Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois - ESCONI

ESCONI Events November 2021

Field trips require membership, but visitors are welcome at all meetings!

Friday, Nov 12th	ESCONI General Meeting 8:00 PM Zoom - Topic: Yellowstone Volcanology and the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory by Stacy Henderson from Montana State.  Zoom link
Saturday, Nov 13th	ESCONI Junior Meeting 7:00 PM Zoom - Topic: "More on Identifying Rocks and Minerals" Specifics of this meeting are available from Scott Galloway, 630-670-2591, gallowayscottf@gmail.com. Contact Scott to get the Zoom link to attend the virtual meeting and find out how to join the Juniors Club.
Saturday, Nov 20th	ESCONI Paleontology Meeting - Topic: "The Linton Ohio Coal Mine; a unique look into Carboniferous Tetrapods" by Mike Payne. This will be a hybrid In-Person/Zoom meeting. Zoom Link

 

Weird Tracks in Texas Indicate Giant Sauropods Walking on Their Front Feet Only #dinosaur #fossil #texas #paleontology #sauropod

(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.

Jurassic World "Dominion" Trailer #dinosaur #JurassicPark #movie #movietrailer

 

Screen Rant has a new movie trailer for Jurassic World 3, schedule for release in June 2022.  Say what you will about the science, but the special effects are stunning!  This trailer shows scenes from the Cretaceous through the present day in Jurassic World.  This one has both the required fight scene between large predatory dinosaurs and an interaction between a T-rex and people.  Check it out!

On the heels of Trevorrow confirming that the film was officially complete, Universal Pictures has debuted a Jurassic World: Dominion trailer, which was previously released as a special IMAX preview to F9: The Fast Saga's theatrical release. Entitled "The Prologue," the video shifts the focus back to 65 million years in the past and highlights dinosaurs that will be key to the story of the upcoming threequel.

Fossil Friday #84: Spider from Knob Noster #fossil #MazonCreek #FossilFriday #paleontology #KnobNoster #Missouri #spider

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.

 

Throwback Thursday #86: Happy Thanksgiving! #fossil #ammonite #Thanksgiving @FieldMuseum #paleontology

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.

 

 

ESCONI December 2021 General Meeting - December 3rd, 2021 at 8:00 PM via Zoom - "Paleoecology of the Herrin Coal Roof Shales Including Depositional Environment and Climate” #fossil #illinois #coal #paleontology #pennsylvanian #paleoclimate

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.

 

Nature: Ancient Pine Cone Trapped in Amber Shows a Super-Rare Form of Plant 'Parenting' #amber #fossil #pinecone #plant

(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.

Mazon Monday #87: Video for November 2021 Paleontology Meeting - "The Linton Ohio Coal Mine; a unique look into Carboniferous Tetrapods" #fossil #paleontology #MazonMonday #MazonCreek #Pennsylvanian #Ohio #Linton

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.

14 Lies About Dinosaurs and Paleontology Movies and TV Have Told You #dinosaur #jurassicpark #paleontology

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...

PBS Eons: When It Was Too Hot for Leaves #paleontology #plants #evolution #fossil #china #climatechange #Silurian

 

There is a new episode of PBS Eons.  This one is about environmental change the evolution of early plants.

Plants first made their way onto land at least 470 million years ago but for their first 80 million years, leaves as we know them today didn’t exist. What held them back?

 

Fossil Friday #83: Tar Pit Fossils #fossil #paleontology #tarpit #California #FossilFriday #dragonfly #wolf #direwolf #bird #cone

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. 

Throwback Thursday #85: Rockhound's Poem From March 1971 #poem #history #TBT #ThrowbackThursday

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

ESCONI November 2021 Paleontology Meeting - November 20th, 2021 at 7:30 PM - "The Linton Ohio Coal Mine; a unique look into Carboniferous Tetrapods" #fossil #paleontology #MazonCreek #Pennsylvanian #Ohio #Linton

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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Paleontologists Unearth New Species of Iguanodontian Dinosaur #fossil #dinosaur #paleontology #isleofwight #cretaceous

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.

Mazon Monday #86: Herrin Coal Fossil Guides #fossil #paleontology #MazonCreek #Herrin #danville #coal #pennsylvanian #illinois

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.

• June 22nd, 2021
• August 25th, 2021

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.	Lycopsida 1 Lycopsida 2
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.	Filicopsida 1 Filicopsida 2
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.	Pteridosperms 1 Pteridosperms 2
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

 

How did birds survive the dinosaur-killing asteroid? #dinosaurs #birds #paleontology #massextinction #cretaceous

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 Episode 130: Bats #fossil #paleontology #bats #Palaeocast #greenriver #mammals

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.

Fossil Friday #82: Eubleptus danielsi #fossil #insect #MazonCreek #FossilFriday #paleontology #illinois

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.

Throwback Thursday #84: The Dinosaur #fossil #paleontology #poem #dinosaur #TBT #history #ThrowbackThursday

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.)

“Cold Bone”: New Dinosaur Species Discovered That Lived on Greenland 214 Million Years Ago #fossil #dinosaur #paleontology #greenland

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.

ESCONI November 2021 General Meeting - November 12th, 2021 at 8:00 PM via Zoom - "Yellowstone Volcanology and the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory” #volcano #yellowstone #geology #vulcanism

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/.

Join Zoom Meeting

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Mazon Monday #85: Species Spotlight - Neuropteris ovata #fossil #MazonCreek #MazonMonday #paleontology #fern #carboniferous

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

Specimens

From George Langford

Chowder Flats

Dresden 1963

Field Museum specimen - PP 58451

Field Museum - Field Museum of Natural History P 31415

 

Tiny pterosaurs dominated cretaceous skies #pterosaur #fossil #cretaceous #paleontology #birds

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.

Northwest Illinois Rock Club - Jewelry, Gem, Fossil and Mineral Show - November 13th and 14th, 2021

The Journal Standard has a piece about the up coming Northwest Illinois Rock Club's Jewelry, Gem, Fossil and Mineral Show.  If you are near Freeport, IL on November 13th and 14th, check it out!

From ancient fossils to the beauty of minerals and gem stones, the bling of jewelry and other gifts created from the wonders of nature, you will find it all at the Nov.13 and 14 Jewelry, Gem, Fossil and Mineral Show at the Freeport Eagles Club.

Located at 1200 W. Galena Ave., the new 2021 venue is located across from the Lincoln Mall with ample parking available.

Northwest Illinois Rock Club show chair, Brian Green, of Warren, said Covid-19 restrictions prevented Highland Community College, where the event has been held for years, to hold the show this year.

Green said he is grateful that the Eagles Club had rental space available.

The popular family event features vendors from Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois.

Fossil Friday #81: Mazon Creek Roachoid #fossil #insect #MazonCreek #paleontology #FossilFriday #illinois #carboniferous #pennsylvanian

This is the "Fossil Friday" post #81.  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 this week's Fossil Friday, we have a beautiful Mazon Creek roachoid.  This stunning specimen comes from ESCONI member Ralph Jewell.  Insects are rare in the Mazon Creek fossil biota.  For more information, see Mazon Monday #46, where we discussed roachoids. 

This one is very nice!  Thanks for sharing, Ralph!

After a little cleaning.

Throwback Thursday #83: Looking Back at ESCONI November 2021 #history #TBT #ThrowbackThursday

This is Throwback Thursday #83.  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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25 Years Ago – November 1996

• The November 1996 program was “Mound Builders of the Americas”, by Les Marszalek.
• The Juniors meeting in November 1996 provided a chance to build an erupting volcano.
• ESCONI member Andrew Hay presented a program at Lizzadro Museum On November 16, 1996 called “Plant Life Through the Ages: The Illinois Fossil Story”.

50 Years Ago – November 1971

• The October 1971 Earth Science News describes “Brag Night” for the Paleontology Study Group, during which Jim Konecny displayed a 52- pound ammonite from Texas, and a 23-pound dinosaur vertebra from Utah!
• The annual ESCONI Silent Auction was held on October 8, 1971. This activity stopped several years ago, but was brought back this year in the form of the “Fall Sale”.
• The following words of wisdom came from a newsletter called “The Geode”: “Once you get a mouthful of very hot coffee, whatever you do next is going to be wrong”.

 

Giant Sea Lizards Ruled the Waves While T. Rex Roamed on Land #fossil #paleontology #ocean #cretaceous #mosasaurs #extinction

Mosasaurus was among the largest and last of the sea-dwelling mosasaurs. Dmitri Bogdanov via Wikimedia Commons under CC0

Smithsonian Magazine has a post about mosasaurs.  A new paper in the journal PaleoBios finds that mosasaurs ruled the oceans up until the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous some 66 million years ago.  It had been theorized they went extinct millions of years before the impact.  Fossil vertebra from the Hell Creek formation provided the evidence.  

There hardly was a more fearsome family of seagoing carnivores than the mosasaurs. From the time the first of these marine lizards slipped into the oceans about 98 million years ago, mosasaurs diversified into a widespread array of aquatic ambush predators that fed on everything from dinosaurs washed out to sea to other mosasaurs. And while it was once thought that these reptiles started to disappear from Earth’s oceans millions of years before a catastrophic asteroid strike closed the Cretaceous period, a fossil find in North Dakota is helping to rewrite the history of these voracious lizards.

The Hell Creek Formation of the western United States is most famous for fossils of Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, Pachycephalosaurus and other dinosaurs that roamed the forests and swamps of the region 66 million years ago. But parts of the Hell Creek Formation also preserve pools of what was once ocean, the remainders of a vast Western Interior Seaway that split North America in two. In one of these pockets of marine strata a private landowner found a curious fossil—an isolated piece of a creature’s backbone—and took it to the North Dakota Geological Survey for identification. The bone had come from a large mosasaur, and further examination of the site turned up part of a mosasaur’s jaw. The giant lizards hadn’t vanished long before the impact. The bones added to an emerging picture that the ocean’s apex predators were still prowling the Cretaceous seas until the day the asteroid struck, the conclusion of a paper published in August in the journal PaleoBios.

Up until now, notes study author and WVU Potomac State College paleontologist Nathan Van Vranken, most mosasaur finds from North America have come from sites along the ancient Atlantic Coast and Gulf of Mexico. As sea levels fell and the Western Interior Seaway drained off the continent, it seemed the mosasaurs that once dominated those waters disappeared as the once thriving ecosystems turned into a “Strangelove Ocean” where the water became more acidic and plankton died off en masse. Such a harsh environment was thought to lack enough prey for mosasaurs and other large predators to survive. But the new find from North Dakota indicates that large mosasaurs were still present in the last remaining parts of the ancient seaway in the middle of the continent. “They still persisted until the end,” Van Vranken says.

Strange Animals That Lived Before the Dinosaurs Reveal the Evolutionary Origin of Tusks #fossil #paleontology #evolution #science #tusks #animals

Life reconstruction of the dicynodont Dicynodon. Aside from the tusks in the upper jaw, most dicynodonts possessed a turtle-like beak that they used to chew their food. Image by Marlene Hill Donnelly. Credit: Marlene Hill Donnelly

SciTechDaily has a story about animal tusks.  Throughout history, many animals have sported tusks, from modern day elephants to the dicynodonts of the Permian.  A new paper in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B looks at the evolutionary history of tusks.

A wide variety of animals have tusks, from elephants and walruses to five-pound, guinea pig-looking critters called hyraxes. But one thing tusked animals have in common is that they’re all mammals — there are no known fish, reptiles, or birds with tusks. In a new study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, paleontologists traced the first tusks back to ancient mammal relatives that lived before the dinosaurs, and to do so, they had to define what makes a tusk a tusk in the first place.

“Tusks are this very famous anatomy, but until I started working on this study, I never really thought about how tusks are restricted to mammals,” says Megan Whitney, a researcher at Harvard University and the lead author of the study.

“We were able to show that the first tusks belonged to animals that came before modern mammals, called dicynodonts,” says Ken Angielczyk, a curator at Chicago’s Field Museum and an author of the paper. “They’re very weird animals.”

The dicynodonts mostly lived before the time of the dinosaurs, from about 270 to 201 million years ago, and they ranged from rat-sized to elephant-sized. Modern mammals are their closest living relatives, but they looked more reptilian, with turtle-like beaks. And since their discovery 176 years ago, one of their defining features has been the pair of protruding tusks in their upper jaws. The name dicynodont even means “two canine teeth.”

Mazon Monday #84: Chowder Flats #MazonCreek #MazonMonday #fossil #pennsylvanian #paleontology #illinois

This is Mazon Monday post #84.  What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil?  Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com.

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During the ESCONI Sale back in October, a member noticed a booklet called "A Guide to the Coal Fossils of Chowder Flats, Morris, Illinois".  It was written by Robert J. Reich in 1982, who was advisor to the Botany Learning Club at the Milwaukee Area Technical College.  If anyone has information about Mr. Reich or the Botany Learning Club, please send it along, as unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anything about Mr. Reich or the Botany Learning Club available online.   The ESCONI library has a few copies available to be lent to ESCONI members. 

There isn't much available about the Chowder Flats locality, which is now a housing development.  While some of the introductory material is a little dated and has been revised with additional scientific evidence in the years since, this booklet contains a wealth of historical and scientific information.  

There are numerous maps of the area, including a detailed layout of the Chowder Flats locality with frequency of fossil specimens, both plant and animal.

Except for using a hammer to open concretions, the advice on collecting, namely logging and numbering specimens is very good... most of us (included myself) should follow these guidelines.

4. Collecting Concretion Fossils.

Concretions are greatly variable in size ranging from about 3/4 inch in diameter to several inches across. Their shapes are also very variable. They may be round, oblong, oval, or long and narrow. They are usually rusty yellow-brown on the surface, but the surface color is caused by oxidation from exposure.

Collect a few concretions and squeeze each one between your fingers to determine if it is hard or if it crumbles. Perhaps only surface layers will fall away leaving a hard interior nodule. This structure should be struck on the thin edge, with the hammer, to cause a split along any surface bearing a fossil. Usually, the rock will split along the weak zone surface of the fossil. Very brittle stones should be discarded. Please use safety glasses when hammering rocks.

If a whitish feature is observed inside the stone, or if other colors drastically different than the normal ground color are observed in streaks, lines, or other shapes keep the stone for later examination. Sometimes, even weak smudge-like structures, upon cleaning, will reveal rare shrimp, polychaetes, jellyfish, fishes, etc. Of course, spectacular fern leaves, stems, etc. are frequently encountered.

Reassemble good specimens and wrap or rubber-band them and place them in a bag. Add a tag with the hill number from which the concretions were collected.

Try not to mix concretions from two or more hills in the same bag. Use a new bag for each new hill. Always place an identification tag in each bag. See the maps on pages 12-13 for hill numbers.

Sometimes fossil stems and large pieces of fossil wood will be found that are not in concretions. Keep a lookout for such prizes.

Pack your bags carefully one on top of the other, into your pail or backpack. Try not to mix specimens from different hills.

Don't carry more weight than you can manage comfortably.

If you wish, you may take bags of unopened concretions home for opening later. You can increase your fossil collection greatly in this way.

Jot notes in your field notebook concerning bag numbers and hills of origin, etc. Include in your field notes interesting bits of information about opened concretions and their contents. These notes are often quite helpful later, when working with the specimens.

5. Preparing Your Fossil Collection at Home.

1. Cleaning: Remove loose scale from concretions into a paper bag for disposal. Don't wash scale down a drain, you'll clog the pipes. Hose your specimens in the garden or alley. Use a bucket of water to scrub the specimens. A scrub brush is fine for outer surfaces of large concretions. A toothbrush is good for small concretions, or fossil surfaces.

2. Drying: Allow the specimens to dry in old cardboard beer-box flats, fossil surfaces upward.

3. Numbering: Assign a number to each specimen. Write the number on two small pieces of paper and glue one on the outside of each half.

4. Notebooks: Obtain a notebook about 5 x 7 inches, with a hard cover. Keep careful notes on each specimen.

5. Storage: The simplest method of storage is in cotton-lined shirt boxes which can be purchased from gift departments in most department stores. Basement or closet shelves are good places to stack these boxes. The more ardent collector may wish to provide wooden drawers or steel drawers in more elaborate cabinets.

6. Identification: Various books are available for identifying Pennsylvanian concretion fossils. A brief list of important titles is found in the bibliography at the end of this paper.

There are lists of the plant and animal fossils that could be found... it's very extensive.  How amazing that many Pit 11 species were found, including the Tully Monster!  From the lists, Chowder Flats was a very rich fossil locality!

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF PLANT FOSSILS OF CHOWDER FLATS

Alethopteris
Annularia
Aspidiopsis
Asterophyllites
Calamites
Codonospermum
Codenotheca
"Cones"
Cordaicarpus
Cordaiphyllum
Cordaites
Crosiers (Ferns) (Spiropteris)
Crossetheca
Cyclopteris
Equisetites
"Ferns" (Various)
Lepidodendron
Lepidophyllum
Lepidostrobophyllum
Lepidostrobus
Linopteris
Mariopteris
Neuropteris
"Nedes" (Stem)
Odontopteris
Pecopteris
Roots
Sarcotesta
Scars (Leaf)
Seeds (Assorted)
Sigillaria
Sphenophyllum
Sphenopteris
Sperangites
Stems (Asserted)
Stigmaria
Wood (Asserted)
Caulopteris

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ANIMAL FOSSILS OF CHOWDER FLATS

Acanthotelsen stimpsoni
Anthracomedusa turnbullii
Beletelsen magister
Centipede
Clams
Cyclus americanus
Cyzicus sp.
Esconites zelus
Essexella ascherae
"Fishes"
Flea Shrimp
Gastrepeds (Shails)
Horseshee Crab
Hydroids
Hydrozoans
Insects
Insect Wings
Lamproy?
Leech?
Medusae
Millipedes
Mite?
Octomedusa pieckerum
Ostraced
Plain Worm
Polychaetes
Scallops
Sea Cucumbers
Shark Teeth
Shrimps
Shail
Spirerbis
Tully Monster
Worm Borings
Worms

There are many good drawings of both plant and animal species.

The author uses the data collected to propose a paleoecological setting for the site.  That setting is a section of river and banks upstream of a delta that thought to extend into a bay.  Presently, the land based plants and animals are referred to as the Braidwood biota, while downstream in the bay, there is the Essex biota.  Like Pit 11, there were elements of both in Chowder Flats. 

10. The Paleoecology of the Chowder Flats Area

In part 3 of this paper, the rationale was described for the study of individual hills (ridges) through careful use of a numbering system and notations of collections. In section 8, each hill is described in terms of its fossil flora and fauna. The frequency study in section 9 is basic to gaining some insight into the ecological setting of the area when the organisms were living.

A static view is presented, deliberately avoiding the extensive time span involved, and the obvious changes which had occurred at the site. Ecological succession was probably active in the Pennsylvanian coal forests as it is in present day forests. A probable sequence is suggested,based upon the distribution of fossil remains at the site. From this data, a hypothetical setting is reconstructed. See page 45. The fossil materials have been vertically disrupted, destroying stratigraphic sequence and obliterating evidences of successional changes of coal forest vegetation.

The known structure of coal forest trees and other vegetation suggests a possible sequence of development of vegetation on a site such as Chowder Flats, from open water to drier, upland situations. A bold attempt to depict this "succession of vegetation" is shown on page 46.

Tides influence the marine community as shown on page 47.

The Oldest Airborne Vertebrate Animal Was a Reptile With ‘Weird’ Wings #reptile #fossil #paleontology #permian

Scientists pulled this weigeltisaurid fossil out of an outcropping of copper shale in Germany in 1992. Now, Smithsonian paleontologists have fully described this animal, the oldest known vertebrate capable of gliding through air. Pritchard et al. 2021

Smithsonian Magazine has a story about the first flying vertebrate.  The fossil of Weigeltisaurus jaekeli was found in 1992 in Germany.  It lived during the Permian Period over 250 million years ago.  A new full analysis of the specimen was recently published in the journal PeerJ.  Where the researchers theorize that the bony rods supported winglike membranes for gliding, similar to some modern day squirrels. Interestingly, his species was first described in 1930 with other specimens known from England, Russia, and Madagascar.

The fossil hunter found the strange skeleton by splitting pieces of shale, cracking the fossil into two slabs. One slab ended up in the hands of a private collector and likely contains pieces of the reptile's bones. The other slab held most of the skeleton and landed in the collection of the State Museum of Natural History in Karlsruhe, Germany. Scientists pinpointed the fossil in the second slab as a Weigeltisaurus, which was first described from another fossil in 1930, but the reptile's body shape still remained an enigma to paleontologists.  

Over the years, some researchers suggested that the long bones protruding from the specimen’s abdomen could have allowed the animal to glide through the air like a flying squirrel. But the skeleton in the fossil is curved in on itself and some bones are overlapping, making it hard to tell if they’re just ribs, or something else.

PBS Eons: How Dinosaurs Coupled Up #paleontology #dinosaur #fossil #pbs @EonsShow #birds

 

There's a new episode of PBS Eons.  Birds do it... bees do it, even dinosaurs do it!  Remember birds are dinosaurs, so....

Dinosaur mating behavior has been the subject of a lot of speculation, but what can we actually say about it from the fossil record?