Contact Us:
esconi.info@gmail.com
Field trips require membership, but visitors are welcome at all meetings!
| Fri, Mar 12th | ESCONI General Meeting 8:00 PM Zoom - Topic: "The Big Hill Lagerstätte; a small locality with large implications for early chelicerate evolution” by Dr. James Lamsdell of West Virginia University. Zoom link. |
| Sat, Mar 13th |
ESCONI Junior Meeting 7:00 PM Zoom - Topic: "More Interesting Gems". Specifics of this meeting are available from Scott Galloway, 630-670-2591, gallowayscottf@gmail.com. Contact Scott to get the Zoom link to attend the virtual meeting and find out how to join the Juniors Club. |
| Sat, Mar 20th | ESCONI Paleontology Meeting 7:30 PM Zoom - Topic: “Fossil Collecting in Extreme Conditions”. by ESCONI Member Tom Williams. Zoom link. |
Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois
ESCONI
2022
Gem, Mineral and Fossil
Show
March 19th and 20th
Dealers, Demonstrators, Displays, Live and Silent Auctions,
Book Sales, Kid’s Korner, Geode Splitting
Free Parking! Free Admission!
DuPage County Fairgrounds
2015 Manchester Rd.
Wheaton, Illinois
Saturday 10 AM to 5 PM
Sunday 10 AM to 4 PM
www.esconi.org
The January 2022 General Meeting will be held at 8:00 PM on January 14th, 2022 via Zoom. Our speaker is Dr. Alyssa Abbey from California State University Long Beach. The title of her talk is “Through the Ages: How we Date Rocks and Geologic Processes”.
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The speaker at our June 2021 meeting was Charles Monson from ISGS. Charles recently published on the Glasford Illinois impact structure and its relation to the Ordovician meteor event.
WCBU, a joint service of Bradley University and Illinois State University, interviewed Charles back in November 2019. Their program is online and available for listening. His paper was published in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.
New research on a central Illinois crater suggests possible links to an Ice Age about 455 million years ago.
Charles Monson is an assistant project coordinator with the Illinois State Geological Survey. He said his team's research suggests a ancient meteor about the size of Wrigley Field struck near Glasford, 20 miles southwest of Peoria, creating a 2.5 mile wide crater that's now buried under a more than a thousand feet of sediment.
Scientists look for certain geologic signs like shatter cones (or altered rock) to prove a meteor impact is responsible for a crater, instead of another phenomenon. Monson said no one's taken a good look at the crater since its discovery more than 50 years ago. Using 21st century technology and methods, he said scientists were able to learn more.
"We've documented some of those at the Glasford structure, much more thoroughly than they've been previously documented, so you could say we are the first ones to completely prove this was a meteor impact," he said.
The speaker at our December 3, 2021 meeting will be Scott Elrick, Head of the Coal, Bedrock and Industrial Minerals Section of ISGS. The topic of his talk via Zoom will be paleoecology of the Herrin Coal roof shales including depositional environment and climate. This talk should should add context to the fossil flora found at the Danville shale pile.
A story about Scott and the discovery of a large underground coal forest in the Smithsonian Magazine from 2009.
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer/John-Nelson-Scott-Elrick-mine-shaft-forest-fossils-631.jpg)
Finding a fossil in a coal mine is no big deal. Coal deposits, after all, are petrified peat swamps, and peat is made from decaying plants, which leave their imprints in mud and clay as it hardens into shale stone.
But it was a different thing entirely when John Nelson and Scott Elrick, geologists with the Illinois State Geological Survey, examined the Riola and Vermilion Grove coal mines in eastern Illinois. Etched into ceilings of the mine shafts is the largest intact fossil forest ever seen—at least four square miles of tropical wilderness preserved 307 million years ago. That's when an earthquake suddenly lowered the swamp 15 to 30 feet and mud and sand rushed in, covering everything with sediment and killing trees and other plants. "It must have happened in a matter of weeks," says Elrick. "What we see here is the death of a peat swamp, a moment in geologic time frozen by an accident of nature."
To see this little-known wonder, I joined Nelson and Elrick at the Vermilion Grove site, a working mine operated by St. Louis-based Peabody Energy and closed to the public. I donned a hard hat, a light, gloves and steel-toed boots. I received an oxygen bottle and a safety lecture. In case of emergency—poison gas, fire or an explosion—follow the red lights to find the way out of the mine, safety manager Mike Middlemas counseled. We could encounter "thick black smoke, and you won't be able to see anything in front of you." He said to use the lifeline running along the ceiling, a slender rope threaded through wooden cones, like floats in a swimming pool.
The ESCONI November 2021 Paleontology will be held on Saturday, November, 20th, 2021 at 7:30 PM. We are doing another hybrid in-person/Zoom meeting. The presentation is by ESCONI member Mike Payne. It's called "The Linton Ohio Coal Mine; a unique look into Carboniferous Tetrapods". The Diamond Coal Mine in Linton, OH dates to the mid 1800's and interesting fossils were collected from the shales since the very beginning. The deposit dates to around 300 million years. Over the years, thousands of specimens of Pennsylvanian vertebrates have been collected from the site. This list includes fish, amphibians, and reptiles.
The photos below are from John Spina Jr. and were also used in Fossil Friday #37.
Topic: Linton Ohio Mine
Presented By: Mike Payne
Time: Nov 20, 2021 07:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada)
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The ESCONI November 2021 General Meeting will be held on Friday, November 12th, 2021 at 8:00 PM via Zoom. Our speaker is Stacy Henderson part of the "MonStER" lab (Montana State Eruption Research) . For more information, see this link https://www.monsterlab.org/.
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This is the preview post #6 for the 2021 ESCONI Fall Sale Live Auction. The sale is on October 16th, 2021 at the DuPage County Fairgrounds in Wheaton, IL. All details can be found here.
On National Fossil Day, we present to you, one of a few boxes of Mazon Creek plant fossils. There are 6 or 7 different species in each box, usually a Neuropteris, a Pecopterid, an Annularia, maybe even a piece of wood. Box #5 appears to have a nice Neuropteris!
This is the preview post #5 for the 2021 ESCONI Fall Sale Live Auction. The sale is on October 16th, 2021 at the DuPage County Fairgrounds in Wheaton, IL. All details can be found here.
Another gorgeous mineral from Brazil. This is Microlite with Muscavite and Albite from the Ipe mine, Governador Valadares, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
This is the preview post #4 for the 2021 ESCONI Fall Sale Live Auction. The sale is on October 16th, 2021 at the DuPage County Fairgrounds in Wheaton, IL. All details can be found here.
Here is a gorgeous specimen of Hematite from Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
The speaker at our October 8, 2021 meeting via Zoom will be Stew Cook, Paleo Prep Lab Manager at the Carter County Museum in Ekalaka Montana. Carter County is where Burpee Museum has excavated since 2001, and the source of "Jane" and "Homer". The topic of his talk will be amber from the Hell Creek formation, it's source, structure and inclusions.
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This is the preview post #1 for the 2021 ESCONI Fall Sale Live Auction. The sale is on October 16th, 2021 at the DuPage County Fairgrounds in Wheaton, IL. All details can be found here.
This is an absolutely stunning piece of petrified wood in the form of a branch. It's a Mazon Creek fossil found in Pit 1, which was occupied by the Greer School back in the 1960's and 1970's. That school taught its students how to operate heavy earth moving equipment,. There was plenty of turnover and an abundance of fossils. Currently, Cinder Ridge Golf Course resides on the same land. The picture does not do this piece justice!
The September 2021 Paleontology Meeting will be held at the College of Dupage in room 1038B of the Tech Ed (TEC) Building (Map). We will also provide a Zoom link for those that can't attend in person. The topic of the meeting is "Show and Tell". The "Show and Tell" theme has been a tradition for the first meeting back after the summer hiatus. But, in the past, it was called "Brag Night" So, bring your fossils and tell us some fish... i mean fossil stories! There will be knowledgeable people that might be able to identify what you found.
This is our first in person meeting since the start of the Covid Pandemic in March 2020. Masks are required for those in attendance.
Here are some photos from previous "Show and Tell" nights.
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There will be a field trip to a quarry near Rockford, Illinois on Saturday, October 2, 2021, from 9AM to 12 noon.
The rock is Ordovician, Galena Group. This is a "hard-rock" quarry (dolomite). There may also be glacial deposits, including gravel, in place (not washed and processed) making it possible to find things like native copper. No guarantee of course...
If you are sick, have symptoms of COVID or have tested positive recently, DON”T COME.
The address of the quarry will be sent to those that sign up a few days before the trip.
I will distribute the waiver forms by email to those signed up just before the trip.
Questions? Send me an email...
