Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois - ESCONI

Montana: All Fossils Are Minerals

The Bozeman Daily Chroniclepeter has a story about the 9th circuit court ruling that all fossils in Montana are minerals.  The AAPS is working with Peter Larson and an attorney to file an Amicus Brief.  The goal is to as the court for an en banc hearing by a larger panel of judges to get this decision overturned.

A recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Decision reclassified fossils as minerals. Fossils now fall under the purview of Mineral Rights, taking their legal ownership from the land or property owner and placing them under the domain of the property's "Mineral Rights" holder.

This ruling applies to all fossils; vertebrates, invertebrates and plants. The drastic change in established law now puts academic and commercial paleontologist as well as the casual fossil collector and museum collections in great peril.

If this ruling stands, mineral right holders will be able to file lawsuits to take possession of any fossils collected on land that is privately held. Many museums are in jeopardy of losing important type specimens, and many wonderful fossil specimens that had been legally collected, prepared and sold could be seized and forfeited.

A court ruling like this can easily spill from Montana to rest of the states.

There are appeals to the decision being drafted, and AAPS, among other groups and museums want to fight this decision. AAPS has created a Go Fund Me page to raise funds to have an attorney produce and file an Amicus Brief. The goal being to ask the court for an en banc hearing by a larger panel of judges and get this decision overturned.

To read more about this and help donate to the cause to save fossils and preserve land owners rights, follow this link:

https://www.aaps.net/newsletter-index.html

ESCONI Events December 2018

Field trips require membership, but visitors are welcome at all meetings!

Fri, Dec 7th	ESCONI Holiday Party - Details are here.  Get your RSVP in today!
Fri, Dec 7th	ESCONI General Meeting, 8:00 PM College of Dupage - Tech Ed (TEC) Building, Room 1038B (Map) - Topic: "Antarctic Dinosaurs" by Dr. Peter Makovicky of the Field Museum

Reminder: ESCONI Holiday Party will be held on December 7th, 2018 5:30 to 7:30 PM

The 2018 ESCONI Holiday Dinner will be held at Cozymel’s, 311 East Loop Rd, Wheaton on Friday December 7, 2018 from 5:30 to 7:30 PM. We will be ordering off the menu and everyone is responsible for their own bill. There will be a drawing for door prizes. The general meeting starts at 8 PM in TEC 1038B. Our speaker is Dr. Peter Makovicky of the Field Museum.  His talk is titled "Antarctic Dinosaurs".

If you plan to attend the dinner, please RSVP to Dave at [email protected]

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Do you have a one of the new ESCONI T-Shirts yet?

We have new ESCONI shirts.  Did you get one yet?  They are available in children S (6-8) and adult sizes, S, M, and L.

They are available at all meetings and some field trip.  Get yours today!

Geophysicists propose new theory to explain origin of water

Oceans and asteroids share a similar chemical signature.

CrediT: PIOLA666/GETTY IMAGES

Cosmos Magazine has an article about the origin of Earth's water.  A paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets challenges the widely-accepted ideas - maybe it didn't come from an asteroid impact.

Earth’s water may not have originated solely from material carried by asteroids, according to new US research.

A study in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets led by Steven Desch from Arizona State University challenges widely-accepted ideas about the asteroidal origin of hydrogen in the planet’s water by suggesting it came in part from the solar nebula – clouds of dust and gas left over after the formation of the Sun.

And the researchers believe their findings could provide new insights about the development of other planets and their potential to support life.

To date, many scientists have supported a theory that all of Earth’s water came from asteroids, primarily because the ratio of deuterium, a heavier hydrogen isotope, to normal hydrogen is similar in ocean and asteroidal samples.

Certainly the ocean chemical signature is close to what is found in asteroids, but that may not be the whole story, explains Desch.

“It’s a bit of a blind spot in the community,” he says. “When people measure the ratio in ocean water and they see that it is pretty close to what we see in asteroids, it was always easy to believe it all came from asteroids.”

New sauropod dinosaur species unearthed in Argentina - Lavocatisaurus agrioensis

Spanish and Argentine investigators working on the extraction of the remains of three dinosaurs in the Argentine province of Neuquen. Photograph: HO/AFP/Getty Images

The Guardian has a story about a new sauropod dinosaur discovered in Argentina.  It lived about 110 million years ago and was found by a team of Spanish and Argentinian paleontologists.  Lavocatisaurus agrioensis was described in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.

A team of Spanish and Argentinian paleontologists have discovered the remains of dinosaurs that lived 110m years ago in the centre of the country, the National University of La Matanza has revealed.

The remains came from three separate dinosaurs from the herbivorous group of sauropods, the best known of which are the Diplodocus and Brontosaurus. This new species has been named Lavocatisaurus agrioensis.

“We found most of the cranial bones: the snout, the jaws, a lot of teeth, also the bones that define the eye sockets for example and, in that way, we were able to create an almost complete reconstruction,” said Jose Luis Carballido, a researcher at the Egidio Feruglio museum and the national council of scientific investigations.

Parts of the neck, tail and back were also found.

“Not only is this the discovery of a new species in an area where you wouldn’t expect to find fossils, but the skull is almost complete,” added Carballido.

This Dino-Era Bird Was as Advanced as Modern Species. So Why Did It Disappear?

The Smithsonian has a piece about a recently rediscovered 70 million year old fossil bird from the Cretaceous Period.  The specimen was originally found 25 years ago in the Kaiparowits Formation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.  It's called Miracre eatoni, and it was about the size of a turkey vulture.  It has been described in a new paper in the journal PeerJ.

The completeness of the fossil allowed researchers to figure out how the birds flew and shows that by the end of the Cretaceous some enantiornithines had developed many features that made them good flyers with traits similar to those that modern birds developed after the mass extinction.

“We know that birds in the early Cretaceous, about 115 to 130 million years ago, were capable of flight but probably not as well adapted for it as modern birds,” Atterholt says in a press release. “What this new fossil shows is that enantiornithines, though totally separate from modern birds, evolved some of the same adaptations for highly refined, advanced flight styles.”

Reminder: Warehouse Work Day - Saturday, November 17th, 2018, 9:00 - 2:00ish

If you have some time, come join our work day at the warehouse on Saturday, November 17th, 2018 from 9:00-2:00ish. The warehouse address is 900 Knell in Montgomery, IL.  Please meet/enter in the back of the warehouse ONLY.  You will see railroad tracks along the back of the warehouse.  Drive all the way to the end in the back.

 

For more information, contact Jim Fairchild at 1-630-497-9700 or e-mail at [email protected]

 

SUE the T. rex, Chomping Back into Action 12.21.18

The wait is almost over, SUE the T. rex* will be back on display at the Field Museum, starting Friday, December 21. Plan your visit to see SUE's new digs and experience the world’s biggest and most complete T. rex like never before.

Step into the world of SUE and uncover what our scientists discovered about the life of our fearsome fossil. Experience a unique multimedia show for visitors of all ages to see how scientists believed SUE walked and stalked prey. 

Learn how the fossil was unearthed, and how scientists continue to make discoveries about SUE today, including important updates to the skeleton, resulting in a more scientifically accurate pose than ever before. Check out fossils of other dinosaurs and animals from the Cretaceous period, and test your T. rex knowledge with an interactive quiz, all under the watchful eye of SUE. 

SUE can't wait to eat, er, meet you on 12.21.18. 

“EnSUEsiasts” can follow @SUEtheTrex on Twitter for updates.

*The Griffin Dinosaur Experience, made possible by the generous support of the Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Fund, includes a special traveling exhibition, Antarctic Dinosaurs; Máximo the Titanosaur; updates to SUE the T. rex and the Griffin Halls of Evolving Planet; and new dinosaur education programs.

 

Reminder: ESCONI Holiday Party will be held on December 7th, 2018 5:30 to 7:30 PM

The 2018 ESCONI Holiday Dinner will be held at Cozymel’s, 311 East Loop Rd, Wheaton on Friday December 7, 2018 from 5:30 to 7:30 PM. We will be ordering off the menu and everyone is responsible for their own bill. There will be a drawing for door prizes. The general meeting starts at 8 PM in TEC 1038B. Our speaker is Dr. Peter Makovicky of the Field Museum.  His talk is titled "Antarctic Dinosaurs".

If you plan to attend the dinner, please RSVP to Dave at [email protected]

 

Reminder: ESCONI General Meeting on November 9th, 2018

The ESCONI General Meeting for November 2018 will be held on November 9th, 2018.  The presentation will be given by Dr. Rex Hanger of the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater.  His presentation is entitled "Cretaceous Reef Paleoecology of Central Texas".  Don't miss it!

 

Warehouse Work Day - Saturday, November 17th, 2018, 9:00 - 2:00ish

If you have some time, come join our work day at the warehouse on Saturday, November 17th, 2018 from 9:00-2:00ish. The warehouse address is 900 Knell in Montgomery, IL.  Please meet/enter in the back of the warehouse ONLY.  You will see railroad tracks along the back of the warehouse.  Drive all the way to the end in the back.

 

For more information, contact Jim Fairchild at 1-630-497-9700 or e-mail at [email protected]

 

Reminder: ESCONI November Junior Meeting, Friday 9th, 2018 at 7:00 PM - Topic "Crystals"

Is your child interested in crystals?

Join us at our junior meeting!

Friday November 9th 7pm

College of DuPage

Technical Education Center West side room 1038B

Contact [email protected] with questions

facebook.com/ESCONI.fb

 

Paleontologists Are Still Digging Into the Origins of the ‘Chinese Pompeii’

A raptor, genus Zhenyuanlong. STEVE BRUSATTE AND JUNCHANG LU.

AtlasObscura has an interesting story about the "Chinese Pompeii".  The Jehol Biota has long been known for its amazing preservation.

WHEN SOMETHING DIES, NATURE ENSURES that its remains won’t stay intact. Microbes eat away at the soft tissue, and wind, rain, rivers, oceans, and scavengers shuffle around the hard segments of the corpse. As eons pass by, these skeletal segments may become fossilized, but they remain broken jigsaw pieces of a puzzle that often cannot be entirely pieced back together.

But around 130 to 120 million years ago, in what is now northeastern China, nature behaved rather differently. It was then, during the early Cretaceous, that a series of cataclysmic events took place, ensuring that a vast collection of plants and animals, including plenty of dinosaurs, were left in much the same state they were in when they were alive.

These often fully or at least partly joined-up fossilized skeletons looked like they had been frozen in time. Many of them still retained soft tissues, from muscles to skin. The remarkable state of preservation at this location, officially known as the Jehol Biota, led to some researchers and journalists to dub the site the “Chinese Pompeii.”

Why Do Birds Have Colorful Eggs? Because They're Dinosaurs

Gizmodo has an article about bird eggs.  Why are they colorful?  Well, dinosaurs had colorful eggs and birds are dinosaurs, therefore, birds also have colorful eggs.  A recent study in Nature proposes that colorful dinosaur eggs had a single evolutionary origin.

Birds are the only living amniotes with coloured eggs, which have long been considered to be an avian innovation. A recent study has demonstrated the presence of both red-brown protoporphyrin IX and blue-green biliverdin5—the pigments responsible for all the variation in avian egg colour—in fossilized eggshell of a nonavian dinosaur. This raises the fundamental question of whether modern birds inherited egg colour from their nonavian dinosaur ancestors, or whether egg colour evolved independently multiple times. Here we present a phylogenetic assessment of egg colour in nonavian dinosaurs. We applied high-resolution Raman microspectroscopy to eggshells that represent all of the major clades of dinosaurs, and found that egg colour pigments were preserved in all eumaniraptorans: egg colour had a single evolutionary origin in nonavian theropod dinosaurs. The absence of colour in ornithischian and sauropod eggs represents a true signal rather than a taphonomic artefact. Pigment surface maps revealed that nonavian eumaniraptoran eggs were spotted and speckled, and colour pattern diversity in these eggs approaches that in extant birds, which indicates that reproductive behaviours in nonavian dinosaurs were far more complex than previously known3. Depth profiles demonstrated identical mechanisms of pigment deposition in nonavian and avian dinosaur eggs. Birds were not the first amniotes to produce coloured eggs: as with many other characteristics, this is an attribute that evolved deep within the dinosaur tree and long before the spectacular radiation of modern birds.

 

Don't Forget To Turn Back You Clocks on Sunday, November 4th, 2018 at 2:00 AM

Move them back.... move them back!

ESCONI Events November 2018

Field trips require membership, but visitors are welcome at all meetings!

Fri, Nov 9th	ESCONI Junior Meeting, 7:00 PM College of Dupage - Tech Ed (TEC) Building, Room 1038B (Map) - Topic: Crystals
Fri, Nov 9th	ESCONI General Meeting, 8:00 PM College of Dupage - Tech Ed (TEC) Building, Room 1038B (Map) - Topic: "Cretaceous Reef Paleoecology of Central Texas" by Dr. Rex Hanger of the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater
Sat, Nov 10th	ESCONI Field Trip - Behind the Scenes at the Burpee Museum, 11:00 AM - Burpee Museum in Rockford, IL.  Details are here.
Sat, Nov 17th	ESCONI Warehouse Work Day, 9:00 AM - 2:00ish PM - Details are in this post.
Sat, Nov 17th	ESCONI Paleontology Study Group Meeting, 7:30 PM College of Dupage - Tech Ed (TEC) Building, Room 1038B (Map) - Topic: "Mosasaurs: Kings of the Late Cretaceous Seas" by ESCONI Member Tom Williams

ESCONI Field Trip: Behind the Scenes at the Burpee Museum

There will be an ESCONI Field Trip to the Burpee Museum in Rockford, IL on Saturday Nov 10 starting at 11 AM.  This will be a guided, behind-the-scenes tour of collections and preparation. The trip is open to families and is limited to 25 total.  There is for members only and there is no cost.  Registration is required by sending an email to Dave Carlson at [email protected].  You will receive a response within 24 hours. If you don't hear back in that time, send it again!  Be sure to include the total number of members attending in your email.