Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois - ESCONI

ESCONI Field Trip: October 8th, 2017 to Irene Quarry

There will be a field trip to the Irene Quarry near Belvidere, Illinois on Sunday, Oct 8 2017, from 9AM to 12 Noon.

 
The rock is Ordovician, Galena Group. This is a "hard-rock" quarry (dolomite). If you like Hormotoma or Receptaculites, this is the place for you!
 
Rules:
 
1. Everyone in your group MUST be an ESCONI member.
 
2. Everyone in your group MUST be at least 18 years of age.

 

3. Everyone MUST have and wear a hard hat, safety vest, and sturdy boots while in the quarry. No sandals, tennis shoes, and the like. No claw hammers, roofing hammers - use only rock hammers. If you plan on hammering then bring eye protection and wear it.
 
4. Sign up by sending me (Dave) an email with the number of members attending and their names. My email is [email protected]   No phone calls please. Do not call the quarry.
 
5. I will acknowledge by return email. If you don't get a reply in 24 hours, send it again!
 
6. Maximum attendance by ESCONI members is 15.

7. I will distribute the release forms by email to those signed up just before the trip. Print these

    out, sign them and bring them along to be collected.

 

8. Please review the Code of Ethics and Conduct on the ESCONI website.

   
    The address of the quarry is 4525 Irene Road, Belvidere, Illinois.

 
    Questions? Send me (Dave) an email...

Dinner & A Little History: Coal, Shale, and Ironstone: The Geology & Paleontology of Mazon Creek

October Dinner Lecture

33 Years of Powerful Partnerships

Exciting events, engaging lectures,  and outdoor activities along the I&M Canal!

Dinner & A Little History: Coal, Shale, and Ironstone: The Geology & Paleontology of Mazon Creek

Join the Canal Corridor Association, Thursday October 5th 2017, at the Lock 16 Cafe & Visitor Center for our Dinner lecture series: Coal, Shale, and Ironstone: The Geology & Paleontology of Mazon Creek    Located in northeastern Illinois, Mazon Creek is an incredible fossil array of associated Upper Carboniferous plants and animals. Considered to be among the world's great Lagerstätten, or Mother Lodes, this site's numerous and delicately preserved soft-bodied animals are rarely seen in the fossil record, and many species have been singularly described from the deposit. Magnificent plant impressions, many of them ferns (to some, the quintessential prehistoric floral form) are beautifully preserved in iron carbonate nodules. The importance of Mazon Creek to understanding the story of our planet, and specifically the Pennsylvanian Period, was realized by science only in the mid-nineteenth century. Considerable research has been done since then, perhaps providing the most comprehensive picture of life in the Late Paleozoic.   Speaker Andrew Young is a visual artist who studied biology, art history, and studio art at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2006, he received an invitation to join an expedition to Antarctica to study the wildlife and document studies of the earthquakes and ice movement in the region. A continued fascination with the human relationship to the natural world led him to curate an exhibition in 2011entitled, Indexing the World: invention, abstraction and dissonance, the 2012 publication of a book on Mazon Creek fossils of Illinois, and a solo painting show with the Chicago Academy of Sciences.   Just the lecture $8. Dinner and Lecture $24 for Members, $29 for Non-Members. Reservations are required. Cocktails 5:30, dinner 6:00, and lecture at 7:00 PM   To reserve Call 815-220-1848 or click below to get your tickets online.

Book Today!

Join the Canal Corridor Association in our efforts to preserve history, protect nature and open space, and create destinations where people can learn and have fun in the I&M Canal National Heritage Area.

 

October General Meeting on October 13th, 2017: Fluorite and Rare Earth Elements in the Illinois-Kentucky Fluorspar District

The program at our October 13, 2017 meeting will be presented by F. Brett Denny, Associate Economic Geologist with the Illinois State Geological Survey. His talk is titled "Fluorite and Rare Earth Elements in the Illinois-Kentucky Fluorspar District".

Please bring your best fluorite specimens to show the group!

News Flash from Africa

Former ESCONI Junior, Rebecca Rogers Ackermann, has been promoted to a full Professor at the University of Cape Town.  Professor Ackermann is one of only three women professors of archaeology in Africa.  Well done ESCONI!

Early trilobites had stomachs, new fossil study finds

A specimen of the trilobite Palaeolenus lantenoisi from the Guanshan Biota in southern Yunnan Province, China. Rarely are internal organs preserved in fossils, but this specimen shows the digestive system preserved as reddish iron oxides. The digestive system is comprised of a crop (inflated region at top of specimen), lateral glands, and a central canal that runs along the length of the body; the iron oxides that extend beyond the fossil are the remains of gut contents that were extruded during preservation. Credit: © F. Chen

PHYS.ORG has a story about trilobites.  Some new 500 million year old fossils from China reveal new insights into the digestive system of early trilobites.  The specimens are exceptionally preserved and show that some trilobites had evolved stomachs 20 million years earlies than previously thought.  The study's paper was published in PLOS ONE.

Trilobites are a group of extinct marine arthropods—distantly related to the horseshoe crab—that lived for almost 300 million years. They were extremely diverse, with about 20,000 species, and their fossil exoskeletons can be found all around the world. Most of the 270 specimens analyzed in the new study were collected from a quarry in southern Kunming, China, during an excavation led by Hopkins' co-author, Zhifei Zhang, from Northwest University in Xi'an.

Previous research suggests that two body plans existed for trilobite digestive systems: a tube that runs down the length of the trilobite's body with lateral digestive glands that would have helped process the food; or an expanded stomach, called a "crop", leading into a simple tube with no lateral glands. Until now, only the first type had been reported from the oldest trilobites. Based on this, researchers had proposed that the evolution of the crop came later in trilobite evolutionary history and represented a distinct type of digestive system.

The Chinese trilobite fossils, about 20 percent of which have soft tissue preservation, are dated to the early Cambrian, about 514 million years ago. Contradictory to the previously proposed body plans, the researchers identified crops in two different species within this material. In addition, they found a single specimen that has both a crop and digestive glands—suggesting that the evolution of trilobite digestive systems is more complex than originally proposed.

 

Field Trip Report: Braceville - Mazon Creek Fossils

Both days had great weather and there was a big turnout... nearly 60 people on Saturday.  Many concretions were exposed by the Summer rains.  Andrew Young and a few others supplied opened concretions for some of the younger participants.  It was a productive trip with many concretions collected for the Winter freeze thaw.

September 9-10, 2017 

Reminder: September General Meeting on Friday, September 8th, 2017 - "Calymene blumenbachii and the Discovery of Trilobites"

The speaker at our September 8, 2017 meeting will be Dr. Don Mikulic, Senior Paleontologist with the Illinois State Geological Survey. The title of his program is "Calymene blumenbachii and the Discovery of Trilobites". The program is based on a chapter in "Fantastic Fossils - 300 years of worldwide research on trilobites", New York State Museum Bulletin 507. This book is available for download on ResearchGate under the account of Ed Landing.  Account on ReasearchGate are free.

Heavily armoured dinosaur had ginger camouflage to deter predators – study

An illustration of Borealopelta markmitchelli. The study suggests that it displayed a camouflage effect known as counter-shading. Illustration: Julius Csotonyi/Courtesy of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, Drumheller, Canada.

The Guardian has a story about a recent paper that studied coloring in the best-preserved armoured dinosaur ever discovered.  The specimen of Ankylosaur named Borealopelta markmitchelli, was discovered back in 2011 at the Suncor Millennium Mine in Canada.  The discovery was a surprise as the site had previously only revealed fossils of ancient marine reptiles.  The animal was about 18 feet long and lived about 110 million years ago.  It was unveiled back in May 2017 and is currently on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Alberta, Canada.

This study looked at the preserved "skin" and determined that it was camouflaged in red and white using an effect called "counter-shading".  This effect is seen in modern animals, like the gazelle, and is thought to evolve quickly.

The original paper was in Current Biology.

“It had this dense armour on its back – it would have looked almost like a pineapple, with dense angular horns,” said Jakob Vinther, a molecular palaeobiologist and co-author of the latest study from the University of Bristol, adding that it is likely the creature’s tail was covered in spikes. “On its neck and over its shoulders it had extremely long horns; even the face was covered in armour,” he said.

Now researchers say analysis of the thin film of organic material has yielded an intriguing discovery: the dinosaur was ginger on top.

“We could see that the organic compounds [in the film] were something that contained carbon, nitrogen and sulphur – that is something that we know is typical for [the pigment] red melanin,” said Vinther.

It’s far from the first time that a dinosaur has been found to have a reddish hue, but the team says the fact that the belly of beast showed no sign of the film means that it was most likely pale underneath and only russet-coloured on the upper side.

Move over, Sue: World's largest dinosaur taking center stage at Field Museum

Sue the T-Rex. Photo via Twitter.

The Chicagoist has a great story about changes at the Field Museum.  Sue is moving to her own space up inside Evolving Planet, and a new cast of the largest dinosaur every discovered will be installed in Stanley Field Hall.  The new dinosaur, Patagotitan mayorum, a titanosaur from South America, will be installed in the Spring of 2018.

Some literally massive changes are afoot at the Field Museum, as the beloved SUE the T. Rex will be moving from its famous entryway mount to a new gallery, making way for a touchable cast of a mammoth titanosaur—the world's largest, in fact. The move means our dear old SUE will be out of public view for more than a year—although SUE does seem quite happy about getting a "private suite."

The massive newcomer is cast from bones of Patagotitan mayorum and stretches longer that two CTA accordion buses and is so tall that it stands eye-to-eye with the second floor balcony, according to Field. “The titanosaur is huge, and it’ll look right at home in Stanley Field Hall,” said Senior Exhibitions Project Manager Hilary Hansen in a release. “It’s a big, majestic space, which will be the perfect backdrop for the world’s largest dinosaur.”

But that sheer size of course means that SUE will have to vacate their iconic perch (SUE prefers they/them pronouns, don't you know?). The fan favorite is also undergoing some upgrades during the big move—which explains why the dino will be off exhibition for such an extended time: SUE will be taken down in February of next year and won't be unveiled in the new gallery until spring of 2019.

As for SUE, our old friend is taking the move news the best way they know how, by yucking it up on social media, where SUE described their new digs as a "SPECIAL THRONE ROOM" and championed the new location's "better defensible position against velociraptor attacks and reduced exposure to possible meteorite collisions."

An illustration from the Field Museum shows the future placement of the Patagotitan mayorum in Stanley Field Hall.  (The Field Museum)

 

 

ESCONI Field Trip Sept 24 2017 to the Cunningham Quarry in Rockford

There will be a field trip to the Cunningham Quarry in Rockford, Illinois on Sunday, Sept 24 2017, from 9AM to 12 Noon.

 

The rock is Ordovician, Galena Group. This is a "hard-rock" quarry (dolomite). There is a pile of shot rock (large uncrushed stone after a blast) in the middle where there is plenty of access to it. 

 

Rules:
 
1. Everyone in your group MUST be an ESCONI member as of Sept 17, 2017.
 
2. Everyone in your group MUST be at least 18 years of age.

 

3. Everyone MUST have and wear a hard hat, safety vest, and sturdy boots while in the quarry. No sandals, tennis shoes, and the like. No claw hammers, roofing hammers - use only rock hammers. If you plan on hammering then bring eye protection and wear it.
 
4. Sign up by sending me (Dave) an email with the number of members attending and their names. My email is [email protected]   No phone calls please. Do not call the quarry.

5. I will acknowledge by return email. If you don't get a reply in 24 hours, send it again!

6. Maximum attendance by ESCONI members is 15.

7. I will distribute the release forms by email to those signed up just before the trip. Print these out, sign them and bring them along to be collected.

 

8. Please review the Code of Ethics and Conduct on the ESCONI website.

   
The address of the quarry is 5881 Cunningham Road, Rockford, Illinois.  Questions? Send me an email...

LOESS Gem Show Oct. 7-8, 2017

Mark your calendars! October 7 and 8 - the LOESS Mineral, Fossil and Gem Show!

 

POSTERS:

We will be having the posters printed up this week or next - once I confirm with a few sponsors, but I am also emailing it to everyone now, even without the sponsors. You can send it on to friends, print to post at work, school, favorite stores. Be creative - help spread the word! This year's show is going to be better than ever. In addition to the fantastic collection from the Illinois State Museum, we are making arrangements to have a complete skeleton of a baby mammoth in the special display! And possibly some other skulls from Ice Age critters.

 

VOLUNTEER!:

Our show will have 2 entrances this year and if last year was any indicator, the concessions and kid's activities will be more busy than ever. Please help out by volunteering at one of these stations. If everyone chips in a few hours, big jobs get done in a hurry! Additionally, we will be needing extra volunteers as we have decided we have to have 2 admissions - adding one on the east parking lot side. Anyone who visited last year during peak hours knows how bad the west parking lot got!

 

QUESTIONS:

There have been a few questions about the date - our show is always the FIRST FULL weekend in October. which makes it as late as it ever can be this year since Oct 1 is a sunday. Spread the word and let your friends know that it is the 7 and 8. Any questions can be directed to this email or [email protected]