Come on out to the show! There is a bunch of new live and silent auction material! Additionally, the vendors will be back again for another day of fun and great deals!
Pictures from the show! Come on out! There's lots to do and see!
Show Setup Pictures!
Ready to crack some geodes!
Mazon Creek Specimens!
Minerals!
Tomorrow is the 2019 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show! Here are a few more pictures of live auction material Macroneuropteris scheuchzeri (Mazon Creek)
Just 2 more days until the 2019 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show... Here are a few pictures of live auction minerals.
Another preview of material for the live auction at the 2019 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show... Laveineopteris rarinervis (Mazon Creek Fern)
Another preview of material for the live auction at the 2019 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show... Neuropteris vermicularis (Mazon Creek Fern)
Another preview of material for the live auction at the 2019 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show... Alethopteris serlii (Mazon Creek Fern)
The Mid-American Paleontology Society (MAPS) will hold its 41st National Fossil EXPO on March 29th-31st, 2019. This is the largest fossil only show in the world.
The topic this year is Trilobites and the keynote speaker is Dr. Jonathon Adrian of the University of Iowa. The keynote will be at 6:00 PM on Friday, March 29th, 2019.
MAPS EXPO:
Friday March 29: 8:00 am to 5:00 pm
Saturday March 30: 8:00 am to 5:00 pm
Sunday March 31: 8:00 am to 3:00 pm
Hotel Show:
Wednesday March 27: 3:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Thursday March 28: 10:00 am to 9:00 pm
Friday March 29: 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Saturday March 30: All Day
Save the Date! Just 1 week until the ESCONI Show!
Saturday, March 23rd - 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Sunday, March 24th - 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Free admittance and parking!
Explore
your interests
Shop
for jewelry, gems, fossils, minerals from world-class vendors
List to Follow Soon, Stay tuned!
Find
unique and interesting books at the used book sale
Learn
from members of club demonstrating their hobbies and collections
Bid and buy
gems, minerals and fossils at the
Silent Auction
and Live Auctions
(photos of some items will be posted on website a week before show)
Enjoy
amazing displays from the
Field Museum & Lizzadro Museum
Win
an amazing earth-science related prize in the hourly raffle if your ticket chosen
AND MORE FOR KIDS ~
Receive
a FREE collection of minerals and fossils at the Junior Booth
Play
games and do crafts at the Kiddie Corner
Split
your own geode
Accomplish
some of the requirements for badges....
Boy Scout Geology, Collections, or Archaeology Badge
Girl Scout Jeweler Junior Craft Badge
4-H Science Project
Click here to see more photos of past ESCONI Shows
Download 2019 Esconi Show Flyer
Questions? Comments?
email: esconiclub@yahoo.com
www.esconi.org
www.facebook.com/ESCONI.fb
twitter.com/ESCONI
Location -
Another preview of material for the live auction at the 2019 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show... Fluorite Crystals.
Another preview of material for the live auction at the 2019 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show... Laveineopteris rarinervis from the Mazon Creek biota.
Another preview of material for the live auction at the 2019 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show... Inesite from the Kalahari, South Africa
Another preview of material for the live auction at the 2019 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show... Alethopteris sullivanti from the Mazon Creek biota.
Another preview of material for the live auction at the 2019 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show... Crenulopteris acadica from the Mazon Creek biota.
Another preview of material for the live auction at the 2019 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show... Prehnite Calcite from India.
Another preview of material for the live auction at the 2019 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show... Okenite from India.
October has an interesting story about the Field Museum and its beer collection. Tooth & Claw from Off Color Brewing has been offered for a while. There's currently PseudoSue and KingSue from the Toppling Goliath Brewery, with Dancing Dinos coming in April. A new exhibit at the Field Museum is called "Brewing Up Chicago" that runs to January 5th, 2020. By the way, this Saturday, March 9th, 2019, the Chicago Beer Fest will be held from 7 PM to 11 PM at the Field Museum.
“What is the Field Museum and what does it represent?” That was the question that Megan Williams, the Chicago-based natural history museum’s director of business operations, asked herself when she was tasked with redeveloping the museum’s two restaurants six years ago.
Given the museum’s core mission—to fuel a journey of discovery across time while enabling solutions for a brighter future rich in nature and culture—education and sustainability were obvious answers. They were also relatively simple answers to address; she developed a plan to minimize waste and offer sustainably produced, local, organic food. Beyond that, Williams wanted the restaurants—a casual cafe and a higher-end bistro—to bring people and cultures together. Those goals led her to add a bar.
But she didn’t want to create just any bar. She wanted to curate the bar in the same way that the Field Museum curates its nearly 40 million artifacts and specimens. To do so, she set about creating a craft beer “collection” that included beers inspired by, and connected to, the museum’s collections. Like the museum’s exhibits, some beers would come and go, while others would remain as the bar’s focal points.
Another preview of material for the live auction at the 2019 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show... Fluorite from China.
Another preview of material for the live auction at the 2019 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show. This very nice Crenulopteris subcrenulata will be offered up for auction.
First preview of material for the live auction at the 2019 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show. This one is a very nice chunk of Iron Pyrite.
Geodeland Earth Science Clubs, Inc. (GESCI) will hold its 39th Annual Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show at Western Illinois University on March 9th and 10th, 2019. The show will be held from 10 AM to 6 PM Saturday and 10 AM to 5 PM on Sunday in the University Union Grand Ballroom. Parking and admission are free.
The GESCI Show will include 11 dealers in minerals, fossils, jewelry and equipment. There will be displays of geodes, minerals, fossils and many other earth science objects. The displays will include items found in backyards in western Illinois, as well as those that come from around the world. Demonstrators will be showing wire-wrapping, geode cracking, flint knapping, glass bead making and lampwork, cabochon finishing, glass fusing, pen barrels turned on a lathe, stone carving, gem tree making and faceting of gemstones.
The theme of the show this year is "Geodes: From Keokuks to Coconuts" and will highlight programs by Ed Wagner from Springfield, IL.The special exhibit includes examples of specimens of unusual geodes from the collections of members and dealers.
An impressive display of fluorescent minerals will demonstrate the array of brilliant colors that some rocks display under ultraviolet light. There will be activities specifically focused on kids – both to entertain them and inform them about the world. These will include the spin and win game, the fossil dig and a touch and feel display where the kids can actually touch the rocks and minerals without being told, "do not touch."
Event programs and a sign-up area for door prizes will be available at the registration desk. The program includes a floor map showing where the dealers are located and children will receive two tickets at the registration table – one for a free spin at the spin and win game and the other for a free turn at the fossil dig to take home a free fossil.
Donation containers, to help bring different special displays to the show each year, will be located throughout the Grand Ballroom.
A Saturday highlight will be tours of the Geology Museum in Tillman Hall from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. The museum features a T-Rex skull, a life size Ophthalmosaurus and a life-size reconstruction of a Tully Monster. There are also displays in the lower hallway leading to the museum including a one million carat crocodile quartz from Brazil, a display of geodes, examples of inclusions in concretions from the Mazon Creek Area and pegmatite minerals.
The Burpee PaleoFest will be held from Friday, March 1st to Sunday, March 3rd, 2019. Don't miss it!
Quick Links:
The Grand Canyon National Park is 100 years old today. There's many posts out on the internet. Here are a few... NPR, CNN, Fortune, and Outside Magazine.
On February 26, 2019, the Grand Canyon celebrates 100 years since it's designation as a national park. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Grand Canyon welcomes approximately six million domestic and international visitors each year. After 100 years, whether its hiking a corridor trail, taking a stroll on the rim or enjoying the landscape from an overlook, Grand Canyon continues to provide a space for all visitors to connect with the outdoors.
This 2019, Grand Canyon National Park will commemorate the past and inspire future generations to experience, connect with, and protect the park's unique natural, cultural, and historic resources.
Whether you are a regular visitor, a national park traveler or virtual explorer, Grand Canyon National Park hopes that you are inspired to experience and connect with a park that has inspired 100 years of stewardship and will continue to delight visitors and stewards for another 100 years! Come. Be Inspired. Go Grand.
LiveScience has an interesting story about some bizarre creatures found in Morocco. The animals are called stylophorans and lived during the Ordovician. The fossils were discovered in 2014 in the Fezouata Formation. They are now identified as echinoderms and are related to modern animals such as sea urchins, starfish, brittle stars, and sea lilies. The original paper was published in the February 2019 issue of Geobios.
For the past 150 years, scientists have hotly debated a mysterious creature that lived hundreds of millions of years ago, long before dinosaurs walked the Earth. And now, with the discovery of stunningly detailed fossils in Morocco, paleontologists have finally ID'd the bizarre life-forms.
The creatures, known as stylophorans, looked like flattened and armored wall decorations that had a long arm poking off their sides. But while it was previously unclear where they fit in the animal family tree, the new study revealed that they are echinoderms, the ancient relatives of modern animals such as sea urchins, starfish, brittle stars, sea lilies, feather stars and sea cucumbers.The finding was made possible thanks to fossils with "unequivocal evidence for exceptionally preserved soft parts, both in the appendage and in the body of stylophorans," said study lead researcher Bertrand Lefebvre, a National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) researcher at the Laboratory of Geology of Lyon in France. [Photos: Trove of Marine Fossils Discovered in Morocco]
The incredible fossils were unearthed during an excavation in 2014 at the Fezouata Formation, located along the edge of the Sahara Desert in southern Morocco. The excavation yielded a bounty of fossils, including about 450 stylophoran specimens, each dating to about 478 million years ago.
But the researchers didn't immediately realize that some of the fossils included preserved soft tissues. "It is only when we unpacked and looked at them under the binocular [microscope], back in the laboratory in Lyon, that we could see the soft parts," Lefebvre told Live Science in an email. "Their presence and identification were then confirmed by SEM (scanning electron microscope) observations and analyses."
Save the Date! Just one month until the ESCONI Show!
Saturday, March 23rd - 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Sunday, March 24th - 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Free admittance and parking!
Explore
your interests
Shop
for jewelry, gems, fossils, minerals from world-class vendors
List to Follow Soon, Stay tuned!
Find
unique and interesting books at the used book sale
Learn
from members of club demonstrating their hobbies and collections
Bid and buy
gems, minerals and fossils at the
Silent Auction
and Live Auctions
(photos of some items will be posted on website a week before show)
Enjoy
amazing displays from the
Field Museum & Lizzadro Museum
Win
an amazing earth-science related prize in the hourly raffle if your ticket chosen
AND MORE FOR KIDS ~
Receive
a FREE collection of minerals and fossils at the Junior Booth
Play
games and do crafts at the Kiddie Corner
Split
your own geode
Accomplish
some of the requirements for badges....
Boy Scout Geology, Collections, or Archaeology Badge
Girl Scout Jeweler Junior Craft Badge
4-H Science Project
Click here to see more photos of past ESCONI Shows
Download 2019 Esconi Show Flyer
Questions? Comments?
email: esconiclub@yahoo.com
www.esconi.org
www.facebook.com/ESCONI.fb
twitter.com/ESCONI
Location -
A life reconstruction of North America’s newest tyrannosaur - Moros intrepidus (Lindsay Zanno)
CBC's Quirks & Quarks has a segment about a tiny tyrannosaur that helps shed light on how T-rex grew so large. The animal, Moros intrepodus, was found by Dr. Lindsay Zanno. She's head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and research professor at N.C. State University in Raleigh. You might remember when she was at the Field Museum. She spoke at an ESCONI general meeting about "Resurrecting Dinosaurs" back in 2009. The paper appeared in Nature's Communication Biology.
Scientists have discovered a fossil from oldest and tiniest Cretaceous tyrannosaur ever found in North America — one that's baby-sized compared to its descendant, the ferocious and massive Tyrannosaurus rex.
But even a baby-sized tyrannosaur would have been intimidating. "It would have been 5 feet high at the head, so this is an animal that would have been able to stare you right in the eyes," said Dr. Lindsay Zanno, the head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and a research professor at N.C. State University in Raleigh.
Her team had been working in Utah looking for fossils for ten years before they discovered what's turned out to be a hind leg of a fully grown new mini tyrannosaur.
"When I first found these bones sticking out of the side of a hill and recognized them as being from a small theropod, it was really, really exciting for the team," said Zanno.
For more information, send an email to ESCONI webmaster at diannal20@yahoo.com
