Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois - ESCONI

Now You Can Have an Earth Science Image A Day

Good for bookmarking: Earth Science Image of the Day.

Also, many members have photos that would be great for this site.

(Photo: George Higginson)

National Park Documentary at 10:00 pm on WTTW

If you didn't get a chance to watch Ken Burn's National Park: America's Best Idea documentary, it is showing on Channel 11, tonight at 10:00 p.m. 

You can also watch parts of it on-line.

New Species Announced at SVP

 

 

Science News via BoingBoing:

 

"BRISTOL, England — A newly described, profusely feathered dinosaur may give lift to scientists’ understanding of bird and flight evolution, researchers report. The lithe creature, which stood about 28 centimeters tall at the hip, is the oldest known to have sported feathers and is estimated to be between 1 million and 11 million years older than Archaeopteryx, the first known bird.

Several fossils of the creature, which has been dubbed Anchiornis huxleyi, have been unearthed in northeastern China, Xing Xu reported September 25 at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology..."

It's possible that flight began from a dinosaur sitting at the top of the tree and not from the ground.

Illustration Credit: Zhao Chuang, Xing Lida

Torosaurus Challenge

Scientific American reports on one of the important papers presented at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology:

"A rare horned dinosaur known as Torosaurus may not be a distinct species after all, according to a presentation given Friday at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Bristol, England...."

Photo of Triceratops skeleton at the American Museum of Natural History by mrkathika via Flickr

The Secrets of Geo Mysteries

The Children's Museum of Indianapolis offers a website on the secrets of geo mysteries.

Who Else Wants Interactive Geo Maps?

Very nice interactive maps from NOAA/NESDIS/NGDC

Want more maps? MapWindow

Where in the Future Are We?

ESCONI can now be found on Twitter. Twitter will be used for announcements and enticements and fun.  But be reassured, all critical information will always be available on the web site and newsletter.

Why? This "Did You Know" video from The Economist talks about the future we live in...

Now You Can Teach Rocks to Kids

Neat educational site... The Rock Cycle

Little Known Stratigraphy Guide

An Online Guide to Sequence Stratigraphy:

"...This online guide is primarily aimed at the application of sequence stratigraphy to outcrops. As a result, none of the examples deal with topics related specifically to cores, well logs, or most significantly, seismic. Perhaps the best way to work through this online guide is to start with accommodation and to continue down the list of topics from there..."

This Saturday - 9/26 - Archaeology Study Group - 7:30

This Saturday... "When Did the Alphabet First Appear" by Bryan Nugent and John Good, 7:30 pm, College of Dupage Bldg K Rm 131.

Metal Detector Finds 7 Figure Stash

Via Birmingham Post:

... Estimated to be worth seven figures, the treasure trove is mainly made up of elaborate weapons, helmet decorations, coins and Christian crosses which experts believe were trophies taken from the battlefield by victorious Mercians.

It was discovered in a farm field in July by amateur metal detector Terry Herbert who lives alone in a council house on disability benefit, and had never before found anything more valuable than a rare piece of Roman horse harness....

Identification References

Dave Carlson's Larson Quarry Fossil document

Illinois Geode Collecting from the ISGS.

More Evidence of Dinosaur to Bird

 

Via Scientific American (9/24):

 

... The dinosaur-bird transition has been the subject of debate for more than a century, and some researchers are still arguing that other bird-like dinos are too recent to be the ancestors of birds. The quandary, known in the paleontology field as the temporal paradox, has been dealt another blow by the reassessment of the A. huxleyi, which is dated to about 155 million years old—about 30 million years before the feathered dinosaur Microraptor and about five million years before the oldest known bird, Archaeopteryx. This earlier date for the emergence of feathered dinosaurs undermines claims that birds lacked enough time to evolve from dinosaurs...  read on... (Image:  Xing Xu et al.)

Top Geology Colleges

College Crunch web site says they have identified the top 10 colleges for geology. There are many more great college programs for geology beyond these 10 colleges, but it is sort of interesting to look at the list and the writer's explanations.

Stunning Views of Glacier from Space

Stunning views of glaciers from space.

Who Wants to Go to SVP ?(Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting)

Can't go to Bristol England right now? Well then at least read Scott's comments about SPV at the Burpee Museum of Natural History blog.

Presentation by Jack Wittry

Thanks to Andy Jansen for putting Jack's slides from his talk last week into a file format that could be easily downloaded. Click here to download (.pdf) (only 5 MB). This document will also be kept on the Mazon Creek Reference page.

Can You Identify?

A reader writes in,

"... I have been doing countless web searches in hopes to find someone in IL who can help me out with a rather interesting find (and it looks like I might have found the right people).While I was vacationing down in Northern Florida (around the Jacksonville Area), I came across an large interesting rock washed up on the shore....

I searched online and I couldn’t find anything that matched its size nor its weight (around 30lbs). It has various ‘leaf’ looking things inside it as well as a few different colorations varying from the orange to a greenish blue color. All in all, it is absolutely amazing looking for whatever it is....

I was hoping either someone in ESCONI could help me out or at least point me in the direction of someone who might be able to tell me what exactly this rock is. I would love to know just for my sake and also to learn how to best preserve this beautiful piece of whatever it is..."

Sincerely, B.N.

The reader, B.N. who gave permission to print her letter and photograph, has been invited to bring her find to an ESCONI Minerology meeting or the ESCONI Gem Mineral Fossil Show because that is the best way to get an informed identification.

But this time, I thought the photograph and her description was good enough to make it possible to make a plausible guess...

Can you help out this reader/rock hound? What do you think it is?

News for the Younger Members

A gift idea for those with younger people in their life... the Paleobet poster via Scienceblogs.

On the same subject of paleo for the young, the popular band, They Might Be Giants (TMBG), has a fun video and song named "I am a paleontologist"... (this and other songs by TMBG are the Schoolhouse Rock! of our time).

And finally, news for the younger ones... from Deseret News via geology.com "...Paleontologist Scott Sampson is about to add one more item to his resume.

Monday, the research curator at the Utah Museum of Natural History and adjunct professor in the department of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah becomes a television star for the preschool set.

He's the human in the midst of a slew of impossibly appealing CGI characters on the new PBS series "Dinosaur Train."

8:00 am - Time for Field Trip

The meeting time has changed from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. for the field trip on Saturday and Sunday, September 26th and 27th.

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