Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois - ESCONI

PBS Eons: The Invisible Barrier Keeping Two Worlds Apart #fossil #animals #biostatigraphy #evolution #asia #australia

PBS Eons has a new episode on Youtube.  This one is about the Wallace Line, named for its discoverer... Alfred Russel Wallace.

In between two of the islands of Indonesia, there’s an ancient line that is both real and…not real.

 

Fossil Friday #159: Danville Callipteridium #fossil #paleontology #danville #FossilFriday #fern #pennsylvanian #MazonCreek #seedfern

This is the "Fossil Friday" post #159.  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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For this week's Fossil Friday, we have an absolutely gorgeous plate of Callipteridium sp. plate from our Danville spoil pile field trip back on April 15th.  Callipteridium is a extinct genus of seed fern.  It is known from Mazon Creek, but is considered very rare.

This beauty was found by Steve Buss.  This was his first time on one of our semi-annual Danville trips.  Thanks for sharing, Steve!

Throwback Thursday #160: Hey, Field Museum... Happy 102nd Birthday! #TBT #history #ThrowbackThursday @FieldMuseum @SUEtheTrex #dinosaur

This is Throwback Thursday #160.  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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On May 2nd, 1921, the Field Museum opened its doors to the public at its current home.  Happy 102nd Birthday!

Originally, it was called the Columbian Museum of Chicago, as much of the initial collection came from the 1893 World Columbian Exposition.  The museum was established by Marshall Field, its later namesake.  It occupied the former Palace of Fine Arts Building in Jackson Park, which is the only remaining building from the Columbian Exposition.  The original building is known today as the Museum of Science and Industry.

Marshall Field left $8 million in his will for the construction of a new, permanent building to house the growing collection.  Construction took six years.  Since 1921, there have been over 135,000,000 visitors!

From Wikipedia...

The museum maintains a temporary exhibition program of traveling shows as well as in-house produced topical exhibitions.^[13] The professional staff maintains collections of over 24 million specimens and objects that provide the basis for the museum's scientific-research programs.^[4][7][14] These collections include the full range of existing biodiversity, gems, meteorites, fossils, and rich anthropological collections and cultural artifacts from around the globe.^{[7][15][16][17]} The museum's library, which contains over 275,000 books, journals, and photo archives focused on biological systematics, evolutionary biology, geology, archaeology, ethnology and material culture, supports the museum's academic-research faculty and exhibit development.^[18] The academic faculty and scientific staff engage in field expeditions, in biodiversity and cultural research on every continent, in local and foreign student training, and in stewardship of the rich specimen and artifact collections. They work in close collaboration with public programming exhibitions and education initiatives.^{[14][19][20][21]}

Marshall Field circa 1900

Opening day 1921

Construction

Stanley Field Hall under construction

Stanley Field Hall in 2008

The building in 2022

 

'Golden' fossils reveal origins of exceptional preservation #fossil #paleontology #germany #pyrite #golden #sealife

Golden ammonite fossils at Ohmden quarry. Credit: Rowan Martindale/ The University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences.

Phys.org has an article about "golden" fossils.  Germany's Posidonia shale, which dates to the early Jurassic, was thought to contain pyritized fossils of sea life.  New research by a team at the University of Texas at Austin have found that the golden shine actually comes from phosphate minerals with yellow calcite.  Additionally, the chemical composition hints at how the fossils were formed.   The research was published in the journal Earth Science Reviews.

The fossils of the Posidonia Shale date back to 183 million years ago, and include rare soft-bodied specimens such as ichthyosaur embryos, squids with ink-sacs, and lobsters. To learn more about the fossilization conditions that led to such exquisite preservation, the researchers put dozens of samples under scanning electron microscopes to study their chemical composition.

"I couldn't wait to get them in my microscope and help tell their preservational story," said co-author Jim Schiffbauer, an associate professor at the University of Missouri Department of Geological Sciences, who handled some of the larger samples.

The researchers found that in every instance, the fossils were primarily made up of phosphate minerals even though the surrounding black shale rock was dotted with microscopic clusters of pyrite crystals, called framboids.

Thanks for the recommendation, George Witaszek!

 

Ants took over the world by following flowering plants out of prehistoric forests #fossil #paleontology #ants #evolution #flowingplants @fieldmuseum

*A leaf cutter ant, one of the more than 14,000 species alive today. Photo by Matthew Nelsen.

The Field Museum has a press release about research performed at the museum.  The research looked at the evolutionary relationship of ants and flowering plants.  Ants took advantage of the diversification of flowering plants, which led to the thousands of species of modern ants which exist today.  A paper detailing the research can be found in the journal Evolutionary Letters.

Ants are pretty much everywhere. There are more than 14,000 different species, spread over every continent except Antarctica, and researchers have estimated that there are more than four quadrillion individual ants on Earth-- that’s 4,000,000,000,000,000. But how ants evolved to take over the world is still a mystery. In a new study in the journal Evolution Letters, scientists used a combination of fossils, DNA, and data on the habitat preferences of modern species to piece together how ants and plants have been evolving together over the past 60 million years. They found that when flowering plants spread out from forests, the ants followed, kicking off the evolution of the thousands of ant species alive today.

“When you look around the world today, you can see ants on nearly every continent occupying all these different habitats, and even different dimensions of those habitats-- some ants live underground, some live in the canopies of trees. We’re trying to understand how they were able to diversify from a single common ancestor to occupy all these different spaces,” says Matthew Nelsen, a research scientist at the Field Museum in Chicago and lead author of the paper.

Scientists already knew that ants and flowering plants, or angiosperms, both originated around 140 million years ago and subsequently became more prevalent and spread to new habitats. Nelsen and his colleagues wanted to find evidence that the two groups’ evolutionary paths were linked.

Mazon Monday #162: Field Trip Report for Danville Spoil Pile #fossil #paleontology #MazonCreek #danville #illinois #carboniferous #MazonMonday

This is Mazon Monday post #162.  What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil?  Tell us at email:[email protected].

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This was our fifth field trip to the Danville spoil pile.  It's been a very productive locality over the last couple years.  The trips have been very popular, with every trip filling up quickly, even though the site is a 3 hour drive from the Chicago area.  Not much information is available about the Herrin coal fossils, but thankfully Jack Wittry compiled a handy "Herrin Coal Fossil Guide, which we posted for Mazon Monday #86.

Here is a list of prior trips.

• June 5th, 2021 - Report
• September 25th, 2021 - Announcement
• April 23rd, 2022 - Report
• September 17th, 2022 - Announcement

Saturday, April 15th was a very nice day.  The weather was summer-like with highs in the 80's.  Quite a few nice fossils were found, look for some specimens in upcoming Fossil Fridays.  Some of the following photos are from Ralph Jewell and Andrew Young,  Check out Ralph's report on the Fossil Forum for some extra photos and comments by the great group of people on that site.  Membership on the Fossil Forum is free... take advantage of it too learn more about fossils.

Of course, we took a group selfie...

Photos of the site

Arial views

Discussions and sharing of finds at the end of the day

Just a few of the many very nice specimens

Connor Puritz - Dunbarella

Gretel Monreal - Lepidophloios

Lee Sunderlin - Lobatopteris

Dan Quasny - Lobatopteris

Ralph Jewell - Lepidostrobus

Caroline Davis - Trigonocarpus

George Witaszek - Calamites suckowi

Steve Buss - Callipteridium

Elizabeth Magnus-Gentry - Lepidostrobophyllum, Annularia, Cyperites

Jeremy Zimmerman - Alethopteris

Dave Carlson - Alethopteris zeilleri

Ben Riegler - Artisia

 

 

Dino-Sore: Smithsonian Paleontologist Diagnoses Ancient Ailments in the Museum’s Dinosaurs #fossil #dinosaur #paleontology @SUEtheTrex @FieldMuseum

Several of the most prominent dinosaur skeletons in the museum’s Deep Time fossil hall, including Camptosaurus (foreground) and Diplodocus (background), exhibit signs of ancient injuries and disease. Jack Tamisiea, NMNH

Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting post about dinosaur injuries.  Not injuries to humans, although getting dinosaur bones out of the ground can be physically challenging, but injuries to dinosaurs evident in their bones long after they have died.  SUE, the T. rex at the Field Museum in Chicago, has numerous bone pathologies including broken ribs, arthritic vertebrae, a fibula that probably suffered from infection, and much more.

Sometimes time doesn't heal all wounds. Between mangled shoulder blades, fused vertebrae and hollowed out hips, several of the National Museum of Natural History’s dinosaur specimens still display the signs of diseases and injuries that date back more than 150 million years to the late Jurassic period.

According to paleontologist Matthew Carrano, the museum’s curator of Dinosauria, the signs of these ancient traumas are vital clues to what life was like during the Mesozoic. “It’s cool to think about how these animals were dealing with pathogens 80 or 100 million years ago,” he said.

But pinpointing prehistoric pathologies is no easy feat. Because paleontologists predominantly study fossilized bones, they can only diagnose diseases that leave marks on the animal’s bones. This makes it difficult to discover traces of ailments like stomach bugs, pneumonia or soft tissue injuries. And only certain types of clues make it into the fossil record. “It has to be this kind of middle of the road problem where it's not so small that it didn't leave a mark, but it's not so big that it killed the animal before it had time to affect the skeleton,” Carrano said.

PBS Eons: It's Becoming Very Clear That Birds Are Not Normal #fossil #paleontology #birds #evolution #bird #dinosaur

PBS Eons has a new video over on Youtube.  Birds are wierd.

A new discovery raises an important question: from an evolutionary perspective, who really has the stranger wings?

ESCONI Events Map 2023 #events #schedule #paleontology

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

Sat, May 6th	ESCONI Field Trip to Braceville, IL for Mazon Creek  Fossils.  ***Trip Full*** Details are here.
Sun, May 7th	ESCONI Field Trip to Braceville, IL for Mazon Creek Fossils.  ***Trip Full*** Details are here.
Fri, May 12th	ESCONI General Meeting 8:00 PM - Topic: “About the Falls of the Ohio State Park” by Alan Goldstein, Park Interpretive Naturalist and Paleontologist. Zoom link
Sat, May 13th	ESCONI Junior Meeting - 6:30 PM at College of DuPage - Topic: TBA 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, May 20th	ESCONI Paleontology Meeting 7:30 PM - Topic: "Echinoderms of the Platteville and Galena Formations", by John Catalani This meeting will be hybrid with both Zoom and in person available at the College of DuPage Tech Ed (TEC) Building, Room 1038B (Map). Zoom link

 

Fossil Friday #158: Helen Asher Cnidarian #fossil #paleontology #MazonCreek #FossilFriday #jellyfish #anemone #pit11 #cnidaria

This is the "Fossil Friday" post #158.  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 historically significant Mazon Creek fossil.  If you visit Pit 11, it's almost a given that you will find an Essexella asherae.  Whether it's a jellyfish or an anemone, it's a common Pit 11 fossil.  Both are extremely rare in the fossil record.   They have no hard parts, being just soft tissue... not much more than a bag of jelly-like fluid.  Here's a description from NOAA.

Fascinating, elegant, and mysterious to watch in the water, take a jellyfish out of the water, and it becomes a much less fascinating blob. This is because jellyfish are about 95 percent water.

Lacking brains, blood, or even hearts, jellyfish are pretty simple critters. They are composed of three layers: an outer layer, called the epidermis; a middle layer made of a thick, elastic, jelly-like substance called mesoglea; and an inner layer, called the gastrodermis. An elementary nervous system, or nerve net, allows jellyfish to smell, detect light, and respond to other stimuli. The simple digestive cavity of a jellyfish acts as both its stomach and intestine, with one opening for both the mouth and the anus.

These simple invertebrates are members of the phylum Cnidaria, which includes creatures such as sea anemones, sea whips, and corals. Like all members of the phylum, the body parts of a jellyfish radiate from a central axis. This “radial symmetry” allows jellyfish to detect and respond to food or danger from any direction.

Jellyfish have the ability to sting with their tentacles. While the severity of stings varies, in humans, most jellyfish stings result only in minor discomfort.

We looked at E. asherae way back in Mazon Monday #14.  And, just recently, a paper by ESCONI member Roy Plotnick questions the classification of Essexella asherae as a jellyfish and identifies it as a sea anemone... see Mazon Monday #155.

This particular specimen isn't the best example of E. asherae, but it has something missing from the ones you till find in Pit 11.  Helen Asher is the namesake of Essexella asherae.  She was a prolific collector.  She sold and gave away many examples of the eponymous animal.  Quite often, she would sign or at least offer to sign the specimen.  Too bad more people didn't take her up on the offer, as there aren't many examples of these.

This interesting specimen was sent in by long time ESCONI member Jim Alann.  Thanks for sharing, Jim!  The signature makes this fossil priceless!

Throwback Thursday #159: Field Museum Photo Archives #history #TBT #ThrowbackThursday #FieldMuseum @SUEtheTrex #dinosaur #triceratops

This is Throwback Thursday #159.  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's a few photos from the Field Museum Photo Archives over on Tumbler.  Unfortunately, the photo blog hasn't updated since 2015, but there are still many good photos to browse!

Dinosaurs this time...

Fossil Friday Triceratops.

© The Field Museum, CSGEO17032, Photographer Charles Carpenter.

Triceratops skull. Late Cretaceous, on exhibit. Geology specimen P12003. Field Columbian Museum.

8x10 glass negative

1905

International Dinosaur Month!!!

Fossil Friday, Anchiceratops.

Anchiceratops is rare compared to other ceratopsians in the area, and usually found near marine sediments.

© The Field Museum, GEO79876.

Anchiceratops, frill and horns skull posterior part of view.

North America Canada Alberta Edmonton

8x10 negative

6/10/1940 

Fossil Friday, Duck billed dinosaur excavation.

© The Field Museum, CSGEO45123.

George F. Sternberg and Anthony Dombroski using shovels and pick axes to excavate a fossil of duck billed dinosaur.

Marshall Field Paleontological Expedition Geology Paleontological North America Canada Alberta Belly River Formation.

5x7 glass negative

6/1/1922 

Fossil Friday, Protoceratops.Protoceratops was approximately 1.8 meters (6 ft) in length and 0.6 meters (2 ft) high at the shoulder. 

© The Field Museum, GEO81445.

Protoceratops andrewsi skeleton. Late Cretaceous from Djadochta beds, Gobi Desert, Mongolia. Hall 38 Case 42. Preinstallation Geology specimen P14046.

8x10 negative 

7/1/1954 

Fossil Friday Lambeosaurus, a duck billed dinosaur.

© The Field Museum, GEO81550.

Lambeosaurus skull, lateral view of duck-billed dinosaur. Family: Hadrosauridae. Late Cretaceous. Geology specimen UC1479.

8x10 negative

3/25/1955 

 

The Story Behind the Smithsonian’s Newest Gem: the Exquisite Lion of Merelani #gem #mineral #gemology #smithsonian

The Lion of Merelani is the world’s largest square-cushion cut tsavorite gem with 177 glimmering facets. Jeff Scovil, courtesy of Bridges Tsavorite

Smithsonian Magazine has an article about the Museum's new gemstone.  The Lion of Merelani is the world's largest square-cushion tsavorite gem.  It has 177 stunning facets.  This gorgeous stone will take up residence in the Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals next to the Hope Diamond, the Whitney Flame Topaz, and the Carmen Lucia Ruby.  All are breathtaking stones!

With more than 10,000 gems, the Smithsonian’s National Gem Collection is brimming with breathtaking stones like the scintillating Whitney Flame Topaz, the radiant Carmen Lúcia Ruby and the iconic Hope Diamond. But mineralogist Jeffrey Post, the National Museum of Natural History’s curator-in-charge of gems and minerals, thinks the collection's newest addition will stop museum visitors in their tracks.

“Things like this get people to stop and look,” Post says of the Lion of Merelani, a glowing green gem unveiled this week in the museum’s Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals. The new showstopper is the world’s largest square-cushion cut tsavorite (the first "t" is silent) gem with 177 glimmering facets.

In addition to its staggering size — the stone is more than twice as heavy as the Hope Diamond — the Lion of Merelani’s verdant hue makes it a rarity. The gem is a garnet, a group of silicate mineral crystals that have been used as precious gemstones since the Bronze Age 5,000 years ago. Most garnets are prized for their rich red hues — the word “garnet” comes from the Latin word for pomegranate, whose dark seeds resemble the crimson crystals.

Fossils reveal the long-term relationship between feathered dinosaurs and feather-feeding beetles #fossil #paleontology #dinosaur #feather #beetle #insect

Molt remains of feather-feeding beetle larvae intimately associated with downy feather portions from an unidentified theropod dinosaur in Early Cretaceous amber of Spain. Insets show the head with powerful mandibles of one of the larval molts (top) and the pigmentation pattern of feather second order branches (bottom), with the main stem of one feather at the right of the amber fragment. Amber fragment is only six millimeters across. Credit: CN IGME-CSIC

Phys.org has a story about an discovery in Mesozoic amber. The amber reveals a parasitic beetle feeding on some feathers.  The researchers were unable to determine if the relationship was one of mutual benefit or one-sided.  The amber is about 105 million years old from a Spanish locality near San Just.  The paper was published in the journal PNAS.

The main amber fragments studied, from the Spanish locality of San Just (Teruel), contain larval molts of small beetle larvae tightly surrounded by portions of downy feathers. The feathers belonged to an unknown theropod dinosaur, either avian (a term referring to "birds" in wide sense) or non-avian, as both types of theropods lived during the Early Cretaceous and shared often indistinguishable feather types. However, the studied feathers did not belong to modern birds since the group appeared about 30 million years later in the fossil record, during the Late Cretaceous.

When looking at modern ecosystems, we see how ticks infest cattle, frogs capture insects with acrobatic tongues, or some barnacles grow on the skin of whales. These are just a few of the diverse and complex ecological relationships between vertebrates and arthropods, which have coexisted for more than 500 million years. The way that these two groups have interacted throughout deep time is thought to have critically shaped their evolutionary history, leading to coevolution. Nevertheless, evidence of arthropod-vertebrate relationships is extremely rare in the fossil record.

 

Mazon Monday #161: Is the Tully Monster a vertebrate? #fossil #paleontology #MazonMonday #MazonCreek #tullymonster

This is Mazon Monday post #161.  What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil?  Tell us at email:[email protected].

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Discovered in the 1950s and first described in a paper in 1966, the Tully monster, with its stalked eyes and long proboscis, is difficult to compare to all other known animal groups. Unique to Illinois in the U.S., it became its state fossil in 1989. Credit: Takahiro Sakono, 2022.

Phys.org has a story about the new Tully Monster paper that was published in the journal Paleontology last week.  The Tully Monster is the State Fossil of Illinois.  And, although it is a popular animal, its evolutionary ancestry has been problematic.  Since it's discovery in 1958 by Francis Tully, numerous theories of its evolutionary affinity have been proposed including arthropods, worms, vertebrates, mollusks, even conodonts. 

For more than half a century, the Tully monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium), an enigmatic animal that lived about 300 million years ago, has confounded paleontologists, with its strange anatomy making it difficult to classify. Recently, a group of researchers proposed a hypothesis that Tullimonstrum was a vertebrate similar to cyclostomes (jawless fish like lamprey and hagfish). If it was, then the Tully monster would potentially fill a gap in the evolutionary history of early vertebrates. Studies so far have both supported and rejected this hypothesis.

Now, using 3D imaging technology, a team in Japan believes it has found the answer after uncovering detailed characteristics of the Tully monster that strongly suggest that it was not a vertebrate. However, its exact classification and what type of invertebrate it was is still to be decided.

In the 1950s, Francis Tully was enjoying his hobby fossil hunting in a site known as Mazon Creek Lagerstätte in the state of Illinois, when he discovered what would later become known as the Tully monster. This 15-centimeter (on average), 300-million-year-old marine "monster" turned out to be an enigma, as ever since its discovery researchers have debated where it fits in the classification of living things (its taxonomic position).

Eugene Richardson, who first called it "Mr. Tully's monster" recognized it didn't fit into any known classification when he described it in 1966.  He famously wrote "While this obscure but plentiful animal is being studied, I prefer not to assign it to a phylum."  In a later paper with Ralph Gordon Johnson, they wrote "There is no compelling reason to assign Tullimonstrum to any of the known phyla.  It could be imagined as an aberrant member of one of several phyla but the critical evidence is not available."  There were later attempts to classify it.  The latest, by McCoy et al in 2016, again in 2016 by Clements et al, and by McCoy et al again in 2020, classify T. gregarium as a jawless fish similar to a lamprey or hagfish.  If that theory is correct, the Tully Monster will fill in a gap in the evolutionary history of early vertebrates.  There has been some disagreement (Sallan in 2017), although that study denies the vertebrate ancestry without proposing a viable alternative.  

The new research was carried out by a team at the National Museum of Nature and Science.  The researchers used 3D laser scanning and x-ray micro-computed tomography to reach their conclusions which refute the vertebrate ancestry of the Tully Monster.  They also fail to propose a viable alternative classification.

Three-dimensional anatomy of the Tully monster casts doubt on its presumed vertebrate affinities

Abstract

Tullimonstrum gregarium, also known as the Tully monster, is a well-known phylogenetic enigma, fossils of which have been found only in the Mazon Creek Lagerstätte. The affinities of Tullimonstrum have been debated since its discovery in 1966, because its peculiar morphology with stalked eyes and a proboscis cannot easily be compared with any known animal morphotypes. Recently, the possibility that Tullimonstrum was a vertebrate has attracted much attention, and it has been postulated that Tullimonstrum might fill a gap in the fossil record of early vertebrates, providing important insights into vertebrate evolutionary history. With the hope of resolving this debate, we collected 3D surface data from 153 specimens of Tullimonstrum using a high-resolution laser 3D scanner and conducted x-ray micro-computed tomographic (μCT) analysis of stylets in the proboscis. Our investigation of the resulting comprehensive 3D morphological dataset revealed that structures previously regarded as myomeres, tri-lobed brain, tectal cartilages and fin rays are not comparable with those of vertebrates. These results raise further doubts about its vertebrate affinities, and suggest that Tullimonstrum may have been either a non-vertebrate chordate or a protostome.

Often used to study dinosaur footprints, these color-coded depth maps enabled the researchers to thoroughly investigate the structure of the Tully monster and other fossils from Mazon Creek. Credit: Mikami, 2022.

It will be interesting to see the response to this paper by the vertebrate crowd.  Victoria McCoy, lead author on two of the Tully vertebrate papers, gave us an excellent presentation on the latest Tully research at the Mazon Creek Open House back in October 2022.

 

Starting small and simple was key to success for evolution of mammals, reveals new study #fossil #paleontology #mammal #evolution

Digital skull model of the small-sized Jurassic mammal ancestor Hadrocodium wui. Credit: Dr Stephan Lautenschlager, University of Birmingham

Phys.org has a story about the evolution of mammals.  A new paper in the journal Communications Biology, found that being small led to more efficient feeding,  The international team of paleontologists used computer analysis and stress analysis to understand the process of skull simplification in early mammals.  In mamy vertebrate groups, like fish and reptiles, the skull and lower jaw is comprised of numerous bones.  Mammals reduced the number of skull bones during the Mesozoic from around 150 to 100 million years ago.

Lead author Dr. Stephan Lautenschlager, Senior Lecturer for Palaeobiology at the University of Birmingham, commented, "Reducing the number of bones led to a redistribution of stresses in the skull of early mammals. Stress was redirected from the part of the skull housing the brain to the margins of the skull during feeding, which may have allowed for an increase in brain size.

"Changes to skull structure combined with mammals becoming smaller are linked with a dietary switch to consuming insects—allowing the subsequent diversification of mammals which led to development of the wide-range of creatures that we see around us today."

The study further demonstrated that alongside the reduction of skull bones, early mammals also became a lot smaller, some of which had a skull length of only 10–12 mm. This miniaturization considerably restricted the available food sources, and early mammals adapted to feeding mostly on insects.

Happy Earth Day 2023 #ecology #earth #renewable ##sustainability #earthday #earthday2023

Happy Earth Day 2023!  Earth day is the culmination of a week long celebration.  The first Earth Day was held in 1970.  Since the, over 1 billion people in 190+ countries modilize for action every year on Earthday.

The Field Museum and other Chicago area museums are free today!

Fossil Friday #157: Danville Cone #fossil #paleontology #MazonCreek #coal #FossilFriday #cone #Danville

This is the "Fossil Friday" post #157.  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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Last Saturday, April 15th, 2023, ESCONI had a field trip to a coal mine spoil pile near Danville, IL.  The deposit is about 1.5 million years earlier than Mazon Creek.  We've found quite a few nice fossils at this locality over the 6 field trips we've had there.  For Mazon Monday #86, we posted some fossil guides and photos of some very nice specimens.

This weeks Fossil Friday comes from the latest field trip.  It was found by long time ESCONI member Ralph Jewell.  He found this stunning cone near the end of the day.  No hammering was needed as the shale had already split.  To add a little more to the pang on envy you might be feeling.... he found this beautiful piece in an area that many people collected throughout the day!

Thanks for sharing photos of this gorgeous piece, Ralph!

Throwback Thursday #158: ESCONI Logo #history #TBT #ThrowbackThursday

This is Throwback Thursday #158.  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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ESCONI was established in November 1949.  For the first few editions of the newsletter, the cover featured various drawings and prospective logos.   The cover of the January newsletter was a shield showing a fossil fern, a diamond, a dinosaur, a crystal, and an arrowhead.

 

 In the January 1950 newsletter, there was an announcement of a contest to choose a logo.

A WORD ABOUT THE COVER

We have no name. We have no symbol. Therefore we have caused to have. designed by one of our talented group this shield which represents the basic earth sciences backed by the tools of our trade and topped by the globe or earth which we are going to study. It will have to stand until we have a name and symbol which will be recognized from that point on as representing a vital and active organization.

The February 1950 newsletter cover featured a globe with crossed hammers.

The March 1950 cover was much different... a sign in a desert scene.

There was a final call for ideas in the March 1950 newsletter.

NOT TOO LATE FOR COVER DESIGN AND NAME FOR BULLETIN

Two competitive contests will be held at our next meeting, March 10th. One will be for the selection of a club emblem to be used as a symbol on our Bulletin cover and stationery. The winner will receive a slab of beautiful Eden Valley opalized wood. The second contest will determine the name of the club's monthly publication. The prize will be a group of nail head spar (calcite crystal). The contest will be open to visitors as well as members, Incidentally, the club wishes to express its appreciation to Mr. Beghtol for the covers for the first three bulletins.

During the March 1950 meeting, a logo submitted by Stevens T. Norvell was selected.  The S.T.N. initials at the bottom are his initials.  Norvell was an ESCONI founding member and the first treasurer.  He moved to Colorado a few years later, but continued to contribute articles for the newsletter into the 1960's.

Since April 1950, the newsletter had the same logo on the cover.

Colored patch version of the ESCONI logo.

A rare, 95-million-year-old titanosaur skull found in Australia #fossil #paleontology #dinosaur #australia #sauropod #skull

An artist’s illustration of Diamantinasaurus matildae’s head. This sauropod lived in Australia 100 million years ago. Elena Marian/Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History

Popular Science has a story about the discovery of a sauropod skull.  The animal, called Diamantinasaurus matildae, lived during the Cretaceous Period nearly 100 million years ago in what is now Australia.  This skull represents the fourth specimen ever found.  A paper in the journal Royal Society Open Science describes the 19.6 inch long skull.  Dinosaur fossils, especially well preserved bones, are rare in Australia, which makes this an exciting find!

The dinosaur. nicknamed ‘Ann,’ was discovered by the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum in 2018 near Winston in central Queensland. Ann is the third fossil specimen of D. matildae to have been discovered by this museum, and the fourth specimen overall. It lived in Australia over 100 million years ago and fell under the titanosaur group– a category of sauropods that included the largest animals to live on land in Earth’s history. D. matildae was a middle size sauropod, with the largest members reaching close to 131 feet long and over 170,000 pounds. Sauropods were also herbivores, subsisting entirely on a diet of plants. 

The team on this study said that it is rare to find a sauropod skull at all, especially one so well-preserved. It is only the fourth specimen of D. matildae ever found and the analysis of this first nearly complete skull is helping scientists learn more about the animal’s feeding habits, relationship to other sauropod dinosaurs, and physical anatomy. According to the team, Ann is not only the first sauropod dinosaur found in Australia that includes most of the skull, it also is the first Diamantinasaurus specimen to preserve a back foot.

“In analyzing the remains, we found similarities between the ‘Ann’ skull and the skull of a titanosaur called Sarmientosaurus musacchioi, which lived in South America at about the same time as Diamantinasaurus lived in Queensland. These include details of the braincase, the bones forming the back end of the skull near the jaw joint, and in the shape of the teeth (which are conical and curved),” co-author and Curtin University paleontologist Stephen Poropat said in a statement. 

Smithsonian: Paleontologists Discover 52-Million-Year-Old Bat #fossil #paleontology #bat #mammal #greenriver #wyoming @fieldmuseum

The fossil of Icaronycteris gunnelli Rietbergen et al., 2023, PLOS One, CC0

Smithsonian Magazine has a story about a fossil bat from Wyoming.  Bats are underrepresented in the fossil record due their small size and even smaller bones.  Unfortunately, they also live in areas that don't usually form fossils.  The Green River Formation in Wyoming, which dates to the Eocene about 52 million years ago, has yield a few examples of fossil bats.   This specimen, which was spotted for sale online, represents a new species - Icaronycteris gunnelli.  It was described in a paper in the journal PLOS One.

The fossil record is biased against bats. The flying mammals are small, making their fossilized remains very hard to find. And their light skeletons—ideal for flying around—mean it takes special circumstances for their bodies to be preserved. And yet, against these odds, paleontologists recently uncovered the exceptionally complete skeleton of what now stands as the earliest known bat.

To date, the most complete early bat fossils have come from an area paleontologists call Fossil Lake in Wyoming. The rock layers are world-famous for containing beautifully preserved fish, birds, mammals and other organisms that lived in the area about 52 million years ago. Among the stunning fossils recovered from these rocks, Naturalis Biodiversity Center paleontologist Tim Rietbergen and colleagues report Wednesday in PLOS One, are fossils of a new bat species the researchers have named Icaronycteris gunnelli. By comparing this new species with other early bats, paleontologists are beginning to develop a deeper understanding of how bats spread around the world in that period.

The Field Museum of Natural History has a specimen of Icaronycteris in its Evolving Planet exhibit.  It was also found in the Green River Formation.

The oldest known complete bat skeletons come from the sediments of the Green River Formation and are critical in deciphering the early evolution of bats and their ability to fly. From these amazingly complete fossils like the Icaronycteris index species pictured here, we can also see early features, such as well-developed claws on the index fingers, which are no long present in modern species.

© The Field Museum, GEO86416_106d, D. Scher