners called this rock “slate,” perhaps because it is hard and splits into smooth sheets. The black shale generally lies on top of the gray shale above the Herrin Coal. Sometimes, however, the black shale is close enough to the coal to be taken down when heightening the haulage ways. Strewn over the slopes are dark gray and brown ironstone nodules—heavy for their size— which were formed in the gray shale above the coal. Of course, there are a few pieces of coal on the pile.
Jack Witty, author of three ESCONI Mazon Creek books, attended the field trips. During the trips, he spent time identifying specimens and taking pictures. Many more pictures were sent in by ESCONI members to Andrew Young. These additional photos were used to help compile the following fossil guides. These guides should prove to be useful tools as there isn't much information available on the plant species of the Herrin Coal deposits.
| Group | Description | Files |
| Lycopsida | Ancestors of the club mosses. These fossils include parts of both arborscent (tree-like) and more herbaceous plants. The largest arborescent forms could grow to more than 40 meters (130 ft.) in height. | |
| Sphenopsida | Ancestors of the horsetails. The sphenophytes include both arborescent (tree-like) and more scrambling (climbing) or shrub-by forms. These plants are characterized by whorls of leaves and hollow stems with a node-inter-node organization. | Sphenopsida |
| Filicopsida | Ferns. Most resemble modern tree ferns and produced sporangia (spore cases) with spores (reproductive cells) of a single type on the lower sides of the leaves. Like modern ferns they had pinnately divided leaves which grew from furled fronds called fiddleheads. | |
| Pteridosperms | Seed Ferns. Pteridosperm foliage appears similar to true ferns. Pteridosperms were arborescent or herbaceous. Unlike ferns, they had seeds and pollen organs. They inhabited a wide range of environments and were a diverse group of plants during this time. Seed ferns are now extinct. | |
| Cordaitales | Ancestral Conifers. Arborescent or scrambling shrub-like plants, with large strap-like leaves distributed at the branch tips and along their length. Like modern conifers, they produced separate male and female cone-like structures. All are now extinct. |
Conifers |
A photo of the fossil (top) and digital brain reconstruction (bottom) of the toothy Cretaceous bird Ichthyornis. (Image credit: Torres et al; CC BY 4.0)
Live Science has a story about the survival of the birds across the K-Pg boundary. A paper in the journal Science Advances looks at brain size of a fossil birds and theorizes that was a factor that helped them survive.
When the dinosaur-killing asteroid collided with Earth about 66 million years ago, it triggered a slew of horrific events — shockwaves, wildfires, acid rain, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and nuclear winter-like conditions — that killed about 80% of all animal species. But, mysteriously, some dinosaurs survived: the birds.
But why did some lineages of birds endure, while others perished? New research on a well-preserved ancient bird skull suggests that the bird species that survived the cataclysm had bigger cerebrums, or forebrains — the front region of the brain.
Although it's not clear exactly how larger forebrains helped birds survive, as the forebrain is responsible for many processes, "it likely had to do with behavioral plasticity — the birds with bigger forebrains could probably modify their own behavior quickly enough to keep up with how quickly their environment was changing," study lead researcher Chris Torres, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral research fellow in the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine at Ohio University, told Live Science in an email.
Palaeocast podcast has a new episode. This one is about bats.
After rodents, bats are the second largest group of mammals, representing a staggering 20% of all mammal species. They can be found all over the world, with the exception of cold climates, where they often play incredibly important ecological roles. Their ecologies (ways in which they live) go well beyond the cave-hanging, moth-eating stereotypes and diets can also be based on fruits, nectar or even blood. In fact, some tropical plants rely solely upon bats for pollination!
But when did bats evolve and who are their closest relatives? Do they have a good fossil record? Is vampirism an effective feeding strategy?
In this episode, we’re joined by Dr Nancy Simmons, Curator-In-Charge of Mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History, who introduces us to the wonderful world of bats and their fossil record.
This is the "Fossil Friday" post #82. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world!
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A Mazon Creek insect is up today... a Eubleptus danielsi from the Mazon River. The concretion was collected in 2020 at the I&M Canal Corridor Fossil Field Trip. The species is named for L.E. Daniels a prolific early collector of Mazon Creek and other Carboniferous fossils. His collection resides at the Illinois State Museum.
The following drawing comes from the "Richardson's Guide to the Fossil Fauna of Mazon Creek".
Figure 14A.12. Eubleptus danielsi, reconstruction by Carpenter (1983). Scale bar = 10 mm. Abbreviations: a, antenna; ab, abdomen; c, cerci; f, foreleg; fw, forewing; h, head; hw, hind wing; p, prothorax.
Here is the specimen. It was in the freeze/thaw for about 6 months or so. Cycling in and out a few times a week.
This is Throwback Thursday #84. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc ...), please sent them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks!
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We have a poem called "The Dinosaur" this week. It comes from the Chicago Tribune's "Line 'O Type or Two" column, which was created by Bert Leston Taylor in 1901. He presided over it until his death in 1921. Starting in 1924, Richard Henry Little took over the column. And, starting in 1924, he published annual compilations of the material until 1948. Some information on the column can be found here, scroll down or search for "The Linebook".
One of the things that always seemed to be available for next to nothing, were small oblong publications called “The Linebook”. They were filled with charming collections of poems and writings reprinted from the Trib’s column “A Line o’ Type or Two” started in 1901 by Bert Leston Taylor. When Richard Henry Little took over the column in 1924, he established “The Linebook” – an annual compilation of material from the column. The first issue’s cover design displayed his silhouette in full, ungainly length, but as of 1926 they employed colorful and playful wraparound covers to grab fans of the column. These covers more often than not depicted Little’s image designed by a long list of talented graphic designers. Bit by bit I gobbled them up and eventually collected up the entire 1924 to 1948 run presented below. . .
"The Dinosaur" is attributed to Bert L. Taylor, so it must have appeared between 1901 and 1921. Interestingly, it references the myth that dinosaurs had two brains. That idea arose when 19th century paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh noticed that the sauropod Camarasaurus had an enlarged canal in the vertebrae over its hips. The expanded canal was actually larger than the animal's brain case! See this article in Smithsonian Magazine in 2012.
Dinosaur brain expert Emily Buchholtz outlined the double brain issue in the newly-published second edition of The Complete Dinosaur. The idea stems from the work of 19th-century Yale paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh. In an assessment of the sauropod Camarasaurus, Marsh noticed that the canal in the vertebrae over the dinosaur’s hips enlarged into an expanded canal that was larger than the cavity for the dinosaur’s brain. “This is a most suggestive fact,” he wrote, and, according to Buchholtz, in 1881 Marsh described a similar expansion in the neural canal of Stegosaurus as “a posterior braincase.”
Sauropods and stegosaurs seemed like the perfect candidates for butt brains. These huge dinosaurs seemed to have pitiful brain sizes compared to the rest of their body, and a second brain–or similar organ–could have helped coordinate their back legs and tails. Alternatively, the second brain was sometimes cast as a kind of junction box, speeding up signals from the back half of the body up to the primary brain. That is, if such an organ actually existed. As paleontologists now know, no dinosaur had a second brain.
Here is "The Dinosaur" as it appeared in the ESCONI newsletter in October 1951.
The Dinosaur
Behold the mighty dinosaur,
Famous in prehistoric lore,
Not only for his weight and strength
But for his intellectual length.
You will observe by these remains
The creature had two sets of brains-
One in his head (the usual place)
The other at his spinal base.
Thus he could reason a priori
As well as a posteriori.
No problem bothered him a bit;
He made both head and tail of it.
So wise was he, so wise and solemn,
Each thought filled just a spinal column.
If one brain found the pressure strong
It passed a few ideas along;
If something slipped his forward mind
Twas rescued by the one behind;
And if in error he was caught
He had a saving after thought.
As he thought twice before he spoke
He had no judgments to revoke;
For he could think, without congestion
Upon both sides of every question.
O, gaze upon the model beast,
Defunct ten million years at least.(Bert L. Taylor in The Tribune's Line of Type or Two Submitted by F. C. Wray.)
Living reconstruction of Issi saaneq, a newly discovered dinosaur that lived on Greenland 214 million years ago. Credit: Victor Beccari
SciTechDaily has a story about a new dinosaur. Called Issi saaneq, which means "Cold Bone", this animal lived about 214 million years ago during the late Triassic Period in what is now Greenland. Believed to be an ancestor to sauropods, it was medium sized with a long neck, however, it walked on its hind legs. Multiple specimens were initially found by researchers from Harvard University in 1994. They thought it was a Plateosaurus, which is a well known sauropod ancestor from Germany, France, and Switzerland. The findings were published in the journal Diversity.
The two-legged dinosaur Issi saaneq lived about 214 million years ago in what is now Greenland. It was a medium-sized, long-necked herbivore and a predecessor of the sauropods, the largest land animals ever to live. It was discovered by an international team of researchers from Portugal, Denmark, and Germany, including the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). The name of the new dinosaur pays tribute to Greenland’s Inuit language and means “cold bone.” The team reports on its discovery in the journal Diversity.
The initial remains of the dinosaur — two well-preserved skulls — were first unearthed in 1994 during an excavation in East Greenland by paleontologists from Harvard University. One of the specimens was originally thought to be from a Plateosaurus, a well-known long-necked dinosaur that lived in Germany, France, and Switzerland during the Triassic Period. Only a few finds from East Greenland have been prepared and thoroughly documented. “It is exciting to discover a close relative of the well-known Plateosaurus, hundreds of which have already been found here in Germany,” says co-author Dr. Oliver Wings from MLU.
The ESCONI November 2021 General Meeting will be held on Friday, November 12th, 2021 at 8:00 PM via Zoom. Our speaker is Stacy Henderson part of the "MonStER" lab (Montana State Eruption Research) . For more information, see this link https://www.monsterlab.org/.
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This is Mazon Monday post #85. What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com.
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Our species spotlight for this week is Neuropteris ovata. N. ovata was described by Friedrich Hoffmann (1797-1836) in 1826. Hoffmann was a Professor of Geology at the University of Berlin. He is esspecially known for his work on the volcanoes of Italy. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much other information about him. This paper is the description of N. ovata.
Hoffmann, F. 1826. Untersuchungen über die Pänzen-Reste des Kohlengebirges von Ibbenbühren und von Piesberg bei Osnabrück. Archiv für Bergbau und Hüttenwesen 13: 266-282.
N. ovata is a seed fern, belonging to a group called Medullosales which is an extinct order of plants referred to as the pteridosperms. It is commonly found in terrestrial Mazon Creek deposits. Seed ferms are common across most late Carboniferous localities. The Mazon Creek biota has a number of seed fern species, including Neuropteris, Alethopteris, Cyclopteris, Macroneuropteris, Odontopteris, and Laveineopteris among others. They were medium sized plants. At that time, they formed part of the forest understory. Their closest living relatives are the Cycads.
The book "A Comprehensive Guide of the Fossil Flora of Mazon Creek" by Jack Wittry has a list of names. Besides Mixoneura ovata, it has pretty much always been referred to as Neuropteris ovata, however there has been a fair bit of controversy as to where it should be classified with a few other species of Neuropteris being assigned as subspecies of N. ovata.
1826. Neuropteris ovata Hoffman: p. 158, pl. i b, figs. 5-7, non 8
1866. Neuropteris loschii (non Brongniart); Lesquereux: p. 428,
1879-80. Neuropteris loschii (non Brongniart); Lesquereux: p. 98, pl. 11, figs. 1-4
1925. Neuropteris ovata; Noé: p. 14, pl. 21, fig. 4
1958. Mixoneura ovata Hoffman; Langford, p. 218, figs. 382, 383
1959. Neuropteris ovata Hoffman forma typica; Crookall: p. 153, pl. 43, figs. 1-5
1969. Neuropteris ovata Hoffman forma typica; Darrah: p. 105, pl. 9, fig. 2; pl. 10, figs. 1, (?)2
1979. Mixoneura ovata Hoffman; Janssen: p. 157, fig. 150
The "ESCONI Keys to Mazon Creek Plants" was written in 1990, before N. ovata was split from N. vermicularis. Speaking to the difficultly in classifying N.ovata, the book calls it "the most variable plant in the fossil record of the Mazon Creek area.
Neuropteris ovata
This is the most variable plant in the fossil record of the Mazon Creek area. The following species are now assigned to N. ovata, and their former names are no longer accepted: N. flexuosa, N. plicata, N. vermicularis, N. gigantea, N. heterophylla, N. obliqua, N. loschi, and Mixoneura jenneyi.
Forms
- N. ovata typica has a large tripinnate frond. The pinnules are twice as long as wide, approximately 4-10 by 8-20 mm. The base is attached without a stalk or with a very short stalk and more or less cordate. The pinnules are ovate with rounded apex. The primary pinnule is small, odontopteroid, and asymmetrical. The midvein is indistinct and often appears to be missing because of branching near the base. The fine numerous veins number 50 or more per centimeter at the margin.
Cyclopterid pinnules, when present on the rachis, have fringed margins.- N. ovata flexuosa is characterized by rela tively large pinnules. The upper basal margin is round while the lower basal margin is auricled. The venation is fairly fine but commonly distant. The midvein is sometimes absent; if present, it is a little more prominent than the lateral veins and sometimes persisting to near the apex. The lateral veins are arched and dichotomous, usually dividing four times. Commonly, there are 40 veinlets per centimeter of margin length. The primary pinnule is relatively larger and broader than in N. ovata typica. This species is rare in the Mazon Creek area.
- N. ovata vermicularis is similar to N. ovata flexuosa but with a larger and more symmetrical primary pinnule. The secondary pinnules taper to a rounded apex, and fre quently have a constricted base. The pinnules are large, up to 70 mm long and 25 mm wide, and are ovate. The venation is coarse and not as fine as in N. ovata flexuosa.
But Wittry, in the description and remarks seems to have found them a home.
DESCRIPTION: The ultimate pinna gently tapers, becoming more linear when large. The rachis is straight and longitudinally striate. The pinnules are sessile or attached by a very short petiole, ovate or oblong, and twice as long as they are wide. The pinnules are rounded at the apex. At their bases, the basiscopic side has a small, pro zounced auricle and the acroscopic side is rounded. The terminal pinnule is asymmetric, obtuse at the apex, small, and oval. The midvein is distinctly marked by a depression in larger pinnules, abruptly disappears before the middle, and is accompanied by subsidiary veins (mixoneuran-like) entering the pinnule on both sides. In smaller pinnules, the midvein is replaced by several thin veins that enter directly from the rachis through a wide petiole. Lateral veins are well marked, thin, and close, meeting the margin with 45 to 50 veins per centimeter.
REMARKS: Neuropteris ovata is common. In 1959, Crookall placed Neuropteris flexuosa into N. ovata as a form. Darrah later added Neuropteris vermicularis to N. ovata as a form. Both N. ovata and N. flexuosa have now been shown to be separate species by cuticle studies. For this reason, the forma designations have been dropped from the names N. ovata and N. flexuosa. Also see Neuropteris fimbriata.
From George Langford
Chowder Flats
Dresden 1963
Field Museum specimen - PP 58451
Field Museum - Field Museum of Natural History P 31415
An artist’s impression of the hatchling pterosaurs. Credit: Megan Jacobs
Phys.org had a story about pterosaus during the Cretaceous. A new study looked at competition between birds and pterosaurs and found the babies of the largest pterosaurs out-competed the adults of smaller species. Previously, it was thought that birds had out-competed the smaller species. The paper appeared in the journal Cretaceous Research.
New research has found that it was the babies of giant pterosaurs—known as flaplings—who overshadowed their small adult rivals.
The newly hatched juveniles of large and gigantic pterosaurs likely outcompeted other smaller adult pterosaur species to dominate the Late Cretaceous period around 100 million years ago, a new study led by researchers from the University of Portsmouth has found.
Pterosaurs were the flying cousins of dinosaurs—some were as large as a Spitfire fighter plane and others as small as a thrush.
During the Triassic and Jurassic periods, 252–145 million years ago, pterosaurs reached only modest sizes, but by the Late Cretaceous period many were giants—some with a wingspan of 10 meters or more.
It had been previously thought that the smaller species of pterosaurs were outcompeted by newly evolving birds, but this research has found that it was actually the babies of giant pterosaurs—known as flaplings—who overshadowed their small adult rivals.
Lead author, Roy Smith, from the University of Portsmouth's School of the Environment, Geography and Geosciences, worked on the study with scientists from Africa and the UK. The international team comprised of experts from the universities of Cape Town, Leicester, Portsmouth and Casablanca.
