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This is the "Fossil Friday" post #180. 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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This week's fossil is a sweet little Acanthotelson stimpsoni from ESCONI member Jake Fill. It's fairly fresh, having just recently opened. Acanthotelson stimpsoni was described by Fielding Bradford Meek and Amos Henry Worthen way back in 1865. It was named for William Stimpson, who worked at the Smithsonian Institution and was later the director of the Chicago Academy of Sciences. A. stimpsoni was a syncarid shrimp, which is a superorder of crustacea. For more details, see Mazon Monday #52.
Thanks for the contribution, Jake. That's a gorgeous specimen!
There are now just 60 Wollemi pines in the wild and these are threatened by bushfires. (Image credit: Dave Watts/Getty Images)
Live Science has a story about the Wollemi pine. Thought extinct, the Wollemi pine was "rediscovered" in 1994 by some hikers near Sydney, Australia. Wollemia nobilis is pretty much unchanged since the Cretaceous Peiod. A group of scientists from Australia, the US, and Italy have recently published the plant's genome. The genome gives insight into both its evolution and unique reproduction, which is mostly through self cloning.
The pine has 26 chromosomes — containing a staggering 12.2 billion base pairs. In comparison, humans have only around 3 billion base pairs. Despite the size of their genome, Wollemi pines are extremely low in genetic diversity, suggesting a bottleneck (when the population is reduced dramatically) some 10,000 to 26,000 years ago.
Indeed, the plants do not exchange much genetic material. The remaining trees appear to reproduce mostly by cloning themselves through coppicing — in which suckers emerge from the base and become new trees.
a MCZ:IP:111710 prone Flexicalymene senaria. b MCZ:IP:111708 prone Ceraurus pleurexanthemus. c Photomicrograph of transverse thin section through cephalon of MCZ:IP:104973 with preserved exopodite and lamellae. d Photomicrograph of sagittal thin section along axial lobe of MCZ:IP:158215 with preserved protopodites. e Photomicrograph of sagittal thin section of MCZ:IP:104956 with preserved protopodites. f Magnification of exopodite of MCZ:IP:104973 showing calcite crystals within lamellae. g Magnification of protopodites in MCZ:IP:104956 showing pyrite, fibrous and sparry calcite. Abbreviations: ax, axial lobe; cep, cephalon; ey, eye; ex, exoskeleton; exo, exopodite; fib, fibrous calcite; gl, glabella; L1, lobe 1; pt, protopodite; pyg, pygidium; pyr, pyrite; sp, sparry calcite; th, thorax.
Nature's journal communication Earth & environment has a paper about the preservation of trilobites in the Wolcott-Rust quarry. The Walcott-Rust quarry was discovered by Charles Wolcott in the 1870's. It dates to the Ordovician Period and yielded the first known trilobite appendages. This paper details research into the mechanism of the delicate, three dimensional preservation.
Abstract
Trilobites with appendages from the Rust Formation of New York State were discovered in the 1870s and represent one of the earliest known cases of exceptional preservation of non-biomineralized tissues. The Rust Formation trilobites feature three-dimensionally preserved walking legs and delicate respiratory lamellae, but the mechanism behind their fossilization remains unknown. Here we show that after burial, carcass decay produced framboidal pyrite, while fibrous calcite precipitated on the visceral side of the body, followed by the widespread formation of sparry calcite crystal replicating non-biomineralized morphological features. Trilobites and co-occurring calcite veins show no chemical or petrographic differences, rejecting the hypothesis that exceptional preservation was caused by a local microenvironment within enrolled trilobites. These results suggest that fine-grained sediment provided support for the appendages and facilitated their fossilization through calcite replacement. Our findings carry broader implications for understanding the exceptional three-dimensional preservation of animal Paleozoic body fossils through calcite casts.
This is Mazon Monday post #183. What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:[email protected].
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Sphenopteris plicata was described by Leo Lesquereux in 1858. Lesquereux (1806 - 1889) described much of the North American Carboniferous flora in the mid 1800's as a consultant to various US state geological surveys. His book "Atlas to the Coal Flora of Pennsylvania and the Carboniferous Formation throughout the United States" written from 1879 to 1884 was the standard reference for the Carboniferous flora in the US for many years.
From George's Basement
Sphenopteris plicata was appeared on page 148 of Jack Wittry's "A Comprehensive Guide to the Fossil Flora of Mazon Creek".
Sphenopteris plicata Lesquereux, 1858
1858. Sphenopteris plicata Lesquereux: p. 862, pl. 11, fig. 3
1879-80. Sphenopteris plicata Lesquereux: p. 292
1884. Sphenopteris plicata Lesquereux: p. 763, pl. 111, fig. 28
1958. Sphenopteris plicata Lesquereux; Langford: fig. 504, no textDESCRIPTION: The penultimate rachis is straight and round. The ultimate rachis is linear-lanceolate, distant, and borne at a slight angle. The pinnules are oblique, decurrent, serrate, and terminate in a half-round, serrated lobe. Fully developed pinnules have three ser- rated lobes per side. The lobes range from short and marginal to nearly free, entire pinnules. The midveins are weak and decurrent. The lamina is thin, often making the margins indis- tinct. The lateral veins are often indistinct. When visible, they appear distant, very thin, branch once or twice, and terminate in a tooth at the margin.
REMARKS: Sphenopteris plicata is very rare. In Lesquereux's original description, he erroneously called the lobes rounded or crenulate. In an close examination of the holotype (see Fig. 2) by this author, the lobes were found to be serrated.
Photos
From Wittry
From George Langford Sr.
This partly flooded chamber contains most of the motifs. (A Ruiz-Redondo/V Barciela/X Mart)
Science Alert has a story about the discovery of cave art in Spain. The art is dated to about 24,000 years old. It was found on the walls of a cave at the Cova Dones site near Spain's Mediterranean coast. The cave has been known by locals for many years, but the art was somehow overlooked. There are pictures of at least 19 wild animals. The paintings were studied by researchers from the University of Zaragoza and University of Alicante in Spain. The research was published in the journal Antiquity.
Located at a site called Cova Dones near Spain's Mediterranean coast, the cave holds a wealth of well-preserved rock art made by humans more than 24,000 years ago, the study's authors report, including at least 19 portrayals of wildlife.
In addition to several horses and red deer (plus a pair of unidentified animals), the researchers found two depictions of aurochs – an extinct bovine species believed to be the ancestor of modern cattle.
"When we saw the first painted auroch, we immediately acknowledged it was important," says study co-author Aitor Ruiz-Redondo, senior lecturer of prehistory at the University of Zaragoza in Spain and research affiliate at the University of Southampton in the U.K.
The fish in question, with the ammonite located just below its spine.
Ars Technica has a story about an interesting fish fossil. A fossil fish, Pachycormus macropterus, from Germany shows that even fish sometimes bite off more than they can eat... This particular fish fossil has a fossilized ammonite in its belly. The fossil was found in the Fischer Quarry in Zell unter Aichelberg, Germany and dates to the Jurassic Period, more than 170 million years ago. See more detail in a paper published in the journal Gelological Magazine.
“This work is part of a larger project studying the evolution and palaeoecology of fishes from the Early Jurassic of Germany,” Maxwell explained. “We were interested in looking at stomach contents in these fishes in order to understand where they fit in the Early Jurassic food web and whether different fishes living in the same environment during the Early Jurassic had similar diets.”
That inquiry brought them directly to this fossil.
Maxwell said that it “fossilized in a very particular way, retaining a lot of the original mother-of-pearl shine of the shell material. This is very unusual for fossils from this locality and is likely a function of the shell being protected from the external environment inside the body of the fish. This can help us to assess whether a shell is truly preserved in an animal’s stomach in future finds.”
This is the "Fossil Friday" post #179. 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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We have a Pit 3 Reticulopteris munsterii for your enjoyment today. This concretion was collected last year. It opened this summer after a few months in freeze/thaw. R. munsterii is uncommon in the Mazon Creek fossil deposit,
R. munsterii is a seed fern, which is an extinct group of fern-like plant, which produces seeds for reproduction. The group went extinct during the Cretaceous mass extinction. R. munsterii was described by Walter A, Bell in 1938 from material found in the coal fields of Nova Scotia. Bell was a Canadian paleontologist and geologist. He wrote many papers during his career, mostly about the Carboniferous stratigraphy, paleobotany, and paleontology of Atlantic Canada.
This is Throwback Thursday #180. 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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More photos from the Field Museum Photo Archive on Tumblr. This time views in/of/from the museum back in the day...
Here is a great photo of the Museum Campus in 1926. No Shedd Aquarium or Adler Planetarium yet. Look at how tiny Soldier Field is.
© The Field Museum, GN82988, Photographer Kauffman and Fabray Company.
Field Museum exterior aerial view showing Soldier Field nearly complete. Shedd Aquarium building not built yet.
8x10 negative
1926
Here is an aerial view of the museum back in 1938. This was before we filled in the lightwells to make more space for exhibitions and collections.
© The Field Museum, GN78428.
Aerial view of Field Museum with Soldier Field in the foreground.
8x10 negative
1/13/1938
Here is a really fun photo from the roof of the museum. The Skyline looks awfully short.
© The Field Museum, GN79261.
North parking lot, cars, Grant Park bandshell, Chicago downtown skyline.
1957
A little boy making faces at Bushman, a famous gorilla from Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo. When he passed away in 1951 he went to the Field Museum.
Bushman is still on display on the ground floor of the museum.
© The Field Museum, GN79754, Photographer John Bayalis.
Children girl and boy, holding hands and standing in front of case and making faces at Bushman, the Gorilla.
4x5 negative
1963
Two beautiful marble lions watch as visitors pass by.
© The Field Museum, GN79868.
Chinese Marble Lion statue lion figures [sculpture].
8x10 negative
4/1/1964
Sorry about the lack of posts the past two days, sadly the doors of the museum are frozen shut and we just can’t get to the negatives. Just Kidding. But it is far too cold to venture out. Hope you are all staying warm.
© The Field Museum CSB34764
Bird in the snow, Field Columbian Museum building south exterior in distance. Jackson Park, Chicago. 1912.
5x7 inch glass negative
1912.
(Image credit: Murray Rayner)
Live Science has a post about Australian diamonds. Western Australia is the source of 90% of the worlds pink diamonds. They are found in the Argyle formation, which formed about 1.3 billion (yes, billion) years ago. A paper in the journal Nature details the origin of these diamonds. While other diamonds derive their color from impurities, the color in pink diamonds comes from deformation of the crystal structure.
Now, new research suggests that the strange color and strange geology likely come from a similar origin, the plate tectonics of the planet some 1.3 billion years ago. Recent studies from other researchers suggest that these large-scale continental movements are important for bringing diamonds of other colors to the surface, as well.
"The breakup of these continents are fundamental at getting these diamonds up from these deep depths," said Hugo Olierook, a research fellow at Curtin University in Australia and lead author of the new study on the origin of the pink diamonds, published today (Sept. 19) in the journal Nature.
Pink diamonds are different from blue or yellow diamonds, which get their color from impurities like nitrogen and boron. In contrast, pink diamonds are colorful only because their crystalline structure has been bent. The Argyle also hosts a lot of brown diamonds, which get their color from an even greater deformation of the crystal structure.
"Pinks are, say, a small push, if you like," Olierook told Live Science."You push a little bit too hard and they turn brown."
Researchers used Bayesian analysis to study the brachiopods’ decline and bivalves’ rise post-end-Permian extinction, finding bivalves better adapted to changing conditions. Left, Devonian brachiopod fossils from Ohio, USA. Right, recent bivalve shells from Shell Beach, Western Australia. Credit: (Wikimedia Commons; Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication) for image on the left. Image on right by Zhong-Qiang Chen.
SciTechDaily has a piece about the rise of the mollusks over the brachiopods after the Permian Mass Extinction. Scientists have long wondered why bivalve species like clams and oysters replaced the brachiopods about 250 million years ago. During the Paleozoic, brachiopods dominated the sea floor, but they are now just a small part of the ecosystem. What happened? New research conducted by paleontologists in Bristol, UK and Wuhan, China used Bayesian analysis to understand why. The details can be found in a new paper in the journal Nature Communications.
“We wanted to explore the interactions between brachiopods and bivalves through their long history and especially around the Permian-Triassic handover period,” said Joe Flannery-Sutherland, a collaborator. “So we decided to use a computational method called Bayesian analysis to calculate rates of origination, extinction, and fossil preservation, as well as testing whether the brachiopods and bivalves interacted with each other. For example, did the rise of bivalves cause the decline of brachiopods?”
“We found that in fact, both groups shared similar trends in diversification dynamics right through the crisis time,” said Professor Michael Benton from Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences. “This means that they weren’t really competing or preying on each other, but more probably both responding to similar external drivers such as sea temperature and short-lived crises. But the bivalves eventually prevailed and the brachiopods retreated to deeper waters, where they still occur, but in reduced numbers.”
This is Mazon Monday post #182. What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:[email protected].
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The Fall 2023 Braceville Field Trip is in the books... is is that on the web? It was a enjoyable, but somewhat wet, weekend. We had rain at the very end of the day on Saturday and most of Sunday. The mud was not too bad. The dry conditions this late summer probably left the shale in a state where it could soak up a good bit of the water.
We had visitors from out of state both days. Alan Keith was very generous and passed out fossils from Texas and Oklahoma. The fossil dump was as good as ever. We had quite a few buckets on both days. Unfortunately, not as many people stuck around until 11:30 on Sunday, as we had a steady rain for most of the morning. Material was supplied by Ralph Jewell, Andrew Young, Rich Holm, Alan Keith, and others. Thank you for your contributions!
Good morning!
Here is a little introductory video on the walk in on Sunday morning. It rained quite a bit Saturday night, so the shale was sticky in places. Mazon Monday #130 looked at the history of the Braceville spoil pile. The old timers called it "Worm Hill".
Fossil Dump on Saturday
Good luck horseshoe found by Chris Berg.
Huntin' for fossils!
Smiles from the pile!
Mud!
Poison ivy!
Steam from the hill when the sun came out on Sunday afternoon
Open fossils found!
Say goodbye to another successful field trip!
Photos of bees made using the team's imaging system. Credit: Silas Bossert lab/WSU
Phys.org has a story about the evolution of bees. A study in the journal Current Biology shows that bees are tens of years older than previously thought. The researchers looked at DNA from more than 200 species combined that with traits from 185 different bee fossils to develop an evolutionary history and genealogical models for historical bee distribution.
In what may be the broadest genomic study of bees to date, they analyzed hundreds to thousands of genes at a time to make sure that the relationships they inferred were correct.
"This is the first time we have broad genome-scale data for all seven bee families," said co-author Elizabeth Murray, a WSU assistant professor of entomology.
Previous research established that the first bees likely evolved from wasps, transitioning from predators to collectors of nectar and pollen. This study shows they arose in arid regions of western Gondwana during the early Cretaceous period.
"For the first time, we have statistical evidence that bees originated on Gondwana," Bossert said. "We now know that bees are originally southern hemisphere insects."
This is the "Fossil Friday" post #178. 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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We have something different from Mazon Creek for this week's fossil. This fossil is a beautiful specimen of Radicites. The classification is somewhat problematic and is believed to be plant roots. The field of Paleobotany uses a system of classification known as "form genus". Where each part of the plant is assigned genus and species names. This system is used because it's usually not clear which plant part belongs to which parent plant.
This stunning fossil belongs to ESCONI member and Club Publicist Chris Berg. Thanks for sharing, Chris!
This is Throwback Thursday #179. 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 photos from the ESCONI Braceville Field Trip in May 2016. By the looks of it, the weather was great.
The pile...
This trip featured the first fossil dump, which has become a tradition at Braceville trips.
Checking out a Tully from Pit 11.
Lots of smiles!
Serious collecting!
Artistic reconstruction of Pampaphoneus biccai. Credit: Original artwork by Márcio Castro
Phys.org has a story about a new Permian fossil from Brazil. Pampaphoneus biccai lived about 265 million years ago, during the Permian Period, around what is now São Gabriel in Southern Brazil. It was a dinocephalian, which are related to early mammals. This specimen is the first found in South America. Previously, they were only known from deposits in South Africa and Russia. The details can be found in a paper published in the journal Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society,
"The fossil was found in middle Permian rocks, in an area where bones are not so common, but always hold pleasant surprises," said lead author Mateus A. Costa Santos, a graduate student in the Paleontology Laboratory at the Federal University of Pampa (UNIPAMPA). "Finding a new Pampaphoneus skull after so long was extremely important for increasing our knowledge about the animal, which was previously difficult to differentiate from its Russian relatives."
Paleontologists from UNIPAMPA and Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) collected the fossil over one month of daily, backbreaking fieldwork.
Due to the pandemic, it took an additional three years for the fossil to be cleaned and thoroughly studied. Co-author Professor Stephanie E. Pierce, in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology and Mammalogy in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, participated in the study of the animal as part of her current work with senior author and head of lab Professor Felipe Pinheiro, UNIPAMPA, on the Permo-Triassic fossil record of Brazil.
