Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois - ESCONI

The Discovery and Controversy of Spinosaurus #fossil #paleontology #dinosaur #spinosaurus #spinosaur @FieldMuseum @SUETheTrex

The Field Museum has an interesting video on Youtube.  The video is a presentation by Dr. Jingmai O'Connor, who is the Associate Curator of Fossil Reptiles, on Spinosaurus.

With its crocodile-like jaws set in a skull that is 20% longer than T. rex and its large dorsal sail, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus is one of the most iconic dinosaurs. However, this species was almost lost to science when the first specimen was destroyed in WW2. Through chance, hard work, and perseverance, a second skeleton was discovered. This specimen reveals that Spinosaurus had a paddle-like tail adapted for aquatic locomotion, a first among dinosaurs. This kicked off one of the greatest controversies in recent dinosaur paleobiology. Field Museum scientists weigh in, providing rigorous quantitative data to demonstrate that Spinosaurus was indeed a subaqueous foraging predator.

Mazon Monday #172: Fossil Insect Symposium 1990 #fossil #paleontology #MazonCreek #MazonMonday #insect #pennsylvanian #history

This is Mazon Monday post #172.  What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil?  Tell us at email:[email protected].

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On May 18th, 1990, ESCONI was part of a symposium on Mazon Creek fossil insects from Pit 11.  Unfortunately, there aren't many details.  However, we recently ran across some photos from the event at the Carbon Hill School Museum in their Tom Testa collection.  Tom donated the photos and other miscellaneous materials.  His Mazon Creek collection resides at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

Here's a report that appeared in the July/August 1990 ESCONI newsletter.

FOSSIL SYMPOSIUM

On May 18, 1990, ESCONI participated in a symposium on fossil insects of Pit 11.

The main participants were Dr. Jarmila Peck, Department of Geology, Carlton University, Ottawa, Canada and Dr. Robin J. Wooten, Cambridge University, England. Both are specialists in fossil insects. ESCONI members Andy Hay, coordinator of the meeting, Tom Testa, collector of Pit 11 fossils, Martha Prepp, and Don Auler also participated.

Most of the fossil insects of superb preservation were presented by Tom Testa. Our visitors were pleased and amazed about the fossils shown.

The program closed with ESCONI donating to the visitors, ESCONI's new fossil fauna book on Pit 11 and Tom Testa permitting Dr. Wooten to borrow his entire collection of Pit 11 fossil insects for study.

This meeting was a continuing example of ESCONI's dedication of the amateur collector to assist the professional.

Don Auler

Dr. Jarmila Peck of Carlton University did quite a bit of work on fossil insects.  We have a few of her drawings.

Jarmila, Walter Lietz, and Dr. Robin Wooten.

Jarmila and Robin on a fossil hunt... possibly Pit 11.

George Agazzi with Rita Lietz (Walter's wife)

Those are fossil insects, not cookies!

These photos are courtesy of the Carbon Hill School Museum's Tom Testa Collection.  The museum is located in Carbon Hill, IL.  It has many historically significant photos, artifacts, and documents of the Coal City, Braidwood, and Wilmington area.  The curator, Michele Micetich, is very knowledgeable.  Visit her this summer for a trip back in time to the coal mining days of yesteryear!

Blade-like spikes covered newly discovered dinosaur unearthed in the UK #fossil #paleontology #dinosaur #UK #ankylosaur

An artist's interpretation of what the newly described species Vectipelta barretti may have looked like. (Image credit: ©Stu Pond)

Live Science has a story about a dinosaur discovery in the UK.  The new dinosaur, Vectipelta barretti, was discovered in 1993 on the Isle of Wight.  It belongs to the sub-order Ankylosauria, which are low, wide, armored, plant-eating dinosaurs.  This animal lived about 140 million years ago during the early Cretaceous Period.  The description of this new species was published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.

The Isle of Wight is a fossil hotspot, with more than 20 different dinosaurs being uncovered there, including large sauropods and a pair of carnivorous predators with "crocodile-like faces" in 2021. 

Only two ankylosaur genera, Polacanthus and Hylaeosaurus, had previously been uncovered on the island. Researchers initially thought the V. barretti remains belonged to Polacanthus, which is the most abundant ankylosaur group identified in the area. But a closer examination revealed this was not the case.

Apex predator of the Cambrian likely sought soft over crunchy prey #fossil #paleontology #cambrian #anomalocaris

A pair of Anomalocaris canadensis appendages. Credit: © Alison Daley

Phys.org has a story about one of the largest predators of the Cambrian Period.  Anomalocaris canadensis, which means "weird shrimp from Canada", was first discovered in the 1800's in fossil deposits around Mt. Stephen in British Columbia.  Until the discovery of the Burgess Shale, the front appendages and body fossils were thought to be separate animals.  A new paper in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B looked at the front appendages and concluded they weren't strong enough to crush trilobite exoskeletons. Recent research found the armor-plated, ring-shaped mouthparts of A. canadensis were also probably unable to process hard food. A. canadensis was likely an agile and fast predator, darting after softer prey in open water.

The first step for the research team, which included scientists from Germany, China, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Australia, was to build a 3D reconstruction of A. canadensis from the extraordinarily well-preserved—but flattened—fossils of the animal that have been found in Canada's 508-million-year-old Burgess Shale. Using modern whip scorpions and whip spiders as analogs, the team was able to show that the predator's segmented appendages were able to grab prey and could both stretch out and flex.

A modeling technique called finite element analysis was used to show the stress and strain points on this grasping behavior of A. canadensis, illustrating that its appendages would have been damaged while grabbing hard prey like trilobites. The researchers used computational fluid dynamics to place the 3D model of the predator in a virtual current to predict what body position it would likely use while swimming.

Fossil Friday #168: Ivy Leaf from the Green River #fossil #paleontology #FossilFriday #GreenRiver #ivy #eocene #leaf #fossilleaf

This is the "Fossil Friday" post #168.  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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Something different today... How about a fossil leaf from the Green River Formation in Wyoming.  The Green River Formation dates to the Eocene Era about 52 million years ago.  This gorgeous fossil leaf was sent in by Keith Robitschek, current president of ESCONI.   Keith has been collecting and preparing fossils from the Green River for quite a few years now.  You might remember the breathtaking Mioplosus he prepared for the 2022 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil show.

The fossil is an Ivy leaf in the family Araliaceae and Order Apiales from the Sandwich Layer of the Green River formation. The Sandwich Layer is below the famous 18-inch Layer, which produces some of the best preservation.   Today, there are over 250 species of Araliaceae living all over the world.

Thanks for sharing this beautiful specimen, Keith!

 

Throwback Thursday #169: Stevens T. Norvell III #history #TBT #ThrowbackThursday #logo

This is Throwback Thursday #169.  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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As we posted in Throwback Thursday #158, the logo was designed by Stevens T. Norvell in 1950 as part of a contest.   Since April 1950, the newsletter has had that same logo on the cover.

Here's more information about the creator of the logo... Stevens T. Norvell, who's initials S.T.N. appear at the bottom.  This article appeared in the July/August 1998 edition of the newsletter.

S.T.N. EXPLAINED by Diane Dare

Look at the logo on the cover of your EARTH SCIENCE NEWS. See the letters S.T.N. at the bottom? Here is some background on "S.T.N."

In the early 1940's, several men who worked at Western Electric's Hawthorne Plant asked the company to sponsor an earth science club. WE already sponsored stamp, camera, science and other clubs, and felt there would not be enough interest in just 'earth' science. Some of the men joined Marquette Geologists Association. Eventually, wanting a greater emphasis on education, the WE men decided to form their own club.

Meeting in Bill All away's basement on November 11, 1949, the eleven men developed plans for a club open to anyone. This was to be a club "to develop all six of the main phases of Earth Science into a combination that will give us a broad outlook, drive away the monotony of too intense specialization, and at the same time presage a long life for our organization."

People were invited to attend the first (organizational) meeting on November 25, 1949 at which temporary officers would be elected. Stevens T. Norvell presented a program that night, a lecture accompanied by 80 Kodachrome slides, on "Geological Features of the West." Thus was born ESCONI.

Stevens T. Norvell was the first club treasurer, and on April 23, 1950, he led the club's first field trip to strip mines 20 miles south of Plainfield, Ill. The first Newsletter came out that January. Roy Beghtol drew different cover illustrations for the first three issues. Two contests were held: for bulletin name, the prize was a "group of nail head spar (calcite crystals)"; for cover design, a slab of Eden Valley petrified wood.

Stevens T. Norvell's winning design appeared in April 1950 on Volume 1 Issue 4, and has continued, unchanged, to symbolize ESCONI interest.

The Norvells moved to Colorado in 1952 and as a farewell, Stevens and his wife Cora were presented with honorary life membership cards. Over the years, Mr. Norvell wrote many articles on geology and minerals for the bulletin. Mr. and Mrs. Norvell later moved to Florida, where he died on June 14, 1965.

The newsletter had a memorial post for his death in June 1965.

STEVENS T. NORVELL

On June 14, Stevens T. Norvell of Lake Worth, Florida, passed away. Mr. Norvell was one of the original dozen people who gathered at Allaway's home to discuss the possibility of forming a club. He served in several positions on the Esconi Board.

We will always remember him for he made the design that is used as the cover of our bulletin.

We extend our deepest sympathy to his wife, Cora.

Here is his obituary.  He was part of a military dynasty that goes all the way back to the Civil War and included a member of Thedore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.

He served in the Rainbow Division, 3rd Engineers during WWI. After the war, he attended Tri-State College, Angola, IN where he obtained degrees in Electrical, Mechanical and Chemical Engineering. He met his wife, Cora Kellam Norvell there.

He worked for many years as an engineer for Western Electric Co in Western Springs, IL. In the early 1950's he retired from Western Electric and purchased a ranch in Custer Co, Colorado. He served as a State Representative during this time and also founded a telephone cooperative to bring telephone service to the area. In the late 1950s, he sold the ranch and moved to Greenacres, Palm Beach Co, FL.

He designed and built many things including two houses in Western Springs, another in Florida, a sawmill in Colorado, and two boats and a fold-up trailer. Later, he designed patterns and made parts for his lathe and built his own faceting machine. An active man, he had many hobbies: fishing and fly tying, teaching classes in lure making, lapidary and rock hunting, and silver-smithing. The founder of the Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois, he designed the Logo Newsletter cover. He also founded the Gem and Mineral Club of Palm Beach Co, FL. He also traveled widely in the west taking 16mm motion pictures and 35mm slides, from which he lectured on his travels. As a horticulturalist he grew both common and unusual plants in his beautiful gardens. He died of leukemia which his family believes was caused by exposure to thorium in the thorium mine on his ranch in Colorado.

There is a photo of Stevens from a genealogy website about the Norvell family

Stevens T. Norvell III in WW I

ESCONI has just one photo of him and his wife Cora.  Unfortunately, they appear with another couple (the Olsons) and it isn't clear who is who.

Norvells and Olsons in 1954

 

 

Mazon Creek Fossil Day, October 14th, 2023, 10 AM to 3 PM, Coal City Public Library #fossil #paleontology #MazonCreek #NationalFossilDay #NFD

JOIN US FOR

MAZON

CREEK

FOSSIL DAY

Coal City Public Library
October 14, 2023
10 AM to 3 PM

Displays of Mazon Creek Fossils
Identification of Mazon Creek Fossils
Books on Mazon Creek Fossils for sale
Lecture on collecting Mazon Creek
Fossils at 1 PM

Download Flyer

Presented by ESCONI (Earth Science Club of
Northern Illinois) and the Carbon Hill School
Museum

You Really Are a Tick Magnet #ticks #tick #staticelectricity #parasite #bloodsucking #natural

The New York Times Trilobites column has an interesting article about ticks.  A new paper in the journal Current Biology, looked at how ticks are attracted to their hosts.  It seems that static electric fields, which are produced naturally by animals (including humans) might be helping ticks to extend their reach from the surrounding vegetation onto their next potential meal. Hopefully, this new discovery will spur the development of new materials that repel their advances.

Many a tick researcher has had to chase down an errant arachnid after it was flung about by static from plastic or nylon equipment because of static, said Sukanya Narasimhan, a biologist at Yale University who was not involved with the new study. But popping ticks were considered nothing more than a nuisance; “we’ve never given it much thought,” Dr. Narasimhan said.

To better understand what was happening, Dr. England and Dr. Lihou brought their ticks into a tightly controlled environment that attempted to mimic conditions they face when questing for a blood meal.

When a tick looks to feed, it stands atop a plant that is grounded, which means its electrical charge is dissipating down into the earth. To simulate this condition, the ticks were placed on a grounding plate. The researchers then passed an electrode, was charged to 750 volts, three millimeters over the ticks. This voltage is similar to or even lower than that of a typical mammal’s electric field. The ticks were invariably pulled upward against gravity onto the electrode. Holding the parasites close to a similarly charged rabbit’s foot produced the same flying tick phenomenon.

To get a sense of what this animal attraction might mean for a potential tick host in nature, Dr. England designed a computer model of the electrical field around a cow.

Mazon Monday #171: Tullies at CGMA #fossil #paleontology #MazonCreek #MazonMonday #tullymonstrum #tullymonster #CGMA @FieldMuseum

This is Mazon Monday post #171.  What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil?  Tell us at email:[email protected].

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Back at the CGMA show in late May, Jack Wittry brought a very nice Tully Monster display from the Field Museum.  Jack brings a nice display every year to CGMA.  Last year's topic was sharks of Mazon Creek.

This years display was very good.  Jack had quite the assortment.   There were all sorts of Tully paraphernalia - hats, drawings, cuddly soft Tully Monsters, and even books (see "The Dancing Worm of Turkana" by Eugene Richardson in Mazon Monday #50).  As to actual Tullys, there were happy, sad, small, and even large Tullys in the display.  

A jaw-dropping conundrum: Why do mammals have a stiff lower jaw? #fossil #paleontology #evolution #jaw #biology #anatomy #skull

The skull of a reptile (bottom) has multiple bones in its lower jaw and a simple ear. Mammals (top) developed a more elaborate inner ear using bones from the lower jaw, leaving only one bone remaining in the lower jaw, giving mammals a stiff mandible. Credit: UCMP

Phys.org has an interesting article about the structure of mammal jaws.  Vertebrate skeletons and thus mammal skeletons are very conservative.  We all have pretty much the same bones, however they are generally reshaped, reoriented, and possibly repurposed.  The general vertebrate lower jaw consists of multiple bones, for mammals some of the smaller bones around the joint have been repurposed into inner ear bones, leaving just one bone to serve as the mandible.  A new paper in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences looks into this evolutionary development from the viewpoint of jaws rather than the ear, which has been the traditional approach.

So why did mammals lose the extra bones in their lower jaw? Well, they didn't. Instead, the extra bones that vertebrates had in the lower jaw, which were clustered around the hinge between the lower and upper jaw, evolved into the mammalian inner ear, perhaps giving mammals better hearing than their vertebrate cousins.

"A solid, stiff jaw in mammals is thought to be a side effect of establishing a uniquely mammalian hearing system," Tseng said.

Co-opting these jaw bones into the ear left mammals with only one lower jawbone per side, making for a rigid jaw that gave mammals some advantage in terms of stiffness—enough to crack bones, for example—but limited their descendants to variations on a single bone, even when a stiff lower jaw was not needed to eat soft food. Anteaters, for example, evolved a down-curving jaw that serves as a slot for their long tongue to slide through.

To date, this major evolutionary transition in mammals—to a complex inner ear, but simple jaw—has been studied primarily as it relates to the ear.

Eight Menacing Saber-Toothed Creatures That Stalked the Earth Long Ago #fossil #paleontology #extinct #sabertooth

A variety of saber-toothed animals have evolved to fill different niches. Matt Celeskey / Charles R. Knight Public Domain / Juan Carlos Cisneros, Fernando Abdala, Tea Jashashvill, Ana de Oliveira Bueno, Paula Dentzien-Dias CC By-SA 4.0 / Mauricio Antón CC By-SA 3.0

Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting story about some extinct saber-toothed animals.  The eight animals highlighted lived in various times - ranging from the Permian to more recent times.  The list includes saber-toothed cats, a giant plant eater, a newly discovered, huge carnivore from South Africa (Inostrancevia africana, which we posted on last week), and even a saber-toothed deer.  All are mammals or related to mammals.  It's interesting that we don't know of any saber-toothed dinosaurs...

Evolution has a fondness for saber-toothed creatures. Time and again, animals with elongated canine teeth have roamed the planet. The ferocious Smilodon of the Ice Age is among the most famous: a lion-sized cat with huge fangs that hunted ancient horses and bison across the Americas. But that’s only the tip of a saber-toothed history going back more than 250 million years.

Most of the time, paleontologists use the term “saber-toothed” for carnivorous mammals who use long, flattened canine teeth to puncture or shear away the flesh of other creatures. But the designation isn’t quite so simple. Other mammals and even proto-mammals have been called saber-toothed even though they’re herbivores, using very similar teeth to tussle with each other rather than bite into prey. On that score, there are technically still some saber-toothed animals around today. Male musk deer compete with each other every mating season by fighting with their fangs.