Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois - ESCONI

The early bird gets the fruit: Fossil provides earliest evidence of fruit-eating by any animal #fossil #paleontology #dinosaur #bird @FieldMuseum @SUEtheTrex

The Cretaceous bird Jeholornis pooping out seeds from fruit, helping fruit-bearing plants take over the world. Illustration by Zhixin Han and Yifan Wang.

The Field Museum has a press release about some recently published research about birds.  Associate Curator of Fossil Reptiles Jingmai O'Connor co-authored a paper called "Earliest evidence for fruit consumption and potential seed dispersal by birds", which has been published in the journal eLife.  The paper looks at an exquisitely preserved new skull of Jeholornis.  Previously, seeds had  been found in fossilized gut contents from a fossil Jeholornis.  But, the morphology of the new head fossil shows that it most likely ate fruit and not exclusively seeds.

Hundreds of animals eat fruit, from toucans to fruit bats to maned wolves to humans. But most fruit-bearing plants evolved relatively recently in Earth’s history, showing up for the first time in the Cretaceous: the final period of the dinosaurs. In a new paper in eLife, scientists tracked down the first fossil evidence of fruit consumption by comparing the skull shapes and stomach contents of fossil birds. The verdict: the earliest-known fruit-eater was an early bird called Jeholornis that lived 120 million years ago, and it may have helped contribute to the spread of the plants that dominate the world today.

“This is the oldest evidence of fruit-eating in any animal,” says Jingmai O’Connor, associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum in Chicago and co-author of the new eLife paper. “Fruits are an incredible resource that everybody’s familiar with, and the plants that produce them are everywhere, but it wasn’t always that way. This discovery about how and when birds started exploiting this resource could help explain why these kinds of plants are so dominant in our landscape today.”

“Birds are important consumers of fruit today, and play important roles in seed dispersal, but so far there has not been direct evidence of fruit consumption by early birds, outside the bird crown group,” says Han Hu, a researcher at Oxford University and the study’s first author. “This obstructs our understanding of the origins of this important plant-animal interaction.”

Big head, small arms: A newly discovered gigantic dinosaur evolved in a similar manner to Tyrannosaurus rex #fossil #dinosaur #paleontology #trex @SUEtheTrex #dinosaurs #cretaceous #evolution

A skeletal diagram of Meraxes gigas, highlighting known bones. (Juan Canale/Ernesto Bachmann Palaeontological Museum), Author provided

The Conversation has a story about the evolution of meat-eating dinosaurs.  Meraxes gigas is a recently named theropod dinosaur from Agentina.  It was found near Villa El Chocon in the Huincul Formation and lived about 95 million years ago.  

Meraxes is a large theropod, the group of bipedal, often meat-eating, dinosaurs which also includes birds, and a member of the Carcharodontosauridae family, making it a relative of dinosaurs like Carcharodontosaurus, Giganotosaurus and Acrocanthosaurus.

The discovered specimen is approximately 11 metres long, and its weight is estimated as approximately 4,200 kg. It has a proportionally large skull featuring a rather fearsome set of teeth, along with long legs and large clawed feet, a powerful tail, and small arms and hands.

Likely a top predator, it co-occurred with other large theropods like Skorpiovenator, alongside large herbivorous sauropod dinosaurs and smaller iguanadontian ornithopod dinosaurs.

Mazon Monday #127: The Inarticulate Brachiopods of Pit 14 #fossil #paleontology MazonCreek #MazonMonday #brachiopod #fossils #pennsylvanian

This is Mazon Monday post #127.  What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil?  Tell us at email:[email protected].

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Today, we have an article called "The Inarticulate Brachiopods of Pit 14" by Earl Hoffman.  This piece appeared in the July/August 1972 edition of the ESCONI newsletter "Earth Science News".  Earl was Historian and later Micro-mount study group chairman for a few years.

Brachiopods are animals that look similar to bivalve mollusks, but are actually belong to their own Phylum - Brachiopoda.  There are two types of brachiopods, inarticulate and articulate.  Inarticulatr brachiopods are missing the tooth-and-groove structures of the valve-hinge present in the articulate group.

Articulate ("jointed") brachiopods have a tooth and socket arrangement by which the pedicle and brachial valves hinge, locking the valves against lateral displacement. Inarticulate brachiopods have no matching teeth and sockets; their valves are held together only by muscles. (R. C. Moore, 1952)

All brachiopods have adductor muscles that are set on the inside of the pedicle valve and which close the valves by pulling on the part of the brachial valve ahead of the hinge. These muscles have both "quick" fibers that close the valves in emergencies and "catch" fibers that are slower but can keep the valves closed for long periods. Articulate brachiopods open the valves by means of abductor muscles, also known as diductors, which lie further to the rear and pull on the part of the brachial valve behind the hinge. Inarticulate brachiopods use a different opening mechanism, in which muscles reduce the length of the coelom (main body cavity) and make it bulge outwards, pushing the valves apart. Both classes open the valves to an angle of about 10°. The more complex set of muscles employed by inarticulate brachiopods can also operate the valves as scissors, a mechanism that lingulids use to burrow.^[9]

Each valve consists of three layers, an outer periostracum made of organic compounds and two biomineralized layers. Articulate brachiopods have an outermost periostracum made of proteins, a "primary layer" of calcite (a form of calcium carbonate) under that, and innermost a mixture of proteins and calcite.^[9] Inarticulate brachiopod shells have a similar sequence of layers, but their composition is different from that of articulated brachiopods and also varies among the classes of inarticulate brachiopods. The Terebratulida are an example of brachiopods with a punctate shell structure; the mineralized layers are perforated by tiny open canals of living tissue, extensions of the mantle called caeca, which almost reach the outside of the primary layer. These shells can contain half of the animal's living tissue. Impunctate shells are solid without any tissue inside them. Pseudopunctate shells have tubercles formed from deformations unfurling along calcite rods. They are only known from fossil forms, and were originally mistaken for calcified punctate structures.^[10][11]

Pit 14 was located southwest of Pit 11, just south of the South Wilmington.  It is currently private property.  It was known for having a large black shale deposit.  Back in Mazon Monday #34, we posted an article about Pit 14 fossils.

Here is a satellite picture from google maps.

THE INARTICULATE BRACHIOPODS OF PIT 14 by Earl Hoffman

Pit 14 of the Northern Illinois Mine of the Peabody Coal Company is located Win Kankakee Co. (N.W. 1/4, Sec. 16, T 31 N, R 9 E) between Essex and South Wilmington, Illinois. The strip mining process deposits on the surface of the spoil piles a black, laminated shale which originally lay either directly above the coal or was separated from the coal by a rather thin layer of gray shale. This black shale appears to correlate with the Mecca Quarry Shale Member (Zangerl & Richardson, 1963). It is a member of the Liverpool Cyclothem of the Carbondale Formation of the Kewanee Group and is of Pennsylvanian age (Kosanke, et. al., 1960).

Fossils are collected by splitting the pieces of shale on the spoil piles and examining all surfaces for the remains of living organisms. Microscopic examination usually reveals specimens too small to be located by the unaided eye. At the north end of the pit (as it was being worked in 1971) the black shale consisted of a laminated, fissle shale and a compact non-fissle gray and black banded component. This non-fissle component yields a distinctly different fauna consisting of brachiopods, gastropods, and pelecypods while the harder, fissle shale yields conodont, shark, and fish remains.

The phylum Brachiopods is divided into two classes--Inarticulata and Articulate. The inarticulate brachiopods are further divided into two orders--the Atremata and the Neotremata (Shrock and Twenhofel, 1953 and Fenton and Fenton, 1958). The inerticulate brachiopods are distin guished from the articulate brachiopods by the lack of hinges between the two valves or shells; the valves being held together only by muscles.

Both orders of the in articulate brachiopods are present in Pit 14. The Atremete (meaning without a strictly defined pedicle opening, the opening being shared by both valves) are represented by the ancient and is still living genus Lingula of the family Lingulidae.

I have identified 32 specimens as Lingula carbonaria Shumerd (dunbar & Condre, 1932 and Sturgeon & Hoere, 1968). The shell is nearly elliptical in outline, sometimes with nearly straight and parallel lateral margins and sometimes with a rather pointed posterior (Figure 1). The specimens range in size from 2.8 mm wide by 4.1 mm long to 8 mm wide by 13 mm long. The outer surfaces of the vzlves often have well defined concentric growth lines numbering from 50 to 80 per mm but "the exceedingly fine radial strise" noted by Dunbar and Condra (1932) were not observed with magnifications up to 80x. A few specimens exhibit brown and white concentric banding which is coarser then the growth line spacing. This pattern may be representative of the color pattern in the living specimens.

 

Figure 1: Lingula species--exterior view

The order Neotremate is represented by two genera of the family Discinidae which are characterized by circular and flattened conical valves; the pedicle valve containing a pedicle opening in a modified pedicle slit (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Exterior view of the pedicle valve of, an Orbiculoidea species.

I identify 25 specimens as Orbiculoides missouriensis Shumard (Dunber & Condra, 1932 and Sturgeon & Hoere, 1968). The size varies from 4 mm to 11 mm in diameter with the length slightly greater then the width. The shells show concentric growth lines numbering 4 to 8 mm depending on the specimen and the distance from the margin of the shell. A few specimens show concentric brown bands..

A single specimen is identified as Lindstroemella patule Girty (Dunbar & Condra, 1932). The specimen is a brachial valve interior 17 mm in diameter. The diagnostic "y shaped muscle scars (Figure 3) described and pictured by Dunbar and Condra (1932) are well defined. these scars are not present in any Orbiculoidea species. Dunbar and Condra (1932) reported that this species had not been found north of Oklahoma.

Figure 3: Interior view of a brachial valve of Lindstroemella patula.

A single distorted and broken pedicle value of diameter 17 mm may be either L. patula or 0. cepliformis McChesney. O. missouriensis is ruled out on the basis of size. Dunbar and Condra (1932) indicate that the pedicle valves of the first two named species are distinguishable only by the vertical profile which is strongly deformed in this specimen. The brachial valve of O. capuliformis would be distinguishable from L. patula by the absence of the "Y" scar.

I would welcome the opportunity to examine specimens from this locality and offer my opinion on their identification. I am especially interested in specimens which do not appear to fit any of the above described species and specimens larger than 10 mm (about 3/8 inch) in diameter or specimens showing distinct muscle scars.

My specimens are available for examination.

 

Dunbar, C. O. and Condra, G. E. 1932, Brachiopoda of the Pennsylvanian System in Nebraska, Nebraska Geol. Surv., Bulletin 5, 2nd Series.

Fenton, C. L. and Fenton, M. A., 1958, The fossil book, Doubleday and Company, Inc., New York.

Kosanke, R. M., Simon, J. A., Wanless, H. R., and Willman, H. B., 1960, Classification of the Pennsylvanian strata of Illinois, Ill. State Geol. Surv., Rpt. 214.

Shrock, R. R. and Twenhofel, W. H., 1953, Principles of invertebrate paleontology, 2nd ed., McGraw-Hill, New York.

Sturgeon, M. T. and Hoare, R. D., 1968, Pennsylvanian brachiopods of Ohio, Ohio Geol. Surv., Bulletin 63.

Zangerl, R. and Richardson, E. S., Jr., 1963, The paleoecological history of two Pennsylvanian black shales, Fieldiena: Geology. Memoirs, Vol. 4, Chicago Natural History Museum.

Scientists discover fossils of giant sea lizard that ruled the oceans 66 million years ago #fossil #paleontology #cretaceous #fossils #mosasaur #morocco

Nick Longrich with the mosasaur fossil. Credit: Nick Longrich

Phys.org has a story about the discovery of a huge mosasaur in Morocco.  It's been named Thalassotitan atrox, and it probably preyed on other large marine reptiles like plesiosaurs, sea turtles, and even other mosasaurs.  Mosasaurs are not dinosaurs, but actually are distant relatives of modern iguanas and monitor lizards.  The research was published in the journal Cretaceous Research.

Mosasaurs looked like a Komodo dragon with flippers instead of legs, and a shark-like tail fin. Mosasaurs became larger and more specialized in the last 25 million years of the Cretaceous, taking niches once filled by marine reptiles like plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs. Some evolved to eat small prey like fish and squid. Others crushed ammonites and clams. The new mosasaur, named Thalassotitan atrox, evolved to prey on all the other marine reptiles.

The remains of the new species were dug up in Morocco, about an hour outside Casablanca. Here, near the end of the Cretaceous, the Atlantic flooded northern Africa. Nutrient rich waters upwelling from the depths fed blooms of plankton. Those fed small fish, feeding larger fish, which fed mosasaurs and plesiosaurs—and so on, with these marine reptiles becoming food for the giant, carnivorous Thalassotitan.

PBS Eons: The Fungi That Turned Ants Into Zombies #ants #evolution #fungi

PBS Eons has a new episode on Youtube.  This one is about a fungus that can control ants.

This fungus was actually manipulating ants’ movements, forcing them to do something they’d never ordinarily do, something strange, yet specific…

ESCONI Events September 2022

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

Fri, Sept 9th	ESCONI General Meeting 8:00 PM Zoom - Topic: “Paleozoic fishes of the Illinois Basin” by Dr. Ryan Shell Zoom link
Sat, Sept 10th	ESCONI Junior Meeting - 7:00 PM at College of DuPage - Topic: "Updating our Mazon Creek Collection and Tumbling Rocks" Specifics of this meeting are available from Scott Galloway, 630-670-2591, [email protected]. The meeting will be in person at the College of DuPage Tech Ed (TEC) Building, Room 1038A (Map).
Sat, Sept 10th	ESCONI Field Trip to Braceville, IL for Mazon Creek Fossils See details here.
Sun, Sept 11th	ESCONI Field Trip to Braceville, IL for Mazon Creek Fossils See details here.
Sat, Sept 17th	ESCONI Field Trip to Danville Spoil Pile Details are here.
Sat, Sept 24th	ESCONI Paleontology Meeting 7:30 PM Hybrid - "Brag Night" College of DuPage Tech Ed (TEC) Building, Room Room 1038A (Map).  Zoom link.

Fossil Friday #123: Lepidostrobophyllum lanceolatus #fossil #paleontology #MazonCreek #FossilFriday #plantfossil #cone #fossils #pennsylvanian #illinois

This is "Fossil Friday" post #123.  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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A stunning cone bract is up for Fossil Friday this week.  This gorgeous specimen comes from ESCONI member Marie Angkuw, who has shared with us on a few previous occasions.  The species here is Lepidostrobophyllum lanceolatus.  Have a look on page 33 of "A Comprehensive Guide to the Fossil Flora of Mazon Creek" by Jack Wittry. 

Thanks for sharing, Marie!  That is is a beautiful fossil!

 

Throwback Thursday #125: ESCONI at the College of DuPage 1983 #history #TBT #ThrowbackThursday #sauger #fish #lakemichigan #postglacial #glacial

This is Throwback Thursday #125.  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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Who's ready to get back to ESCONI meetings?  We have the September 2022 General Meeting coming up on September 9th, 2022 at the College of DuPage.  The very first ESCONI General Meeting at the College of DuPage occurred on Friday, September 9th, 1983.  This was announced in the July/August 1983 edition of the ESCONI newsletter.  Previously, most General Meetings were held at the Hummer Park Field House in Downers Grove.

The topic of that meeting was "Post Glacial Fish from the Lake Michigan Drainage in Milwaukee, Wisconsin" given by Susan Teller-Marshall of the Lincoln Park Zoo.

The October 1983 newsletter had a summary of her presentation by Recording Secretary Kathy Dedina.

Tonight's speaker is Susan Teller-Marshall of the Lincoln Park Zoo. Her program is on the post glacial fishes of the Milwaukee drainage. Susan is a vertebrate paleontologist not a geologist. She did her master's on material collected by amateurs along the gulf coast of Texas. Without the amateurs, her thesis would not have been possible. The area yields too little to devote a season to collecting there. The work on the post-glacial fishes was done at the University of Illinois and formed the basis for a series of papers. I hope to show you that you can reconstruct a fossil from only parts of the animal. The paper on the fishes of the Milwaukee drainage is available from the Milwaukee Museum.

The first site studied was at Michigan City, Indiana. Someone brought a fossil fish to the Field Museum. The museum called Dr. Bardack, my adviser. The fish was a pike. We collected in the Michigan City area to get more material. We found quite a few fossils. When a group of fossils are found together, there are several ways to test if they actually occurred together--1) Would you expect these to occur together answer yes for Michigan City fossils; 2) Was the geological feature long or short lived - short-lived for Michigan City. The shorter-lived the feature, the more likely the fossils occurred together; 3) Sedimentation study is done; 4) Radiocarbon dating gives approximate age. Fish are more particular where they live since they have a more limited tolerance.

The animals found at Michigan City were: long-nosed gar fish, northern pike, northern brown bullhead, blue gill, large-mouthed bass, sauger, painted turtle and red-throated loon. Each of these animals could be separated from related species by distinctive skeletal features. As an example, the northern pike has a long, flat head with a distinctive top headbone. The lower jaw and tooth pattern separate the northern pike from the related muskie. The northern brown bullhead was determined from the pectoral spine. Only the brown or yellow bullhead has serrated teeth at the base of the spine. By measuring the depth to length of spines, we found each species has a size range that did not overlap. I was particularly pleased with the sauger because it was my find. The specimen was a complete fish head. The distinctive features of a sauger are found in the head. The turtle was studied by an expert at the University of Illinois. We took his word for the identification. Loons have much longer braincase than other birds with more primitive features. The skull was too small for a common loon. The bill and distribution determined it to be a red-throated loon.

We charted the habitats these animals live in. One animal specie may live in a variety of habitats. All the animals we found at Michigan City occur in a warm shallow marsh. The fossils were radiocarbon dated to 6350 B.P. Was the climate at that time warmer than the climate of today? Some literature say that the climate then was not the same as now. 22,000 years ago, the Wisconsin glacier reached its peak; 14000 years ago, ice receded north of Chicago; 9,000 years ago Lake Michigan water was at its lowest lever; 4,000 years ago, it approached its present stage. The Michigan City fossil location was quite a ways from the shore of the lake. 10,000 years ago, the climate warmed and reached its peak 4,000-6,000 years ago then it cooled. This climatic data is based on pollen data. Some geologists didn't think the climate was significantly different after the receding of the last glacier than today.

Since one community doesn't tell much, we looked into the literature for other locations. We found one other community, Fenton Lake in Michigan, dated about 1,000-3000 B.P. The Fenton Lake fossils included lake trout, lake whitefish, suckers, walleye, silver red horse, and muskellunge. The Fenton Lake fishes were colder water fishes than those of Michigan City. We envision that the Michigan City community was a marsh or shallow pond that warmed up in the warmer weather. Fenton Lake was deeper and stayed cooler. A number of the Michigan City fish ranged further south than those of Fenton Lake. The difference in species at the two locations may represent differences in habitat rather than climate. Caution should be used in determining climate on the basis of pollen data only. The period of 4,000-6,000 B.P. was very dry. Many areas were drained. Some fishes may have been kept out of an area by changes in water or river patterns rather than climatic cooling.

A fossil which turned out to be a mudminnow was given to us for study by the Milwaukee Museum. We found that the museum had a whole room full of material from the mudminnow location. The fossils were found during sewer works. The fossils found at the Milwaukee location were: central mudminnow, black bullhead, small-mouth bass, pike, muskellunge, green sunfish and pumpkinseed. The radiocarbon date was 7,750 B.P. The fossils of Milwaukee represent a different community than the fossils of the Michigan City location. Milwaukee was a slow-moving cooler stream or river. Since our papers, there has been a turnaround in how post-glacial fossils are viewed. Factors other than climate are being considered when studying the distribution of fossils.

Kathy Dedina, Recording Secretary

Sander canadensis - AKA Sauger

 

Glacier Archaeologists Find a 1300-Year-Old Arrow in Melting Ice #archaeology #culture #arrow #norway #artifact

The Archaeologist has a piece about the discovery of a 1300 year old arrow.   The arrow was found during a research project on the Langfonne ice patch in the Jutunheimen Mountains in Norway.   It dates to the Late Neolithic Age from about 2400 to 1750 BC.  The Langfonne ice patch has shrunk 30% in the last 20 years due to climate change.

The arrow was discovered in a collection of broken rock fragments between larger stones on the lower edge of the icefield.

The team believes that the arrow was lost and deposited downslope by meltwater and that it has since been exposed several times by melting ice over the centuries.

This is indicated by the lack of fletching, the fin-shaped aerodynamic stabilization normally made from feathers or bark. Evidence of sinew and tar has also been identified, but this survives in a poor state of preservation. The arrow is tapered towards the end and the nock has been thickened for engaging with a bowstring. The remains of the tar would have glued the fletching to the shaft, while imprints of the thread securing the fletching are still visible.

In recent years, the team has found numerous arrows in the region during the Late Neolithic (2400-1750 BC) and especially during the Late Iron Age (AD 550-1050).

Eighty million years ago, western Kansas was 'hell's aquarium.' Here's what it can teach us today #fossil #paleontology #fish #cretaceous #fish #fossils #kansas

George Sternberg excavates his most famous discovery, the fish-within-a-fish, in Gove County near Castle Rock badlands.  Digitized By Forsyth Digital Collections/University Archives, Fort Hays State University

High Plains Public Radio (HPPR) has a story about Kansas during the Cretaceous Period.  Eight million years ago, a good part of Kansas was covered by the Western Interior Seaway - a "shallow" sea.  That sea teamed with life, including large mosasaurs, fish like Xyphactinus, sharks, and even giant clams.  Circling above were pterosaurs like Pteronodon.  One very famous fossil from western Kansas is called the "fish within a fish", which resides in the Sternberg Museum in Hays, Kansas.  The fossil features a large Xyphactinus fish with a smaller fish fossilized in its stomach.

That’s when he dug up a 14-foot-long fish with a perfectly intact eight-foot-long fish in its belly, meaning it swallowed the colossal prey whole right before it died. Their intertwined skeletons are so large that they wouldn’t fit in Sternberg’s truck and had to be sawed in half.

The specimen is now known far and wide as the fish-within-a-fish. Images of the famous fossil adorn billboards, t-shirts, even the can of a new beer from the local brewery.

And today, this wall-length double-fish spectacle greets visitors as they step into the Sternberg Museum.

“This is the most photographed fossil in our collection by a longshot,” collections manager Aly Baumgartner said. “Everybody takes their picture with this.”

Mazon Monday #126: Relative Abundance of Different Mazon Creek Organisms #fossil #paleontology #MazonCreek #MazonMonday #pennsylvanian #fossils

This is Mazon Monday post #126.  What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil?  Tell us at email:[email protected].

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There are good shapes and bad shapes, but at the end of the day - it's what's in the concretion that counts.  Everyone wants to know what might be in the concretion they just found.  It's pretty well known that the northern Braidwood biota yields concretions that are more likely to have plant matter, while the southern Essex biota, being marine, is more likely to have animal fossils.  Chapter 4B in the "Richardson's Guide to the Fossil Fauna of Mazon Creek" shows the relative scarcity of plants and animals found in the Mazon Creek fossil deposit.

Perseverance does not always pay off for every collector who stalks the coal company dumps or wades Mazon Creek. Although probabilities remain constant over time, chance sometimes matches a great fossil with the right collector on a day well remembered. Indeed, one hunter may find two lampreys in one day, while an other collecting just as intensely finds none in a year. Gene Richardson recalled the first time that his Field Museum colleague Bill Turnbull was taken to the strip mines. Turnbull promptly secured a splendid specimen of the snakelike amphibian Aornerpeton (=Phlegethontia), a prize for which some veterans have searched in vain for decades.

But what controls the probability? Unless you are so foolish as to walk in the fresh boot prints of one or more zealous amateurs, your chances are influenced by the original absolute and relative abundances of organisms fossilized in concretions within the exposed and weathered rock. An approximate measure of the relative rarity or abundance of Mazon Creek organisms at various localities can be established through census collecting. However, the quality of such data depends on the amount of material collected, identified, and recorded. Roy L. Moodie tentatively determined that on average at least 100,000 concretions from Mazon Creek would have to be split to yield an amphibian fossil (Moodie, 1912, p. 279); this figure is little more than an educated guess based on extrapolation, however, because no one has ever collected half a million concretions from along the creek to firmly establish the odds.

The chapter is a summary of the 1985 paper by Gordon Baird, Charles Shabica, John Anderson, and Eugene Richardson, Jr. called "Biota of a Pennsylvanian muddy coast: habitats within the Mazonian Delta Complex, northeast Illinois".  The paper was part of a larger study to determine the boundary line between the terrestrial and marine environments back in the Pennsylvanian.

Baird, G. C., C. W. Shabica, J. L. Anderson, and E. S. Richardson, Jr. 1985a. Biota of a Pennsylvanian muddy coast: habitats within the Mazonian Delta Complex, northeast Illinois. Jour. Paleo., 59:253-281.

Abstract

The Mazon Creek biota (Westphalian D) is composed of plants and animals from terrestrial, fresh water and marginal marine habitats. Fossil animals, including jellyfish, worms, crustaceans, holothurians, insects, chordates, and problematica occur in sideritic concretions on spoil piles of more than 100 abandoned coal mines in a five-county region (Mazon Creek area) of northeast Illinois. These fossils record rapid burial and early diagenesis in a muddy, delta-influenced coastal setting submerged during marine transgression. Fossils are associated with laminar mudstone in the Francis Creek Shale Member of the Carbondale Formation, which records moderate to very rapid sedimentation in quiet water. Rapid engulfment of organisms is indicated by upright-standing trees, edgewise-buried plant leaves, and escape burrows with associated animals. Very regular sedimentary rhythms in the lower Francis Creek record daily sediment accumulation in a tide-influenced shallow bay or estuary. Major fossil associations include: 1) terrestrial plants and animals from coastal swamp, levee, and floodplain settings; 2) fresh water animals; and 3) euryhaline animals inhabiting waters near distributaries. Extensive fossil sampling shows a distinct regional boundary between marine (Essex) and nonmarine (Braidwood) faunal assemblages which parallels the ancient coastline. As this boundary is crossed, a low diversity nonmarine fauna is replaced by a diverse association of eurytopic marine benthonic and pelagic taxa. The faunal gradient between these associations as well as spatial changes in species dominance within the Essex fauna are attributed to salinity, turbidity, and oxygen depletion stress between localities. The Essex fauna is compared to coeval normal marine shelf faunas in western Illinois. Intermediate fossil groupings are absent in the Francis Creek, but one assemblage (Danville Fauna) in a younger Pennsylvanian unit clearly shows intermediate faunal composition and taphonomic characteristics; this delta margin biota is described and contrasted with Essex and normal marine faunas.

56,974 Braidwood concretions were collected, of which 22,802 (40%) were duds.  For the Essex, 229,979 concretions yielded 144,799 duds (63%).  As, many have noticed, there are far more duds found in Pit 11 and Braceville than the terrestrial localities.  So yes, you will find a bunch of duds at Pit 11!

Table 4B.1
Relative Rarity of Selected Braidwood Fossils

Fossil	Number	Percentage
Pecopteris	8971	26
Plant stem	4572	13
Epidophyllums	4476	13
Macerated plant	4233	12
Coprolite	2670	7.8
Neuropteris	2496	7.3
Annularia	1430	4.2
Misc. plants	885	2.6
Bark	839	2.5
Calamites	770	2.3
Clam	632	1.8
Shrimp	162	0.5
Misc. molluscs	149	0.4
Horseshoe crab	98	0.3
Millipede	21	0.1
Fish scale	20	0.1
Insect	11	0.03
Fish	6	0.02
Spider	4	0.01
Centipede	1	0.003

Table 4B.2
Relative Rarity of Selected Essex Fossils

Fossil	Number	Percentage
Blob (Essexella)	35420	42
Plants	25072	29
Burrow / trail	5062	5.9
Clam ("Edmondia")	4673	5.5
Coprolite	4070	4.8
Worms	2409	2.8
Misc. molluscs	1656	1.9
Shrimp (Belotelson)	1497	1.8
Myaline	1190	1.4
Misc. shrimp	446	0.5
Cyclus	412	0.5
Tully	318	0.4
Pecten	292	0.3
Octomedusa	262	0.3
Blade (Esconichthys)	95	0.11
Misc. fish	60	0.07
Insect	25	0.03
Millipede	12	0.014
Hydroid (Drevotella)	12	0.014
Horseshoe crab	9	0.011
Spider	9	0.011
Amphibian	3	0.004
Kottixerxes	2	0.002
Centipede	2	0.002

The odds estimated at the end of the article are somewhat encouraging, although 250 is a massive number of concretions today.  And, 1000 concretions in a day is just crazy.  However, the odds hold even if they aren't collected in a single day.  So, get out there and get collecting, and please.... send us photos for Fossil Friday!

The sheer number of different categories of relatively rare taxa significantly in creases the odds of really scoring on any particular day. Thus, the chance of finding a rare fossil is better than even at 250 fossils collected, and near certainty at 1000 fossils. This latter figure is what one person can collect in one day, assuming that he or she is the first to go to known choice areas in the early spring or after great storms. Seasoned and persevering veterans at "the Pit" know that, like a slot machine with numerous winning combinations, the area will continue to yield treasures. Moreover, unlike at a casino, there is more treasure because more untapped winning combinations surely await discovery. Let's all keep searching, collecting, and sharing our finds!

References

Baird, G. C., C. W. Shabica, J. L. Anderson, and E. S. Richardson, Jr. 1985a. Biota of a Pennsylvanian muddy coast: habitats within the Mazonian Delta Complex, northeast Illinois. Jour. Paleo., 59:253-281.

Baird, G. C., S. D. Sroka, C. W. Shabica, and G. J. 1 Kuecher. 1985b. Taphonomy of Middle Pennsylvanian Mazon Creek area fossil localities, northeast Illinois: significance of exceptional fossil preservation in syngenetic concretions. Palaios, 1:271-285.

Moodie, R. L. 1912. The Pennsylvanian amphibia of the Mazon Creek Shale, Illinois. Kansas University Sci. Bull., 6:323-359.

 

 

 

The early bird gets the fruit: Fossil provides earliest evidence of fruit-eating by any animal #fossil #paleontology #birds #fruit @FieldMuseum @SUEtheTrex #dinosaur

The Cretaceous bird Jeholornis pooping out seeds from fruit, helping fruit-bearing plants take over the world. Credit: Zhixin Han and Yifan Wang.

Phys.org has a story about birds and fruit.  Jingmai O'Connor of the Field Museum is co-writer of a paper (in the journal eLife) about the early bird Jeholornis, which is believed to lived on a diet of fruit about 120 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period.  Jeholornis fossils have been found in China.

"This is the oldest evidence of fruit-eating in any animal," says Jingmai O'Connor, associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum in Chicago and co-author of the new eLife paper. "Fruits are an incredible resource that everybody's familiar with, and the plants that produce them are everywhere, but it wasn't always that way. This discovery about how and when birds started exploiting this resource could help explain why these kinds of plants are so dominant in our landscape today."

"Birds are important consumers of fruit today, and play important roles in seed dispersal, but so far there has not been direct evidence of fruit consumption by early birds, outside the bird crown group," says Han Hu, a researcher at Oxford University and the study's first author. "This obstructs our understanding of the origins of this important plant-animal interaction."

The crown group of birds is the group that's alive today, Neornithes, and their direct ancestors. But other birds began evolving tens of millions of years earlier; the second-most primitive known bird was a long-tailed raven-sized creature called Jeholornis. The time between the first Jeholornis and the first T. rex is about the same as the amount of time separating the last T. rex and modern humans.

PBS Eons: How Whale Evolution Kind Of Sucked #fossil #paleontology #whale #evolution #whales #baleen

 

PBS Eons has a new episode.  This one is about the evolution of whales and how and when baleen appeared.

Mystacodon is the earliest known mysticete, the group that, today, we call the baleen whales. But if this was a baleen whale, where was its baleen? Where did baleen come from? And how did it live without it?

Fossil Friday #122: Eldredgeops rana from Penn Dixie #fossil #paleontology #trilobite #FossilFriday #fossils #penndixie

This is "Fossil Friday" post #122.  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 very nice Eldredgeops rana (formerly Phacops rana) from Penn Dixie Fossil Park and Nature Reserve in Blasdell, NY.  This stunning specimen was discovered and prepared by ESCONI President Keith Robitschek.  

Penn Dixie is a former quarry, known for providing abundant fossil, including trilobites, brachiopods, crinoids, cephalopods, corals, bryozoans, and even fish parts!  They have other events like star gazing and bird watching.  Check it out if you are in the Buffalo, NY area.

Penn Dixie — a global geological treasure — is ranked as the #1 fossil park in the U.S. in a 2011 scientific study. In 2018, Penn Dixie claimed the Guinness World Records™ title for the World’s Largest Fossil Dig. Thanks to 905 fossil diggers who participated, Penn Dixie is now the inaugural record holder for this category! We are also tremendously proud for Penn Dixie to be honored as one of the first members of New York State’s new geological trail. We are thankful to be recognized as an economic, scientific, cultural, and conservation gem.

Penn Dixie Fossil Park & Nature Reserve is a 54-acre park located the site of a former cement quarry in Hamburg, NY. Our visitors can collect and keep Devonian Period fossils including trilobites, brachiopods, crinoids, and more! Ready to dig? Check our Hours & Rates. What to bring? Read our Frequent Questions.

Thanks for sharing this beautiful trilobite, Keith!

Throwback Thursday #124: Resolution Lost #poem #TBT #history #collecting #ThrowbackThursday

This is Throwback Thursday #124.  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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A poem from December 1970 is up for this week's Throwback Thursday.  It's called "Resolution Lost".  It comes via a few other newsletters - "The Rockpile" newsletter for Midwest Mineralogical & Lapidary Society and "Crystal Cluster" newsletter for the Desplaines Valley Geological Society.  There doesn't seem to be any information about Blythe Best and The Water Rock.

It's easy to identify with the message...  who doesn't love to be out in the field searching and ultimately finding treasures.

RESOLUTION LOST

With aching Back and tired feet
    I start my homeward way,
To reassess most leisurely
    My findings of the day.
I look at them and with a sigh
    I vow I'll go no more
Until I'm rid of all the rocks
    That line my basement floor.
And yet it seems as time goes by
    I let the sorting slip,
To do it at some later date---
    I'm on another trip!

Blythe Best, The Water Rock The Rockpile, and Crystal Cluster

TRIP FULL!: ESCONI Field Trip to Danville, IL - Saturday, September 17th, 2022 #MazonCreek #fossils #fossil #FieldTrip #paleontology

This field trip is full.  We are taking names for the waiting list.

Danville Field Trip Rules

Sept 17, 2022

An ESCONI field trip to the Danville Shale Pile for Pennsylvanian fossils is scheduled for Sept 17, 2022 starting at 10 AM. This is on private property and there is an attendance limit of 25 people. The gate will be secured once we are in and locked when we leave. Plan on being off the hill at 3 PM to give time for specimen identification and pictures.

You must register to go on this trip. See rule 6 below for instructions. This is the only way to register.

If you are sick, have any symptoms of Covid-19 or have recently tested positive, DO NOT COME.

1. The minimum age is 18 years old. Registration ends at midnight Sept 10th.

2. You and everyone in your party must be members of ESCONI. No membership dues will be accepted at the field trip site. Have your membership status resolved before the trip, no later than Sept 10th. You can pay dues by mailing a check, or with a credit card using the PayPal link on the ESCONI website.

3. You will be required to check-in at the collecting site. By attending, you agree to follow the ESCONI Code of Ethics and Conduct (available on the ESCONI website) and agree to the conditions set forth in the ESCONI Accident Waiver and Release of Liability Form (sent by email to those that register). You don’t need to print it out - just know what you’re agreeing to.

4. The pile is a mixture of “Red dog” shale (bisque-fired shale), gray shale and black shale. You’ll be collecting from loose shale which can be hard and sharp. If you decide to dig for concretions, it is much like Braceville, though concretions are less common. Sturdy boots are highly recommended as are gloves. No tennis shoes or soft climbing footwear. Wear eye protection if using a hammer.

5. Parts of the pile are unstable. You must not go into areas marked with flags/caution tape. Anyone found beyond the markers will be asked to leave and may not be allowed to sign up for future field trips.

6. Sign up for the trip by sending me (Dave) an email with your name and the number of members attending. I will acknowledge by return email within 24 hours. If you don’t hear from me in that time, send it again! My email is [email protected]

7. If the trip is full I will keep a waiting list in case there are cancellations. If you are signed up and can’t make it, please let me know.

I will send a map to those that register a few days before the trip. The driving distance is significant. Depending on where you live, it could take 2 to 4 hours to get there.

All the better to better eat you with: Dinosaurs evolved different eye socket shapes to allow stronger bites #fossil #paleontology #biteforce #tyrannosaur #dinosaur @SUEtheTrex

Skull and life reconstruction of Tyrannosaurus rex with original eye socket and eye (left) and hypothetical reconstruction with circular eye socket and enlarged eye (right). Credit: Dr Stephan Lautenschlager, University of Birmingham.

Phys.org has a story about the strength of a T-rex bite.  A new study, published in the journal Communications Biology, looked at the shape of eye sockets to determine how it affected bite force.  The skulls of about 500 different dinosaurs were analyzed and the researchers found that a circular eye socket was prone to higher stresses than the oval or "figure eight" shape of some top predators. 

Large dinosaur predators, such as Tyrannosaurus rex, evolved different shapes of eye sockets to better deal with high bite forces, new research has shown.

While in many animals—and most dinosaurs—the eye socket is just a circular hole in the skull housing the eyeball, this is very different in large carnivores.

In a new study, published today in Communications Biology, researchers at the University of Birmingham reveal how the unusual elliptical, or oval, eye sockets found in the skulls of these predators could have evolved to help the skull absorb impact as they pounced on prey.

Dr. Stephan Lautenschlager, Senior Lecturer for Palaeobiology at the University of Birmingham and author of the new study, analyzed the shape of the eye sockets of about 500 different dinosaurs and related species.

Mazon Monday #125: Lycopodites meekii #fossil #paleontology #MazonCreek #MazonMonday #plant #lycophyte #lepododendron

This is Mazon Monday post #125.  What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil?  Tell us at email:[email protected].

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Lycopodites meekii are foliaged lycophyte twigs.  They were described in 1970 by Leo Lesquereux. Many paleobotanists think that L. meekii are the the terminal branches of Bothrodendren minutifolium or a similar plant.  These plants were herbaceous resembling the modern day Lycopodium, a club moss, having needle shaped leaves on small branches.  They is related to Lepidodendron also known as scale trees.  This group of extinct plants make up a significant portion of the plant matter in the Carboniferous coal deposits of Illinois.

Lycopodium clavatum, Schwäbisch-Fränkische Waldberge, Germany

L. meekii appears on page 48 of "A Comprehensive Guide to the Fossil Flora of Mazon Creek" by Jack Wittry.

Lycopodites meekii Lesquereux, 1870

1870. Lycopodites meekii Lesquereux: p. 426, pl. 26, fig. 6
1879-80. Lycopodites meekii Lesquereux: p. 357, pl. 62, fig. 1
1925. Lycopodites meeki Lesquereux; Noé: p. 38, pl. 10, figs. 1, 4
1949. Bothrodendren minutifolium Boulay; Arnold: p. 176 pl. 7, fig. 2
1958. Lycopodites meeki Lesquereux; Langford: p. 75, fig. 129
1964. Bothrodendren minutifolium Boulay; Crookall: p. 332, pl. 80, fig. 3
1969. Lycopodites meeki Lesquereux; Darrah: p. 184, pl. 28, figs. 2, 3; pl. 28, (?)fig. 1
1979. Lycopodites meeki Lesquereux; Janssen: p. 46, non fig. 25 = Lycopodites pendulus

DESCRIPTION: The branches are 3 to 8 mm wide, nearly consistent in width, and fork repeatedly. The leaves are lanceolate, thick, sharply pointed, acute, curve upward at the tip, and tightly overlap. A single median vein can be seen in the leaves of larger branches.

REMARKS: Lycopodites meekii is uncommon. This form was once thought to be a herbaceous plant. This is no longer the case. There are no distinguishing characteristics to separate L. meekii from the terminal branches of Bothrodendren minutifolium. They probably represent related, if not identical, plants (Arnold, 1949). On the right-hand side of Fig. 1, a cone is developing at the distal tip. See cf. Bothrodendrostrobus.

Specimens

From "A Comprehensive Guide to the Fossil Flora of Mazon Creek" by Jack Wittry

George's Basement

ESCONI member specimens

 

Mammal ancestor looked like a chubby lizard with a tiny head and had a hippo-like lifestyle #fossil #paleontology #mammals #Permian #France #evolution

Lalieudorhynchus might have had a hippo-like lifestyle, spending much of its time in water. (Image credit: Frederik Spindler)

Live Science has a article about an mammal ancestor.  Lalieudorhynchus gandi lived about 265 million years ago in what is now the Lodève Basin in southern France.  At that time, southern France was part of northeastern Pangaea.  Mammals had not evolved as a group yet. L. gandi was described in a paper in the journal Paleo Vertebrata.

Fossils of the unusual animal were first discovered in 2001 in the Lodève Basin in southern France, by study co-author and paleontologist Jörg Schneider, a professor in the Department of Paleontology and Stratigraphy at the University of Freiberg in Germany, and doctoral candidate Frank Körner. They found two large ribs, each measuring 24 inches (60 centimeters) long, in a rocky streambed. During later visits to the site, Körner found additional bones from the mystery animal: a femur measuring 14 inches (35 cm) long, and a shoulder blade measuring 20 inches (50 cm) long. 

Their analysis has been 20 years in the making, largely because the fossils were encased in concrete-hard sandstone and their preparation took years to complete, the researchers reported in the study.

From this partial but well-preserved skeleton, the paleontologists deduced that the primitive creature was a type of caseid — an extinct group of fossil reptiles that possessed mammalian traits and are thought to be mammal ancestors — in the genus Lalieudorhynchus. Described in the press release as a “chubby lizard” and as a 3.5-meter-long “pile of meat”, the creature lived during the Permian, a period that began about 299 million years ago and ended about 252 million years ago with the onset of the Triassic period (and the rise of the dinosaurs). 

PBS Eons: Did An Ancient Pathogen Reshape Our Cells? #evolution #cells #biology #paleontology #mammals #pathogen

 

PBS Eons has a new episode over on Youtube.  This one is about the evolution of mammals and how we came to not have alpga-gal.

There is one - and only one - group of mammals that doesn’t have alpha-gal: the catarrhine primates, which are the monkeys of Africa and Asia, the apes, and us.