Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois - ESCONI

Which Fossils Are Unique to Illinois?

Over at the ESCONI Yahoo Group, Dave Carlson has put forward this post: 

Does anyone know what fossils are found only in Illinois? I think that the Ordovician cystoid Lepadocystis decorus is one, and maybe some Mazon fossils would also qualify. Anybody know specifically which ones? Any others outside of Mazon?

New 100 million year old Meteor Crater Found

Via CBC:

Researchers from the University of Saskatchewan along with the Geological Survey of Canada have discovered the country's 30th meteor impact crater — a 25-kilometre astrobleme created more than 100 million years ago in the Arctic.

The pit-like hole created by the impact of a meteor is in the northwestern part of Victoria Island, and located between Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.

 

 

Graphic on Earth's Mineral Resources

Via Wall Street Journal - a nice graphic of mineral resources left to be found - 

Mining companies estimate the Earth contains enough of certain minerals to last hundreds of years, and that available reserves will be better used thanks to techniques such as drilling deeper and mining in largely untapped places, such as Greenland, Mongolia and the Arctic. See available reserves and read about the minerals.

Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms: The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind.

Enjoyable radio show you can still listen to online or via podcast -  On Point: 

Life forms come and go on this planet. An amazing few have stuck around. Through meteorite strike, that wiped out the dinosaurs, and great extinction that killed almost everything. Through ice age and poisoned seas. The horseshoe crab has hung in there. The lungfish. The velvet worm. The gingko tree.

An amazing few are supreme survivors. Mastodon, gone. Musk ox, still here. Platypus, still here. The greatest survivors have lasted billions of years. Humans? Not so much.

Interview with Richard Fortey, a senior paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London. He’s the author of the new book Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms: The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind.

 

 

Interview with Chris Stringer

Via New York Times....

... the British paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer — recently sat for an interview in New York that ranged across many recent developments: the evidence of interbreeding between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens; the puzzling extinct species of little people nicknamed the hobbits; and the implications of a girl’s 40,000-year-old pinkie finger found in a Siberian cave....

Western Stemmed As Old or Older As Clovis

Via BBC from Science Magazine:  (hat tip - Floyd)

Scientists studying how North America was first settled have found stone spearheads and darts in Oregon, US, that date back more than 13,000 years.

The hunting implements, which are of the "Western Stemmed" tradition, are at least as old as the famous Clovis tools thought for a long time to belong to the continent's earliest inhabitants.

Precise carbon dating of dried human faeces discovered alongside the stone specimens tied down their antiquity.

 

Contests for Earth Science Week 2012

Time to get those cameras, pens and paper out and submit your entries to the AGI Earth Science Week contests. Open to all ages. Just read the READ MORE for each contest on rules for that contest. 

Photography contest: "Earth Science is a Big Job"

Visual Arts Contest: "Imagine Me, An Earth Scientist!"

Essay: "Geoscientists Working Together"

Last year's contest winners.

 

List of July Gem Shows Across The US

June 2012 Gemshows in the US

Fossil and Genetic Evidence at Odds

Via NYTimes: (hat tip Dave Carlson - ESCONI Yahoo Group):

...Two of the hunter-gatherers in the study, the Hadza and Sandawe of Tanzania, speak click languages and carry ancient DNA lineages that trace to the earliest branchings of the human family tree. The third group is that of the forest-dwelling pygmies of Cameroon, who also have ancient lineages and unusual blood types...

 

Oldest Pottery Found

Via Geology.com:

Fragments of the oldest pottery ever found were discovered in southern China. They are estimated to be 20,000 years old.  

Mass Extinction and the Effects on the Pace of Evolution

Via PhyOrg:

A new study indicates that mass extinctions affect the pace of evolution, not just in the immediate aftermath of catastrophe, but for millions of years to follow. The study's authors, University of Chicago's Andrew Z. Krug and David Jablonski, will publish their findings in the August issue of the journal Geology.

Newest Feathered Dinosaur Fossil

Via PlanetSave: (hat tip Floyd)

...The fossil of a previously unknown species of dinosaur has been discovered in the chalk beds of the Franconian Jura, and it shows very clear traces of fluffy plumage. The discovery brings up an interesting question, were all dinosaurs feathered?

The new discovery is helping to change our perception of how predatory dinosaurs looked. Sciurumimus albersdoerferi is the first evidence that we have that theropod dinosaurs, which are not closely related to birds, were feathered.

“This is a surprising find from the cradle of feathered dinosaur work, the very formation where the first feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx was collected over 150 years ago,” said Mark Norell, chair of the Division of Palaeontology at the American Museum of Natural History and an author on the new paper along with researchers from Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie and the Ludwig Maximilians University... More

 

Oldest Known Crater Now in Greenland

Via Cardiff University:

A 100 kilometre-wide crater has been found in Greenland, the result of a massive asteroid or comet impact a billion years before any other known collision on Earth.

The spectacular craters on the Moon formed from impacts with asteroids and comets between 3 and 4 billion years ago. The early Earth, with its far greater gravitational mass, must have experienced even more collisions at this time – but the evidence has been eroded away or covered by younger rocks. The previously oldest known crater on Earth formed 2 billion years ago and the chances of finding an even older impact were thought to be, literally, astronomically low.

 Now, a team of scientists from Cardiff, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) in Copenhagen, Lund University in Sweden and the Institute of Planetary Science in Moscow has upset these odds...  MORE

 

Oldest Known Crater Now in Greenland

Via Cardiff University:

A 100 kilometre-wide crater has been found in Greenland, the result of a massive asteroid or comet impact a billion years before any other known collision on Earth.

The spectacular craters on the Moon formed from impacts with asteroids and comets between 3 and 4 billion years ago. The early Earth, with its far greater gravitational mass, must have experienced even more collisions at this time – but the evidence has been eroded away or covered by younger rocks. The previously oldest known crater on Earth formed 2 billion years ago and the chances of finding an even older impact were thought to be, literally, astronomically low.

 Now, a team of scientists from Cardiff, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) in Copenhagen, Lund University in Sweden and the Institute of Planetary Science in Moscow has upset these odds...  MORE

 

Coming Soon: The Bark Diet

Via NYTimes:

Almost two million years after their last meals, two members of a prehuman species in southern Africa left traces in their teeth of what they had eaten then, as well as over a lifetime of foraging. Scientists were surprised to find that these hominins apparently lived almost exclusively on a diet of leaves, fruits, wood and bark....

GREAT Photos in article