Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois - ESCONI

Reminder: ESCONI November 2020 General Meeting - November 13th, 2020 at 8:00 PM via Zoom - "New Tetrapod Discoveries from Mazon Creek” #fossils #paleontology #MazonCreek #vertebrates #tetrapods

Our speaker via Zoom in November is Dr. Arjan Mann. Arjan recently received his PhD from Carleton University in Toronto. He is transitioning to a postdoc position at Harvard. Arjan co-authored articles naming two new species of microsaurs called Diabloroter and Infernovenator. The title of his talk is “New Tetrapod Discoveries from Mazon Creek”.

Zoom link

Here's a link to some information about him:
https://newsroom.carleton.ca/story/filling-fossil-record/

Hell hunter and devil digger. When Arjan Mann names a species, he doesn’t mess around.

As part of his PhD research into carboniferous period creatures, the Carleton Earth Sciences student identified two new species. The two species date from about 310 million years ago, when the ancestors of modern reptiles, birds and mammals were moving permanently on to land.

The first he named Diabloroter — devil digger. Mann studied the specimen at the Field Museum in Chicago, where it had been preserved in a devilishly red latex peel. Its hard skull is similar in structure to modern animals that burrow, digging into the earth by compacting soil with their heads.

The second of the two creatures was an elongated, short-limbed animal that would have moved by sidewinding — much like a modern snake. He called it Infernovenator (hell hunter) to stick with the hellish theme.

Trilobite Tuesday #28: A new middle Cambrian trilobite with a specialized cephalon from Shandong Province, North China #fossils #trilobites #China #Cambrian #TrilobiteTuesday

Acta Palaeontologica Polonica has a that describes newly discovered trilobites from the Middle Cambrian of Northern China.  These trilobites had a strangely lobed cephalon that suggests "rabbit ears".  Actually, the species name Phantaspis auritus comes from the Latin aurītus, having ears; in reference to the cranidium having a pair of long “ears”.

Trilobites achieved their maximum generic diversity in the Cambrian, but the peak of morphological disparity of their cranidia occurred in the Middle to Late Ordovician. Early to middle Cambrian trilobites with a specialized cephalon are rare, especially among the ptychoparioids, a group of libristomates featuring the so-called “generalized” bauplan. Here we describe an unusual ptychopariid trilobite Phantaspis auritus gen. et sp. nov. from the middle Cambrian (Miaolingian, Wuliuan) Mantou Formation in the Shandong Province, North China. This new taxon is characterized by a cephalon with an extended anterior area of double-lobate shape resembling a pair of rabbit ears in later ontogenetic stages; a unique type of cephalic specialization that has not been reported from other trilobites. Such a peculiar cephalon as in Phantaspis provides new insights into the variations of cephalic morphology in middle Cambrian trilobites, and may represent a heuristic example of ecological specialization to predation or an improved discoidal enrollment.

Key words: Trilobita, Ptychopariida, ontogeny, specialization, Miaolingian, Paleozoic, Longgang, Asia.

Zhixin Sun [[email protected]], Han Zeng [[email protected]], and Fangchen Zhao [[email protected]] (corresponding author), State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology and Center for Excellence in Life and Palaeoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (for details please see creativecommons.org), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Mazon Monday #33: Creature Corner Newsletter Column and Book #MazonMonday #fossils #MazonCreek

This is Mazon Monday post #33.  What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil?  Tell us at email:[email protected].

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Last week, we spoke about a couple books published by ESCONI in the 1980's - "Keys To Identify Pennsylvanian Fossil Plants of the Mazon Creek Area" in 1986 (updated in 1990) and "Keys To Identify Pennsylvanian Fossil Animals of the Mazon Creek Area" in 1989 (republished in 1999).  This week we will explore a newsletter column that formed the basis of the "Keys" animal book and was eventually collected into a separate book published in 2001. 

The column "Creature Corner" was written by Andy Hay and illustrated by Don Auler.  It appeared in the newsletter between June 1984 and December 2001.  Each article was about a species or group of fossil animals found in the Mazon Creek biota.  At the time, there was little to no easily accessible information to help identify these animals as many were discovered after the Langford books were published in the late 1950's and early 1960's.  Back then, scientific papers were much harder to obtain, so these articles helped members identify and learn about specimens in their collections.  Additionally, these columns provided the ESCONI board with encouragement to create the Keys To Identify Pennsylvanian Fossil Animals of the Mazon Creek Area" in 1989.

The introduction of the book was written by Karen Nordquist who was president of ESCONI in 2001.

Introduction

Many of our more recent ESCONI members (including myself) were not able to enjoy the Creature Corner articles written by Andy Hay and illustrated by Don Auler many years ago. We keep hearing about them from the old timers, but cannot easily find them to read. Now we have gathered as many of them as we could find to reprint for the next generation of ESCONI members and friends.

I'm sure that you will enjoy reading them (or rereading them) now that they have been compiled in this booklet. I'm sure you'll admit that it is about time that wwe were all allowed to share them again. They are compiled in the date order in which they were originally printed with an extra bonus on the first page.

Thank you to Andy and Don for allowing us to put this together and for their willingness to share their knowledge and talent with all of us. And many thanks to Jack Wittry for his help in gathering the pages and to Bryan Nugent for his enthusiastic help in putting this together.

The ESCONI Board
Karen Nordquist,
President November 2001

The author and illustrator of the column provided comments for the book.

Comments from Andrew A. Hay

I started out presenting this information at the monthly Paleontology meetings and then expanded out to the ESCONI Monthly Bulletin (My deepest appreciation to Jean Reynolds who had to manually retype and rearrange my text in order to accommodate the artwork). Locating copies of the original descriptive papers on our "Creatures" was often as great a pleasure as finding their fossil. Hope you enjoy reading these articles as much as I did putting them together.

Comments from Don Auler

Except for the scientific description, I drew the fossils as I saw them in the concretions. Others did not understand why the fossil was not precisely drawn (i.e. drawing the fossil as it would look like in real life). I deliberately did not enhance the fossil because it would give a false impression of what it would look like out in the field.

T used my own fossil samples or samples from other ESCONI members in order for me to draw an accurate picture of the fossil. Looking back I feel that I made the right decision and am proud of what Andy and I have accomplished.

Here are a few of my favorite pages from the book.

You have and will continue to see outtakes from the "Creature Column" book in this series.  It still has relevant information.  And, although the book is out of print, there are a few copies left.  Have a look at the books available at the next ESCONI show.

Unfortunately, Andy Hay passed away in 2003 and Don Auler in 2002.  They were both very involved in ESCONI for many years.  They are sorely missed.  And, many happy memories of them are still passed around.

 

 

NYT: Ancient Remains in Peru Reveal Young, Female Big-Game Hunter #archaeology #Peru #hunter

Excavations at the Wilamaya Patjxa site in Peru, where archaeologists recovered roughly 20,000 artifacts, including the remains of six people, one of whom was the female hunter.Credit...Randall Haas

The New York Times Trilobites column has a story about an ancient big game hunter... a female big game hunter.  The 9,000 year old female skeleton was discovered with what archaeologists describe as a "big-game hunting kit" in the Andes highlands of Peru.  This discovery is challenging the beliefs that in hunter-gatherer societies - males hunted and females gathered.   The discovery is detailed in a paper in the journal Science Advances.

Randy Haas, an archaeologist at the University of California, Davis, and a group of colleagues, concluded in a paper published in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday that this young woman was a big game hunter, who participated with her people in the pursuit of the vicuña and deer that made up a significant portion of their diet.

The find of a female hunter is unusual. But Dr. Haas and his colleagues make a larger claim about the division of labor at this time period in the Americas. They argue that additional research shows something close to equal participation in hunting for both sexes. In general, they conclude, “early females in the Americas were big game hunters.”

Other scientists found the claim that the remains were those of a female hunter convincing, but some said the data didn’t support the broader claim.

Robert L. Kelly, an anthropologist at the University of Wyoming who has written extensively on hunter gatherers, said that while one female skeleton may well have been a hunter, he was not persuaded by the analysis of other burials that “the prevalence of male-female hunters was near parity.” The researchers’ sample of graves was small, he said, noting that none of the other burials were clearly female hunters.

Bonnie L. Pitblado, an anthropologist at the University of Oklahoma whose specialty is the peopling of the Americas, said the findings were “well-reasoned and an important idea for future testing.” The authors could question gender roles further and what determined them, she said, calling the study “a really refreshing contribution” to studies of early settlers of the Americas.

SciTechDaily: Five-Eyed 520-Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals Arthropod Origin #Cambrian #fossils #arthropods

SciTechDaily has a story about arthropod origins.  Researchers from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) have revealed a new shrimp-like fossil with five eyes.  The animal, called Kylinxia, lived about 520 million years ago in what is now China's Yunnan Province.  The paper describing this discovery appeared in 4 November 2020 issue of the journal Nature.

The fossil species, Kylinxia, was collected from the Chengjiang fauna in southwest China’s Yunnan Province. The fauna documents the most complete early animal fossils in the Cambrian time.

Prof. HUANG Diying, corresponding author for the study from NIGPAS, said, “Kylinxia is a very rare chimeric species. It combines morphological features from different animals, which is analogous to ‘kylin,’ a chimeric creature in traditional Chinese mythology.”

“Owing to very special taphonomic conditions, the Kylinxia fossils exhibit exquisite anatomical structures. For example, nervous tissue, eyes and digestive system — these are soft body parts we usually cannot see in conventional fossils,” said Prof. ZHAO Fangchen, co-corresponding author of the study.

Kylinxia shows distinctive features of true arthropods, such as a hardened cuticle, a segmented trunk and jointed legs. However, it also integrates the morphological characteristics present in very ancestral forms, including the bizarre five eyes of Opabinia, known as the Cambrian “weird wonder,” as well as the iconic raptorial appendages of Anomalocaris, the giant apex predator in the Cambrian ocean.

Fossil Friday #30: Flexicalymene from St. Leon, IN #trilobites #Indiana #FossilFriday #fossils

This is the "Fossil Friday" post #30.  Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website.  We will post any fossil pictures you send in to [email protected].  Please include a short description or story.  Check the #FossilFriday Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world!

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Today, we have a trilobite from Indiana.... a fairly common trilobite from a legendary locality.  This is a Flexicalymene meeki from St. Leon in Indiana.  The locality is about a mile long road cut that has multiple benches on both sides of the road and it's chock full of fossils.  Stories of St. Leon (or Route 1) in Indiana are everywhere on the Internet.  Here are a couple.. here, here, and here... even here.  They are everywhere... just do a google search or go to the Fossil Forum.  There are quite a few quality threads that discuss where to look and what you'll find. 

If you've never been there and you love fossils, plan a trip... you will love the place and collect an absolute ton of fossils.

Here is the enrolled Flexicalymene meeki specimen.  It was collected on an ESCONI field trip to southern Indiana in 2009.

Throwback Thursday #32: Field Trip to a Riverside, IL Quarry in 1959 #TBT #history #fossils

This is Throwback Thursday #32.  In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general.  If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc ...), please sent them to [email protected].  Thanks!

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Here are some pictures of a field trip by ESCONI juniors to a "Riverside" quarry in 1959.  Unfortunately, the location for this trip was not recorded, but a little research in the newsletters of the time yielded the following announcement in the December 1959 edition of the newsletter.  

So, it looks like this was a field trip to the Consumers Quarry in McCook, IL near Lemont on Saturday, November 21st, 1959.  That quarry was reclaimed and is now is part of the Lemont Heritage Quarries Recreation Area.  Back in the 1950's and 1960's, there were many quarries in the towns surrounding Chicago.  The Chicago area was growing quickly and there was a need for building materials.  Now, many of these old quarries have been recovered and live on as parks and forest preserves.

Photo of Consumers Quarry, Lemont, about 1890. Photo courtesy of the Lemont Area Historical Society.

Consumer Quarry Today

ESCONI had multiple junior groups back in the 1950's.  Unfortunately, there are no old cars in these pictures, but it's interesting to see how people dressed on a field trip to a quarry back then... street clothes.  No one is wearing any hard hats and are they really lounging on stones piled next to the high wall?!?  Also, young children were let into the quarry.  The minimum age for a quarry visit like this is 16 in our more enlightened modern time.

Since this is a hard rock limestone quarry, they most likely found the usual Silurian fossils of corals, trilobites, cephalopods, gastropods, and brachiopods with the occasional crinoid.

What Did Pterosaurs Eat? Look Very Closely at Their Teeth #pterosaur #fossils

PHOTOGRAPH: MILLARD H. SHARP/SCIENCE SOURCE

Wired.com has a story about pterosaurs.  Want to know what an animal eats... look at its teeth!  That's exactly what a paper published in Nature Communications did.  The researcher imaged teeth of pterosaurs using a method called infinite focus microscopy.  This allowed them to compare the teeth with modern animals, whose diets we know.

THE PTEROSAURS HAD no way of knowing it, but they would one day become a bit of a headache for scientists. The flying reptiles lived alongside the dinosaurs between 210 million and 66 million years ago, ranging from the size of a sparrow to the height of a damn giraffe in the case of Quetzalcoatlus northropi, whose wings stretched 33 feet.

If they flew like birds but were in fact reptiles, which group did they take after when it comes to diet? Paleobiologists often look to living animals for clues: A Komodo dragon, for instance, packs serrated teeth for slashing through flesh, whereas crocodilians use their peg teeth to grasp prey and swallow it whole. So even though the pterosaurs are long gone, today scientists can analyze the shapes of their skulls and teeth to suggest whether a certain species was likely to hunt insects, fish, or the flesh of terrestrial animals.

Now, one group of researchers has a newfangled tool for divining not only what a pterosaur ate, but how that prey, in a sense, bit back. It turns out that chewing on different materials creates characteristic patterns of “microwear” on the tooth, on the scale of millionths of a meter. (The same thing also happens to your teeth, and to modern reptiles like crocodiles and monitor lizards.) These patterns offer clues to an animal’s eating habits.

Phys.org: Antarctica yields oldest fossils of giant birds with 6.4-meter wingspans #birds #fossils #Antarctica

An artist's depiction of ancient albatrosses harassing a pelagornithid -- with its fearsome toothed beak -- as penguins frolic in the oceans around Antarctica 50 million years ago. Credit: Copyright Brian Choo

Phys.org has an interesting story about some truly giant birds.  The bird fossils, discovered in the 1980s, show that an extinct group of birds, the pelagornithids, had some large members not long after the mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago.  One specimen, which lived about 50 million years ago, had a wingspan of about 21 feet (6.4 meters).  Another, which lived about 40 million years ago, is part of a jaw bone.  Read all about it in a paper in the journal Scientific Reports

"Our fossil discovery, with its estimate of a 5-to-6-meter wingspan—nearly 20 feet—shows that birds evolved to a truly gigantic size relatively quickly after the extinction of the dinosaurs and ruled over the oceans for millions of years," said Peter Kloess, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley.

The last known pelagornithid is from 2.5 million years ago, a time of changing climate as Earth cooled, and the ice ages began.

Kloess is the lead author of a paper describing the fossil that appears this week in the open access journal Scientific Reports. His co-authors are Ashley Poust of the San Diego Natural History Museum and Thomas Stidham of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Both Poust and Stidham received their Ph.Ds from UC Berkeley.

Peter A. Kloess et al, Earliest fossils of giant-sized bony-toothed birds (Aves: Pelagornithidae) from the Eocene of Seymour Island, Antarctica, Scientific Reports (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-75248-6

Mazon Monday #32: ESCONI books - Keys to Identify Pennsylvanian Fossil Plants and Animals #MazonMonday #MazonCreek #fossils #Pennsylvanian

This is Mazon Monday post #32.  What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil?  Tell us at email:[email protected].

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ESCONI has made numerous contributions to the science of Mazon Creek fossils over the years.  Everyone knows about the George Langford books published in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  Jack Wittry wrote new books that included much of the new science books starting with "The Mazon Creek Fossil Flora" in 2006 and followed by "The Mazon Creek Fossil Fauna" in 2012.  Just this year, ESCONI published "A Comprehensive Guide to the Fossil Flora of Mazon Creek" also by Jack Wittry.  This last book brings the science of Mazon Creek plants very much up to date. All of these books are/were the definitive books in their time for the science of Mazon Creek fossils.

Between the early 1960s and 2006, ESCONI published two other books - "Keys To Identify Pennsylvanian Fossil Plants of the Mazon Creek Area" in 1986 (updated in 1990) and "Keys To Identify Pennsylvanian Fossil Animals of the Mazon Creek Area" in 1989 (republished in 1999).  These books strive to provide "Keys" to identifying fossils that might be found in the Mazon Creek area.

"Keys To Identify Pennsylvannian Fossil Plants of the Mazon Creek Area" is full of excellent illustrations by Don Auler,  And, while the species names have changed a little, as seen in comparison to the latest Wittry plant book, there is still very interesting and useful information that can be used to identify your fossils.  This book was dedicated to the memory of Dr. Eugene S. Richardson, Jr.

"... his unselfish, caring, and sensitive commitment to support amateur paleontology will never be forgotten by all whom he personally touched, instructed, and guided through prehistory."

The introduction and historical background are instructive as to the motivation around why this book was created.

The partnership which has been established between amateur and professional, between ESCONI members and research paleontologists is unique. Over the course of the last 24 years I have witnessed and participated in collecting, preparing and cooperatively researching Mazon Creek Area fossils with fellow ESCONI members. This was not done in a vacuum. We were inspired, educated, directed, and included in the work of many fine professionals from Langford to Richardson. Today, other professionals continue the tradition. part as amateurs, we continue to contribute our share to the scientific efforts in making history out of prehistory.

These keys have been produced to motivate, guide and assist current and fu-ture fossil collectors. It represents our best efforts to assemble the best information available in a collector-usable format. The greatest room in any house is the room for improvement.Please send your ideas to ESCONI and help us improve our work.

Paul F. Caponera

Historical Background

The idea and initial work to develop these keys occurred in 1967 within the ESCONI Paleontology Study Group.  In 1984, work to revise the first drafts of that key was begun.  Our current keys are part of an evolutionary educational process for the Group.

For many years, most of us who collected fossils spent hours identifying our finds by comparing them to pictures and illustrations in books such as George Langford's "The Wilmington Coal Flora", Raymond E. Janssen's "Leaves and stems from Fossil Plants", and A. C. Noe's "Pennsylvanian Flora of Northern Illinois". This was a slow process.

Early in 1967 it was suggested that the Paleontology Study Group undertake a project to develop keys for the most common fossil plant genera and I was appointed chairman of a committee to proceed with the venture. Assignments were made which resulted in the first keys and other pertinent classification aids.  All of these were presented at the February and March 1967 Study Group meetings and it was suggested that copies be made for all study group members.

In 1975, Larry Osterberger borrowed all of the material in my file. several of the keys and illustrations re-arranged and re-typed for a better presentation.

A comment early in 1984 by Don Brazda that he had seen an incomplete copy of some of the identification material reminded me of all the information in my file that many fossil collectors would find very useful. I suggested at the January 1984 Paleontology Study Group meeting the possibility of putting all of this together with copies for everyone in the group. There was an enthusiastic response with volunteers to do re-typing of some sheets for better copying, preparing a cover, and running off copies for all Study Group members and those who had created the original keys."Keys To Identify Pennsylvanian Fossil Plants of the Mazon Creek Area"

ESCONI then committed support for the production, printing and sale of the Keys to Identify Pennsylvanian Fossil Plants of the Mazon Creek Area, and several members and study groups advanced funds on a loan basis to provide additional financial support.

Then came the real challenge. It was recognized that the keys, as printed up to that point, were based on data that was out-dated due to research on fossil plants over the past 25 years.  Larry Osterberger undertook the great task of bringing the keys up to date.  Without Larry's work the present keys would have been impossible.  Paul Caponera undertook the job of layout to put Larry's work into a format most useful for fossil plant collectors.  Paul also added several new sections and genera keys.  Don Auler volunteered to do the art wok.  The sketches he made for the 1984 edition cover made everyone realize how greatly the keys would be improved with illustrations that really looked like fossil plant nodules.  Floyd Rogers put it all together in a work processor.  These four deserve major credit for the "Keys to Identify Pennsylvanian Fossil Plants of the Mazon Creek Area, now in your hands.

John Ade, Past President, ESCONI

The book has sections that provide "Keys" to identify the plant fossils found in the Mazon Creek biota.  If the target species are changed to the species names in "A Comprehensive Guide to the Fossil Flora of Mazon Creek", these "Keys" are still relevant.  Here are the main sections of the book.

• Overview
• Guide to Unlock the Keys
• Form Genera Key
• Lycopod Key
• Sphenposid Key
• Spore Fern Key
• Seed Fern Key
• Cordaites Key

coposition

"Keys To Identify Pennsylvannian Fossil Animals of the Mazon Creek Area" was published in 1989 and reprinted in 1999.  It did for animal fossils what the plant book did for fossil plants.  The dedication was to George Langford, Sr.

We herewith dedicate this publication to the memory of George Langford, Sr., whose achievements continue to inspire amateur collectors.

The acknowledgments section speaks to the dedication to the effort by Andy Hay, Don Auler, and Floyd Rogers.

When ESCONI published "Keys to Identify Pennsylvanian Fossil Plants of the Mazon Creek Area in 1986, we received many words of appreciation and praise from those who purchased and used the book. The complements we appreciated the most, however, were the many requests we had to publish a companion book on the fossil aninals of the Mazon Creek Area. At the time, we thought the requirements to publish a fossil animal book were well beyond our ability to do a credible job.

What we did not realize until later was that we had a member, who had not contributed to the fossil plant book, but who was demonstrating in almost every issue of the Earth Science News, ESCONI's monthly publication, the ability to write and assist others in writing the text for a valid fossil animal book similar to the fossil plant book. Andy Hay had written his first "Creature Corner" article in December 1984 about the First Fossil Laprey, and has covered a variety of fossil animals since realization that we had a person with the ability to lead the way with the text, a committee was formed to produce this book.

The acknowledgements listed on the following page give credit to al1 those who have assisted with this work. This book could not have been produced without any one of the three following persons: Andy Hay for the text, Don auler for the illustrations, and Floyd Rogers for the computer document composition.

Note: the Jack Wittry books are available on our website or on ebay.  The "Key" books are still available at some ESCONI shows, although we have very few copies.

PBS Eons: Why Do Things Keep Evolving Into Crabs? #paleontology #crabs #fossils

 

There's a new episode of PBS Eons.  This one is about all things crab and why animals keep evolving into the crab shapes.

For some reason, animals keep evolving into things that look like crabs, independently, over and over again. What is it about the crab’s form that makes it so evolutionarily successful that non-crabs are apparently jealous of it?