Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois - ESCONI

Missing 3 Newsletters from 1950, 1952 and 1990

Andy Jansen, our ESCONI librarian, is looking for 3 newsletters - May, 1950; February 1952; and April 1990. Do you have one of these newsletters? Please contact Andy at (630) 739-7721.

Andy has been scanning all of the SCONI Newsletters so that you can buy a CD with all of ESCONI's newsletters!

Events This Week: Ending 9/4/11

Friday, Sept 2 - Behind the Scenes Tour of Field Museum. 9:30 am to 2:30 pm. $74, includes entry to museum, class code - YEMS-0010-010. All ages. Sign up through College of Dupage's web site or call Georgia Madden at (630) 942-2063.  Less than 1% of the Field Museum's specimens are actually on display - so sign up for this unique class! Rob Sula will lead the tour of the fossil preparation labs and the dermestid beetle room and then the fossil exhibits.

Room Change AGAIN! Back to Rm 161

All meetings in September will be in our usual room - Room 161, Building K.

Planet Diamond

From Reuters:

Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.

The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond...

Mining Upswing in US

Many interesting news stories have been published about the increase in a variety of mining activities in the US.

From CBS News via geology.com - Largest Underground Marble Mine and Products (nice video!)

From Arizona Geology via geology.com - A New Potash Mine in Arizona Could More than Double US Production

From National Public Radio via geolgoy.com - A huge Demand for High Qulaity Frack Sand

 

Sign Up Today for Field Museum Tour

2 students shy of having enough to run class.... if you want to go, please register today!

Friday, Sept 2 - Behind the Scenes Tour of Field Museum. 9:30 am to 2:30 pm. $74, includes entry to museum, class code - YEMS-0010-010. All ages. Sign up through College of Dupage's web site or call Georgia Madden at (630) 942-2063.  Less than 1% of the Field Museum's specimens are actually on display - so sign up for this unique class! Rob Sula will lead the tour of the fossil preparation labs and the dermestid beetle room and then the fossil exhibits.

Worlds Oldest Profession

From Science News:

“Tooth size becomes dramatically smaller than what we would expect,” says paleoanthropologist David Strait of the University at Albany in New York, who was not involved with the work. “This is really compelling indirect evidence the human lineage became adapted to and dependent on cooking their food by the time Homo erectus evolved.”

Earthquake Across the US

Via Bad Astronomy from the Discovery Magazine:

This is very cool: seismometers deployed across the United States detected the seismic waves from the magnitude 5.9 earthquake that hit Virginia on August 23, 2011. In this animation showing the data you can actually see the wave rippling across the country!

Room Change for Meetings !

Update - as of 8/29/11 - This room change is no longer happening. All September meetins will be back in K161.

ESCONI will be meeting in a new room for the August Board meeting and all September meetings (General and Study Group) and the August Board Meeting will meet at College of Dupage,Student Resource Center, Room 1450A - (find in the back of the  cafeteria!)

New Species Dino Named After Local Ranch Family

Via Great Falls Tribune (Montana):

A new species of duck-billed dinosaurs has been named for a local ranch family.

The oldest duck-billed dinosaur yet discovered in North America, the 79.3 million-year-old Acristavus gagslarsoni was found on land originally owned by Russell "Gags" and Nora Larson and was donated to the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman by their children.

Scientists say the discovery of this new species and new genus of hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur, is expected to shed new light on dinosaur evolution. The find is announced in this month's issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology....

Dinosaurs in Antarctic Similar to All Other Dinosaurs

From UPI Science News via Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs

"...based on bone tissues, dinosaurs living within the Antarctic Circle were physiologically similar to dinosaurs living everywhere else." UPI Science News on new research into polar dinosaurs.

 

Citizen Paleontology

Via the Cornell Ornithology Lab,

Lisa Gardiner blogs about three paleontology-focused citizen science projects... she shares an overview of three paleontology-based citizen science projects, in a blog post on TalkingScience (part of NPR's Science Friday initiative). Participants don't just dig into the science of paleontology, they also help advance understandings of ecology and climate change.

Big thanks to Lisa for sharing this post, and for TalkingScience for regularly covering citizen science projects. Read more TalkingScience posts on citizen science by Lisa and others.

Do you lead a paleontology or other geoscience-based citizen science project? There's a call for presenters for citizen science sessions at AGU, deadline August 4th, 2011.  Abstracts from 2010 AGU sessions on citizen science cover a wide range of interests and activities.

Grand Canyon Photo Tour

Via the International Business Times a nice collection of photos of the Grand Canyon.

 

Whyoming Paleontology Dispatch #4

Smithsonian Magazine:

.... The Fourth of July barbecue at the Churchill’s is an opportunity to meet and talk with people from Powell, and also to talk casually with colleagues about our science. Many a collaboration and future Ph.D. thesis has been born of a conversation in the Churchill’s side yard, as a hot, sunny Fourth of July day turns into a beautiful cool evening. Sometimes local collectors bring finds for the professionals to identify, and sometimes we are even able to help them! I don’t know of anything quite like this get-together—a hybrid of family reunion, international professional conference and neighborhood picnic....

Old Tides Not Like New Tides

From Oregon State University via geology.com:

“The ebb and flow of the ocean tides, generally thought to be one of the most predictable forces on Earth, are actually quite variable over long time periods, in ways that have not been adequately accounted for in most evaluations of prehistoric sea level changes.” Quoted from the Oregon State University news release

Moving Town to Mine Iron

From Wall Street Journal via geology.com:

The town of Kiruna, Sweden is located 90 miles north of the Arctic Circle and directly over valuable iron ore. Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB has been mining in the area for over 100 years and will pay to move the town to get at the ore. Fortunately there is little opposition – the town exists because of the mine.

 

Indian Mound Hike Planned for September

Winfield Mounds Hike  10:00 am - 11:30 am

Join a naturalist-led hike to the only known prehistoric American Indian mounds in DuPage County. Ages 12 and up; under 18 with an adult. Free. Registration begins Sept. 10. Call (630) 942-6200.

Spectacular Dinosaur Finds in China

Via Newsweek:

... The trove of fossils at Zhucheng is probably the largest single deposit of dinosaur bones in the world. And it’s just the latest in a string of spectacular discoveries by the 42-year-old Xu, who’s arguably helped uncover more important finds than any other dinosaur hunter on the planet. “I am quite certain that Xu Xing has described more new kinds of dinosaurs than anyone in the history of dinosaur paleontology,” says Peter Dodson, professor of paleontology at the University of Pennsylvania and coeditor of the book The Dinosauria...

Mesozoic Paleontology News

Found a new blob, Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs, that includes a list of news.

Archaeology Combines with Astrophysics

Via PhsyOrg:

Lucy Fortson, an astrophysicist and Associate Professor in the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota is part of a collaboration called Ancientlives which has received a grant to apply the analysis tools of astrophysics to help decipher a collection of ancient Egyptian papyri...

Using an interface first developed for the Zooniverse collaboration to allow the general public to identify the shapes of galaxies, volunteers will be able to click on places where they think a letter might be. This data should train the algorithms to improve their ability to translate the texts.