Monday 3 June 2019

ARNIOCERAS BEDS: SINEMURIAN AMMONITES

Arnioceras semicostatum & Arnioceras miserable
These beauties are from the Arnioceras beds near Last Creek, British Columbia. The fossils found here are from the Lower Jurassic, Lower Sinemurian, Little Paradise Member of the Last Creek formation.

This site is part of the research area for Dr. Howard Tipper, GSC (who is hugely missed) and Dr. Louise Longridge, University of British Columbia.

Several ammonites species can be found here including Arnioceras semicostatum & Arnioceras miserable.

Building on the work of Dr. Howard Tipper and Dr. Louise Longridge, along with Taylor et al from 2001, Pengfei Hou did a Master's thesis through UBC in 2014 on Sinemurian (Early Jurassic) stratigraphy at Last Creek, British Columbia and Five Card Draw, Nevada : paleontology and environmental implications.

As part of that work, he collected over 400 ammonite specimens from the Last Creek Formation in Last Creek, British Columbia and the Sunrise Formation in Five Card Draw, Nevada. The research led to three new species: Tipperoceras n. sp. A, Tmaegoceras obesus n. sp., Arnioceras n. sp. Nice to see Tip getting a nod for his efforts with a species named after him.

The two gastropods you see in the central block look to be Promathildia turritella. The age is certainly correct. Here's hoping a nice grad student takes an interest. The rare but lovely gastros from this area would make an excellent thesis. Perhaps comparing their distribution to their counterparts in Europe.

Sunday 2 June 2019

MIGHTY MARINE REPTILES: ICHTHYOSAURUS

Blue Lias Ichthyosaur / Photo: Lewis Winchester-Ellis
Ichthyosaurs were particularly abundant in the later Triassic and early Jurassic periods, until they were replaced as the top aquatic predators by another marine reptilian group, the Plesiosauria, in the later Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
In the Late Cretaceous, ichthyosaurs were hard hit by the Cenomanian-Turonian anoxic event. As the deepest (benthos) layers of the seas became anoxic, poisoned by hydrogen sulphide, deep water marine life died off. This caused a cascade that wreaked havoc all the way up the food chain. At the end of that chain were our mighty predaceous marine reptiles. Bounty turned to scarcity and a race for survival began. The ichthyosaurs lost that race as the last lineage became extinct. It may have been their conservative evolution as a genus when faced with a need for adaptation to the world in which they found themselves and/or being outcompeted by early mosasaurs.

Saturday 1 June 2019

NORTH CASCADES

North Cascades, Cascade Range, western North America

Thursday 30 May 2019

OREGON: FOSSILS ALONG THE FARALLON PLATE

Had you been swimming with the marine fossils that were laid down in the Eocene Epoch in Oregon, some 55 to 38 million years ago, you'd be treading water right up to where the Cascade Mountains are today.

The Farallon Plate took a turn north some 57 million years ago, sweeping much of western coastal Oregon along with it. The Cascades were beginning to uplift and acting as the breakwater for a retreating Pacific Ocean. By the middle Oligocene, the Cascadia Subduction Zone was in full force. The growing pressure fracturing our magma shield and causing volcanic eruptions along the Western Cascades. Lassen Peak erupted twice in fairly recent history, 1914 and 1921. Mount St. Helens has had a long history of minor eruptions but there was a massive eruption as recently as 1980.

We see a fair bit of volcanic action in Oregon right through to the Miocene. We also see lovely marine fossils from this same era. The soft ocean sediments of Oregon contain beautifully preserved gastropods, bivalves, wood, bone and cephalopods that range in age from 15 to 30 million years old.

Wednesday 29 May 2019

VERTIPECTEN FUCANUS

Vertipecten fucanus / Miocene / Clallam Formation
Some water worn samples of the fossil bivalve Vertipecten fucanus from lower Miocene deposits in the Clallam Formation.

These were collected on the foreshore near Clallam Bay, Olympic Peninsula, northwestern Washington.

Until Addicott's study from 1976, the area was considered middle Miocene. The new lower Miocene designation can be credited in large part to the restricted stratigraphic range of Vertipecten fucanus (Dall) and the restricted and overlapping ranges of several other mollusks.

Tuesday 28 May 2019

VISUAL POETRY: ON SUNSETS

Taking in the beauty and colours of  a sunset
One of the most satisfying moments is taking in a sunset after a long days hike. Pure visual poetry. Peaceful, meditative and well-earned. It is a time for reflection on the day, your world, fresh blisters - the gamut!

Have you ever wondered about the colors you see in these moments? What sunlight actually is? Yes, it's light from the Sun but so much more than that. Sunlight is both light and energy. Once it reaches Earth, we call this energy, "insolation," a fancy term for solar radiation. The amount of energy the Sun gives off changes over time in a never ending cycle. Solar flares (hotter) and sunspots (cooler) on the Sun's surface impact the amount of radiation headed to Earth. These periods of extra heat or extra cold (well, colder by Sun standards...) can last for weeks, sometimes months.

The beams that reach us and warm our skin are electromagnetic waves that bring with them heat and radiation, by-products of the nuclear fusion happening as hydrogen nuclei shift form to helium. Our bodies convert the ultraviolet rays to Vitamin D. Plants use the rays for photosynthesis, a process of converting carbon dioxide to sugar and using it to power their growth (and clean our atmosphere!) That process looks something like this: carbon dioxide + water + light energy -->glucose + oxygen = 6 CO2(g) + 6 H2O + photons → C6H12O6(aq) + 6 O2(g) Photosynthetic organisms convert about 100–115 thousand million metric tonnes of carbon to biomass each year, about six times more power than used my us hoomins.

We've yet to truly get a handle on the duality between light as waves and light as photons. Light fills not just our wee bit of the Universe but the cosmos as well, bathing it in the form of cosmic background radiation that is the signature of the Big Bang.

Once those electromagnetic waves leave the Sun headed for Earth, they reach us in a surprising eight minutes. We experience them as light mixed with the prism of beautiful colors. But what we see is actually a trick of the light. As rays of white sunlight travel through the atmosphere they collide with airborne particles and water droplets causing the rays to scatter. We see mostly the yellow, orange and red hues (the longer wavelengths) as the blues and greens (the shorter wavelengths) scatter more easily and get bounced out of the game rather early.

Monday 27 May 2019

Saturday 25 May 2019

DRACULA, DINOSAURS & ANCIENT POT SHARDS

Râpa Roșie / Magyarosaurus dacus (von Huene, 1932)
Râpa Roșie is a geological and botanical reserve in the southwest Secaşelor Plateau, in mineral rich Alba County, central Romania.

The distinctive red and white banded clays hold clues to our ancient past both from an archaeological and paleontological perspective.

Râpa Roșie sits in the southwestern part of the region known to you from books and lore as Transylvania. Home to Dracula, Late Cretaceous dwarf sauropod dinosaurs and ancient pot shards - oh my! Paleo coordinates: 45°59′15″N 23°35′29″E

Friday 24 May 2019

DINOSAUR PROVINCIAL PARK

Dinosaur Provincial Park / Alberta Badlands

Thursday 23 May 2019

SOLAR WINDS: THE MAGNETOSPHERE

Structure of the Magnetosphere
The Earth has a magnetic field with north and south poles. The magnetic field of the Earth is surrounded by the magnetosphere that keeps most of the particles from the Sun from hitting the Earth.

Some of these particles from the solar wind enter the atmosphere at one million miles per hour. We see them as one of the most beautiful of all natural phenomena -- Earth's polar lights, the aurora borealis in the north and the aurora australis, near the south pole.

The auroras occur when highly charged electrons from the solar wind interact with elements in the Earth's atmosphere and become trapped in the Earth's magnetic field. We see them as an undulating visual field of red, yellow, green, blue and purple dancing high in the Earth's atmosphere -- about 100 to 400 kilometers above us.

This image shows the parts of the magnetosphere. 1. Bow shock. 2. Magnetosheath. 3. Magnetopause. 4. Magnetosphere. 5. Northern tail lobe. 6. Southern tail lobe. 7. Plasmasphere.

Photo credit: Magnetosphere_Levels.jpg: Dennis Gallagherderivative work: Frédéric MICHEL - Magnetosphere_Levels.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9608059

Wednesday 22 May 2019

FOSSILIZED WOOD: SILICATE REPLACEMENT

Fossilized Wood
Fossilized or petrified wood is amazing to behold in person. The original tree or branch is sometimes subjected to such a high degree of replacement that it is impossible to tell from the original at first glance. But fossilized it is.

All of the original cells are replaced one by one with minerals, often a silicate such as quartz, leaving the original cell structure intact. And while there is often amazing preservation of the big woody bits, the telltale leaves that help us identify that wood to species are often lost. If this is the case, we add our best guess at the genus and add xlon. So, Palmoxylon is the indeterminate wood of a palm, though we may never know which palm. If you have an interest in botany and fossils, you may want to consider making a career of it. The study of fossil wood is called palaeoxylology, with a palaeoxylologist being someone who studies fossil wood. Pretty cool, eh!

Tuesday 21 May 2019

VICTORASPIS LONGICORNUALIS

This lovely specimen is an armoured agnatha jawless bony fish, Victoraspis longicornualis, from Lower Devonian deposits of Podolia, Ukraine.

Victoraspis longicornualis was named by Anders Carlsson and Henning Bloom back in 2008. The new osteostracan genus and species were described based on material from Rakovets' present-day Ukraine. This new taxon shares characteristics with the two genera Stensiopelta (Denison, 1951) and Zychaspis (Javier, 1985).

The Agnatha is a superclass of vertebrates. He looks quite different from our modern Agnatha, who include lamprey and hagfish. Ironically, hagfish are vertebrates who do not have vertebrae. Sometime in their evolution they lost them as they adapted to their environment.

Ref: Carlsson, A. & Blom, H. Paläont. Z. (2008) 82: 314. ttps://doi.org/10.1007/BF02988898

Sunday 19 May 2019

NORTH CASCADES NATIONAL PARK

North Cascades National Park / Rainforest Pool

Saturday 18 May 2019

MACROSCELIDES PROBOSCIDEUS

Elephant Shrew, Macroscelides proboscideus
This adorable little fellow is a Short-eared elephant shrew, Macroscelides proboscideus, one of 15 species of this order. They range in size from 9.5-12.5 cm.

These small, quadrupedal, insectivorous mammals strongly resemble rodents or opossums with their scaly tails, elongated snouts, and rather longish legs.

They live in the desert and temperate grasslands of southern Africa. The Elephant shrew is considered "Living Fossils" as their distinctive morphology has not changed all that much in the past 30 million years. They ought to have been named Elephant Bunny shrew. They move through the world like wee baby elephant-bunnies, snuffling on all fours and hopping about looking for tasty snacks. They have a preference for seeds, fruit, termites and berries. They know how to live well, taking a siesta each afternoon when the sun gets high in the sky.

Friday 17 May 2019

PANOPEA ABRUPTA

The bivalve Panopea abrupta
This lovely large fossil bivalve is Panopea abrupta (Conrad) an extinct species of marine mollusc in the family Hiatellidae, subclass Heterodonta.

This specimen was collected from lower Miocene deposits in the Clallam Formation on the foreshore bordering the Strait of Juan de Fuca near Clallam Bay, Olympic Peninsula, northwestern Washington.

Clallam Bay is a sleepy little town on the northwestern edge of the Olympic Peninsula. It was founded back in the 1880s as a steamboat stop and later served as a Mill town. If you are planning to visit the fossil exposures, head to the edge of town where it meets the sea.

Once at the water's edge, head east along the shore until you can go no further. You'll find marine fossils in the sandstone on the shore and cliffs. Mind the tide as access to the fossil site is only possible at low or mid-tide. You'll have to swim for it if you time it poorly. Clallam Bay: 48°15′17″N 124°15′30″W

Thursday 16 May 2019

WALLISEROPS: JOUST A PLAISANCE

Walliserops, Photo: Gianpaolo Di Silvestro
A beautiful detail of a Walliserops, a genus of spinose phacopid trilobite of the family Acastidae found in the Lower to Middle Devonian strata near Foum Zguid, Tata Province, Souss-Massa, southeastern Morocco.

Their wee horns or tridents suggest sexual dimorphism though this concept is still a hotbed of debate. Did they use them much as we used a traditional jousting lance back in the 14th Century? It is an interesting proposition. Kudos and photo credit to Gianpaolo Di Silvestro

Wednesday 15 May 2019

CAMBRIAN LASCAUX CHINOIS

Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis, a Cambrian Fuxinhuiid Arthropod
This fellow is Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis, a rather glorious fuxinhuiid arthropod. While he looks like he could be from the inside of the Lascaux Caves and their fire-kissed Palaeolithic paintings, albeit by a very ancient Picasso, he was found at a UNESCO World Heritage Cambrian fossil site in southern China.

As his name indicates, he is from a locality in the Yunnan region near Kunming. He is unusual in many ways, both because of the remarkable level of preservation and the position in which he was found.

This fellow was a bit of a tippy arthropod. His carapace had flipped over before fossilization, allowing researchers to examine this fuxianhuiid's head in great detail without a carapace in the way.

The study, published back in the February 27, 2013 issue of Nature, highlights the discovery of previously controversial limbs under the head. These limbs were used to shovel sediment into the mouth as the fuxianhuiid crawled across the seabed.

Using a feeding technique scientist's call 'detritus sweep-feeding', fuxianhuiids developed the limbs to push seafloor sediment into the mouth in order to filter it for organic matter – such as traces of decomposed seaweed – which constituted the creatures' food.

Fossils also revealed the oldest nervous system on record that is 'post-cephalic' – or beyond the head – consisting of only a single stark string in what was a very basic form of early life compared to today.

"Since biologists rely heavily on organization of head appendages to classify arthropod groups, such as insects and spiders, our study provides a crucial reference point for reconstructing the evolutionary history and relationships of the most diverse and abundant animals on Earth," said Javier Ortega-Hernández, from Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences.

Ortega-Hernández co-authored the paper with Nicholas Butterfield and colleagues from Yunnan University in Kunming, South China.

The Xiaoshiba 'biota' in the Chiungchussu Formation Maotianshan shales of China's Yunnan Province is similar to the world-famous Chengjiang biota and also produces spectacular arthropod fossils.

The recent publication on the Qingjiang biota found on the edge of the Yangze craton along the banks of China’s Danshui River are similar in age, competing with the world's most famous Cambrian fossil assemblage, the Burgess Shale.

The roughly 518-million-year-old site contains a dizzying abundance of beautifully preserved weird and wonderful life-forms, from jellyfish and comb jellies to arthropods and algae and is about 10 million years older than Burgess and if you're following Chinese lagerstätte, the site is just over a thousand miles from the Chengjiang site.

Photo credit: Yie Jang (Yunnan University)

Tuesday 14 May 2019

CENOMANIAN-TURONIAN IMPACT

Ichthyosaur and Plesiosaur by Edouard Riou, 1863
During the early Triassic period, ichthyosaurs evolved from a group of unidentified land reptiles that returned to the sea. They were particularly abundant in the later Triassic and early Jurassic periods before being replaced as a premier aquatic predator by another marine reptilian group, the Plesiosauria, in the later Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

In the Late Cretaceous, ichthyosaurs were hard hit by the Cenomanian-Turonian anoxic event. As the deepest benthos layers of the seas became anoxic, poisoned by hydrogen sulphide, deep water marine life died off. This caused a cascade that wreaked havoc all the way up the food chain. At the end of that chain were our mighty predaceous marine reptiles.

Bounty turned to scarcity and a race for survival began. The ichthyosaurs lost that race as the last of their lineage became extinct. It may have been their conservative evolution as a genus when faced with a need for adaptation to the world in which they found themselves and/or being outcompeted by early mosasaurs.

Sunday 12 May 2019

FERNIE AMMONITE

Titanites occidentalis / Fernie Ammonite
This impressive big beauty is Titanites occidentalis, Western Giant, the second known specimen of this extinct fossil species.

The first specimen was discovered in 1947 in nearby Coal Creek by a British Columbia Geophysical Society mapping team.

Titanities is an extinct ammonite within the family Dorsoplanitidae that lived during the upper Tithonian of the Late Jurassic, some 152 to 145 million years ago.

Saturday 11 May 2019

ISOGRAPTUS MAXIMUS

Isograptus maximus / Photo: Gilberto Juárez Huarachi
This fellow is the graptolite, Isograptus cf. maximus, from the Piranha Formation, Middle Ordovician (Dapingian), Bolivia.

Graptolites (Graptolita) are colonial animals. The biological affinities of the graptolites have always been debatable. Originally regarded as being related to the hydrozoans, graptolites are now considered to be related to the pterobranchs, a rare group of modern marine animals. They are hemichordates, phylum Hemichordata, a primitive group that share a common ancestry with the vertebrates. Yes, you're looking at one of your oldest relatives!

In life, many graptolites appear to have been planktonic, drifting freely on the surface of ancient seas or attached to floating seaweed by means of a slender thread. Some forms of graptolite lived attached to the sea-floor by a root-like base. Graptolite fossils are often found in shales and slates. The deceased planktonic graptolites would sink down to and settle on the seafloor, eventually becoming entombed in the sediment and are thus well preserved.

Graptolite fossils are found flattened along the bedding plane of the rocks in which they occur. They vary in shape, but are most commonly dendritic or branching (such as Dictoyonema), saw-blade like, or "tuning fork" shaped (such as Didymograptus murchisoni).

This fellow is pure "Bat Sign" with his showy "wings" looking like something out of a DC Comic. He's also received a nod as the Panem symbol in Hunger Games and been described as having eagle or angel wings. No matter how you interpret his symbolism, there is no doubt that he is ONE spectacular specimen and currently in the collection of the deeply awesome Gilberto Juárez Huarachi of Tarija, Bolivia.

Friday 10 May 2019

GOAT: CAPRA MAGICAL

Goats, Capra hircus, are a domesticated species of goat-antelope typically kept as livestock. 

They were domesticated from wild goats, C. aegagrus, from Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. 

The goat is a member of the animal family Bovidae and the subfamily Caprinae, meaning it is closely related to sheep. 

There are over 300 distinct breeds of goat — one of the oldest domesticated species of animal. The archaeological evidence places their earliest domestication in Iran at 10,000 years ago.

Goat-herding is an ancient tradition that is still important in places like Egypt. Goats have been used for milk, meat, fur, and skins across much of the world. Milk from goats is often turned into white, crumbly goat cheese known as chèvre. If you love your palate, consider trying the Spanish take on slightly musty, velvety Garrotxa, a dense, aged explosion of flavour for the senses. You will taste some lemony tanginess with hints of toasted hazelnuts and aromatics of scrub brush and grasses growing in the foothills of the Pyrénées.

Female goats are referred to as does or nannies, intact males are called bucks or billies, and juvenile goats of both sexes are called kids. Castrated males are called wethers. While the words hircine and caprine both refer to anything having a goat-like quality, hircine is used most often to emphasize the distinct smell of domestic goats.

URSUS AMERICANUS

Ursus americanus / Baby Black Bear
Bear cubs are known for being playful and altogether too curious. They usually stick pretty close to Mamma but sometimes an intriguing opportunity for discovery will cross their paths and entice them to slip away for just a few minutes.

This wee one needed to get a better view of his surroundings and try out his climbing skills on this alder tree. He'll stay under the watchful eye of his mother for about two years before branching out on his own altogether. These cuties are omnivores, eating nuts, insects, plants, salmon, honey, small mammals and scavenged carrion.

Wednesday 8 May 2019

ILYMATOGYRA ARIETINA

Ilymatogyra arietina / Oyster Slab
Ilymatogyra arietina, Oyster Slab, Lower Cretaceous, Washita Division, Del Rio Formation, Williamson County near Georgetown, Texas, USA.

The highly calcareous siltstones of the Del Rio Formation at Washita have huge blocks of Ilymatogyra packed so tightly one specimen overlaps with the next. If you're in the area, it is well worth a field trip.

Tuesday 7 May 2019

COAHUILACERATOPS MAGNACUERNA

Coahuilaceratops or "Coahuila Horn Face," is a relatively new genus of Ornithischia Ceratopsidae, a  herbivorous ceratopsian dinosaur who lived during the Upper Cretaceous (late Campanian) near the town of Porvenir de Jalpa (about 64 km / 40 miles west of Saltillo) in what is now southern Coahuila (formerly Coahuila de Zaragoza), northern Mexico.

The Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range runs northwest to southwest forming a spine through the centre of the State. East of the range, the arid landscape slopes gently through the desert terrain down to the Rio Grande. It is home to wonderful common, rare and endangered cacti, beautiful (and one of my favourite) raptors, Aquila chrysaetos and the evolutionarily unlikely pronghorn, Antilocapra americana (if a monkey/owl/ antelope had a baby...)

The world was a much wetter warmer place when these big beauties roamed. Picture them ambling through lush vegetation and rearing young next to freshwater rivers, brackish swamps and salty ancient seas. Many of the dinosaur remains from the area bear the marks or remains of fossilized snails and clams. Perhaps predation vs a symbiotic relationship as proximity isn't always intimacy. Coahuilaceratops magnacuerna is known from holotype CPC 276, a partial skeleton of an adult along with bits and pieces of skull, a section of horn, pretty complete lower jaw, a smidge of the upper jaw and part of the frill.

Another specimen, CPS 277, has been touted as a possible juvenile Coahuilaceratops. All the specimens from Coahuilaceratops come from a single Upper Cretaceous (Campanian) locality of the Cerro del Pueblo Formation, northern Mexico.

This particular species of Coahuilaceratops was formally named C. magnacuerna by Mark A. Loewen, Scott D. Sampson, Eric K. Lund, Andrew A. Farke, Martha C. Aguillón-Martínez, C.A. de Leon, R.A. Rodríguez-de la Rosa, Michael A. Getty and David A. Eberth in 2010. Though the name was in circulation informally by those working in the study of ceratopsian dinosaurs as early as 2008.

Though challenged by examining and interpreting mere bits and pieces, the team posed estimates on the overall size of this new rather largish, 6.7 m / 22 ft, chasmosaurine. Coahuilaceratops' horns are also impressively large, estimated at 1.2 m / 4 feet. Rather long for a ceratopsian (consider that a Triceratops distinctive horn generally comes in under 115 cm / 45 inches and interesting in terms of evolutionary design. The holotypes are available for viewing at the Museo del Desierto in Saltillo, Coahuila. Photo credit: José F. Ventura

Monday 6 May 2019

Saturday 4 May 2019

MOBULA RAYS: FEASTING ON THE HIGH SEAS

This beautiful fellow is a Mobula Ray. They have graced our seas, undulating hypnotically for millions of years. We once thought these filter feeders were passive plankton eaters. That is mostly true but not always true. They do swim with their mouths open, taking in the wee micronutrients the ocean has on offer, but they also gather to hunt in the high seas.

I saw a wonderful expose, the Blue Planet, earlier this year with David Attenborough as narrator. The program showed some wonderful footage with great pods of dolphins, 10,000 members strong, pushing deep-sea Laternfish up from the depths to dine upon them. Once the dolphins and trailing Tuna had had their fill, rows of Mobulas swooped in with their mouths open to feast on these small mesopelagic fish. The water was a frenzy of fish scales and the aptly named 'Flying Mobulas.' They were an impressive sight, arriving in tight formation to best capitalize on a beautiful feast.

Friday 3 May 2019

PROTOASTER HAEFNERI

This beautiful specimen is Protoaster Haefneri, a new species of edrioasteroid, an extinct lower Cambrian genus of echinoderm from the Kinzers Formation of York County, Pennsylvania.

The specimen was found by and named after Chris Haefner, and is set to be "unveiled" this September at a conference in Moscow, Russia.

He is one of only two specimens of this new lower Cambrian genus of echinoderm found in the 520 million years shales of the Kinzers. The specimens were collected during field work in 2017 and 2018 and form the basis of the research to be published this Fall by Dr. Samuel Zamora of Spain.

Protoaster Haefneri was a mobile bulbous creature (about the size of a smaller onion) with feeding tendrils extended from the sides of his pentaradial body plan. All living echinoderms share a body plan with pentaradial symmetry, but interestingly they start out as larvae with bilateral symmetry, suggesting an evolutionary history of bilaterian ancestors evolving into pentaradiate forms. This specimen and one other went into collections at the Natural History Museum of London in December 2018, as NHMUK PI EE 16659 and 16660. It will be interesting to compare this specimen to echinoderms from the early Cambrian of Morocco and the body plans of two major echinoderm clades, the pelmatozoans and eleutherozoans and their divergence.

Along with this new edrioasteroid, other Cambrian fauna were discovered, including delicate soft-bodied creatures we think of from the middle Cambrian, 508 million year old, Burgess Shale and trilobites matching species from the lesser known and slightly older, lower Cambrian Eager Formation, near Cranbrook, British Columbia.

The locality is plentiful. Field work revealed two massive complete Anomalocarid (six and eight inches in length; one a new species); a new species of brown algae, over a hundred specimens of the cupcake-looking echinoderm, Camptostroma roddyi, upwards of four hundred Olenellus trilobites and forty complete Wannerias.

We'll definitely be seeing more photos and fauna from this productive 20-acre hilltop site. I'm rather hoping this flood of specimens will rekindle excitement into the naming of Wanneria, and perhaps someone taking up the mantle to continue the as yet unpublished work of Lisa Bohach.

Thursday 2 May 2019

TEMPLO PALENQUE

Templo de las Inscripciones Palenque

Wednesday 1 May 2019

POSIDONIA ERUENDOS

Early Jurassic Ichthyosaur Paddle
This beautifully preserved Ichthyosaur paddle with its incredible detail is from Early Jurassic (183 Million Years) deposits in the Ohmden, Posidonia Shale Formation, Baden-Württemberg, east of the Rhine, southwestern Germany.

Tuesday 30 April 2019

BLUE LIAS ICHTHYOSAUR

This well-preserved partial ichthyosaur was found in the Blue Lias shales by Lewis Winchester-Ellis in 2018. An exciting find to be sure. The vertebrae you see are from the tail section of this marine reptile.

The find includes stomach contents which tell us a little about how this particular fellow liked to dine.

As with most of his brethren, he enjoyed fish and cephalopods. Lewis found fishbone and squid tentacle hooklets in his belly. Oh yes, these ancient cephies had grasping hooklets on their tentacles. I'm picturing them wiggling all ominously. The hooklets were the only hard parts of the animal preserved in this case as the softer parts of this ancient calamari were fully or partially digested before this ichthyosaur met his end.

Ichthyosaurus was an extinct marine reptile first described from fossil fragments found in 1699 in Wales. Shortly thereafter, fossil vertebrae were published in 1708 from the Lower Jurassic and the first member of the order Ichthyosauria to be discovered.

To give that a bit of historical significance, this was the age of James Stuart, Jacobite hopeful to the British throne. While scientific journals of the day were publishing the first vertebrae ichthyosaur finds, he was avoiding the French fleet in the Firth of Forth off Scotland. This wasn’t Bonnie Prince Charlie, this was his Dad. Yes, that far back.

The first complete skeleton was discovered in the early 19th century by Mary Anning and her brother Joseph along the Dorset Jurassic Coast. Joseph had mistakenly, but quite reasonably, taken the find for an ancient crocodile. Mary excavated the specimen a year later and it was this and others that she found that would supply the research base others would soon publish on.

Mary's find was described by a British surgeon, Sir Everard Home, an elected Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1814. The specimen is now on display at the Natural History Museum in London bearing the name Temnodontosaurus platyodon, or “cutting-tooth lizard.”

In 1821, William Conybeare and Henry De La Beche, a friend of Mary's, published a paper describing three new species of unknown marine reptiles based on the Anning's finds.

The Rev. William Buckland would go on to describe two small ichthyosaurs from the Lias of Lyme Regis, Ichthyosaurus communis and Ichthyosaurus intermedius, in 1837.

Remarkable, you'll recall that he was a theologian, geologist, palaeontologist AND Dean of Westminster. It was Buckland who published the first full account of a dinosaur in 1824, coining the name, "Megalosaurus."

The Age of Dinosaurs and Era of the Mighty Marine Reptile had begun.

Ichthyosaurs have been collected in the Blue Lias near Lyme Regis and the Black Ven Marls. More recently, specimens have been collected from the higher succession near Seatown. Paddy Howe, Lyme Regis Museum geologist, found a rather nice Ichthyosaurus breviceps skull a few years back. A landslip in 2008 unveiled some ribs poking out of the Church cliffs and a bit of digging revealed the ninth fossil skull ever found of a breviceps, with teeth and paddles to boot.

Specimens have since been found in Europe in Belgium, England, Germany, Switzerland and in Indonesia. Many tremendously well-preserved specimens come from the limestone quarries in Holzmaden, southern Germany.

Ichthyosaurs ranged from quite small, just a foot or two, to well over twenty-six metres in length and resembled both modern fish and dolphins.

Dean Lomax and Sven Sachs, both active (and delightful) vertebrate paleontologists, have described a colossal beast, Shonisaurus sikanniensis from the Upper Triassic (Norian) Pardonet Formation of northeastern British Columbia, Canada, measuring 3-3.5 meters in length. The specimen is now on display in the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta, Canada. It was this discovery that tipped the balance in the vote, making it British Columbia's Official Fossil. Ichthyosaurs have been found at other sites in British Columbia, on Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) but Shoni tipped the ballot.

The first specimens of Shonisaurus were found in the 1990s by Peter Langham at Doniford Bay on the Somerset coast of England.

Dr. Betsy Nicholls, Rolex Laureate Vertebrate Palaeontologist from the Royal Tyrrell Museum, excavated the type specimen of Shonisaurus sikanniensis over three field sessions in one of the most ambitious fossil excavations ever ventured. Her efforts from 1999 through 2001, both in the field and lobbying back at home, paid off. Betsy published on this new species in 2004, the culmination of her life’s work and her last paper as we lost her to cancer in autumn of that year.

Charmingly, Betsy had a mail correspondence with Roy Chapman Andrews, former director of the American Museum of Natural History, going back to the late 1950s as she explored her potential career in palaeontology. Do you recall the AMNH’s sexy paleo photos of expeditions to the Gobi Desert in southern Mongolia in China in the early 20th century? You’d remember if you’d seen them. Roy Chapman Andrews was the lead on that trip. His photos are what fueled the flames of my own interest in paleo.

We've found at least 37 specimens of Shonisaurus in Triassic outcrops of the Luning Formation in the Shoshone Mountains of Nevada, USA. The finds go back to the 1920s. The specimens that may it to publication were collected by M. Wheat and C. L. Camp in the 1950s.  The aptly named Shonisaurus popularis became the Nevada State Fossil in 1984. Our Shoni got around. Isolated remains have been found in a section of sandstone in Belluno, in the Eastern Dolomites, Veneto region of northeastern Italy. The specimens were published by Vecchia et al. in 2002.

For a time, Shonisaurus was the largest ichthyosaurus known.

Move over, Shoni, as a new marine reptile find competes with the Green Anaconda (Eunectes murinus) and the Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus) for size at a whopping twenty-six (26) metres.

The find is the prize of fossil collector turned co-author, Paul de la Salle, who (you guessed it) found it in the lower part of the intertidal area that outcrops strata from the latest Triassic Westbury Mudstone Formation of Lilstock on the Somerset coast. He contacted Dean Lomax and Judy Massare who became co-authors on the paper.

The find and conclusions from their paper put "dinosaur" bones from the historic Westbury Mudstone Formation of Aust Cliff, Gloucestershire, UK site into full reinterpretation.

And remember that ichthyosaur the good Reverend Buckland described back in 1837, the Ichthyosaurus communis? Dean Lomax was the first to describe a wee baby. A wee baby ichthyosaur! Awe. I know, right? He and paleontologist Nigel Larkin published this adorable first in the journal of Historical Biology in 2017.

They had teamed up previously on another first back in 2014 when they completed the reconstruction of an entire large marine reptile skull and mandible in 3-D, then graciously making it available to fellow researchers and the public. The skull and braincase in question were from an Early Jurassic, and relatively rare, Protoichthyosaurus prostaxalis. The specimen had been unearthed in Warwickshire back in the 1950's. Unlike most ichthyosaur finds of this age it was not compressed and allowed the team to look at a 3-D specimen through the lens of computerised tomography (CT) scanning.

Another superb 3-D ichthyosaur skull was found near Lyme Regis by fossil hunter-turned-entrepreneur-local David Sole and prepped by the late David Costain. I'm rather hoping it went into a museum collection as it would be wonderful to see the specimen studied, imaged, scanned and 3-D printed for all to share. Here's hoping.

Lomax and Sven Sachs also published on an embryo from one of the largest ichthyosaurs known, a new species named Ichthyosaurus somersetensis. Their paper in the ACTA Palaeontologica Polonica from 2017, describes the third embryo known for Ichthyosaurus and the first to be positively identified to species level. The specimen was the collected from the Lower Jurassic strata (lower Hettangian, Blue Lias Formation) of Doniford Bay, Somerset, UK and is housed in the collection of the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum (Lower Saxony State Museum) in Hannover, Germany.

We've learned a lot about them in the time we've been studying them. We now have thousands of specimens, some whole, some as bits and pieces. Many specimens that have been collected are only just now being studied and the tools we are using to study them are getting better and better.

While they resembled fish and dolphins, Ichthyosaurs were large marine reptiles belonging to the order known as Ichthyosauria or Ichthyopterygia. In 2018, Benjamin Kear and his team were able to study ichthyosaur remains at the molecular level, Their findings suggest ichthyosaurs had skin and blubber quite similar to our modern dolphins.

While ichthyosaurs evolved from land-dwelling, lung-breathing reptiles, they returned to our ancient seas and evolved into the fish-shaped creatures we find in the fossil record today.

Their limbs fully transformed into flippers, sometimes containing a very large number of digits and phalanges. Their flippers tell us they were entirely aquatic as they were not well-designed for use on land. And it was their flippers that first gave us the clue that they gave birth to live young; a find later confirmed by fossil embryo and wee baby ichy finds.

They thrived during much of the Mesozoic era; based on fossil evidence, they first appeared around 250 million years ago (Ma) and at least one species survived until about 90 million years ago into the Late Cretaceous.

During the early Triassic period, ichthyosaurs evolved from a group of unidentified land reptiles that returned to the sea. They were particularly abundant in the later Triassic and early Jurassic periods before being replaced as premier aquatic predator by another marine reptilian group, the Plesiosauria, in the later Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

In the Late Cretaceous, ichthyosaurs were hard hit by the Cenomanian-Turonian anoxic event. As the deepest benthos layers of the seas became anoxic, poisoned by hydrogen sulphide, deep water marine life died off. This caused a cascade that wreaked havoc all the way up the food chain. At the end of that chain were our mighty predaceous marine reptiles.

Bounty turned to scarcity and a race for survival began. The ichthyosaurs lost that race as the last lineage became extinct. It may have been their conservative evolution as a genus when faced with a need for adaptation to the world in which they found themselves and/or being outcompeted by early mosasaurs.

There are promising discoveries coming out of strata from the Cretaceous epeiric seas of Texas, USA from Nathan E. Van Vranken

His published paper from 2017, "An overview of ichthyosaurian remains from the Cretaceous of Texas, USA," looks at ichthyosaurian taxa from the mid-Cretaceous (Albian–Cenomanian) time interval in North America with an eye to ichthyosaurian distribution and demise.

The find and photos are all credited to Lewis Winchester-Ellis. Thank you for sharing your tremendous specimen with us. Lewis did much of the preparation of the specimen, removing the majority of the matrix. The spectacular final prep is credited to Lizzie Hingley, Stonebarrow Fossils, Oxfordshire. Her skill with an air scribe is unparalleled.

Link to Lomax Paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article…

Link to Nathan's Paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/…/10.1080/03115518.2018.1523462…

Nicholls Paper: E. L. Nicholls and M. Manabe. 2004. Giant ichthyosaurs of the Triassic - a new species of Shonisaurus from the Pardonet Formation (Norian: Late Triassic) of British Columbia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 24(4):838-849 [M. Carrano/H. Street]

Monday 29 April 2019

DARING LOVELIES: COLEMAN SHRIMP

Coleman Shrimp / Periclimenes colemani
These daring lovelies are Coleman shrimp, Periclimenes colemani. They are generally found in mating pairs atop the exquisitely beautiful but frightfully poisonous, Fire Sea Urchin, Asthenosoma varium.

The female of the Coleman pair in this photo is the slightly larger beauty on the left. She's looking poised and ready to catch something tasty with her open claws. Coleman shrimp and several other fish and invertebrates were named after the Australian naturalist and underwater nature photographer, Neville Coleman. It was his life's mission to document all of the sea life of Australia. 

Sunday 28 April 2019

Saturday 27 April 2019

TROPITACEA

Superfamilia Tropitaceae Mojsisovics, 1875. Familia Tropitidae Mojsisovics, 1893. Genus Discotropites Hyatt & Smith, 1925. Type: Discotropites sandlingensis (Fr.v.Hauer)  Karn/Tuval 2, Subbulatus-Schichten, Raschberg, Mojs. Plate 130.

The picture shows Discotropites cf. sandlingensis. It was found at the classic Mons Tuval site situated at the Austrian /Bavarian border region south of Salzburg. Size of the ammonoid is about 7cm. This area of the world boasts one of the richest deposits of Triassic ammonite units — more than five hundred magnificent ammonite species are found here along with a diversified selection of cephalopod fauna  — orthoceratids, nautiloids, ammonoids — we also see gastropods, bivalves (esp. halobiids), brachiopods, crinoids and a few corals. For microfauna, we see conodonts, foraminifera, sponge spicules, radiolaria, floating crinoids and holothurian sclerites —  polyp-like, soft-bodied "wormy" invertebrate echinozoans.

Friday 26 April 2019

CERATIOCARIS, YE KEN

This braw fellow is Ceratiocaris papilio (Salter in Murchison, 1859) a pod Shrimp from the Silurian mudstones of the Kip Burn Formation in the Midland Valley of Scotland. He would have swam in rising seas filled with crinoids, coral reefs, brachiopods, trilobites and new and exotic fish -- some sporting jaws for the first time.

Ceratiocaris is a genus of extinct paleozoic phyllocarid crustacean whose fossils are found in marine strata from the Upper Ordovician through to the Silurian.

They are typified by eight short thoracic segments, seven longer abdominal somites and an elongated pretelson somite. Their carapace is slightly oval shaped; they have many ridges parallel to the ventral margin and possess a horn at the anterior end.

This tidy specimen is from the Silurian mudstones that characterise the Kip Burn Formation with it's dark laminated silty bands. The lower part of the Kip Burn houses the highly fossiliferous ‘Ceratiocaris beds’, that yield the arthropods Ceratiocaris, Dictyocaris, Pterygotus, Slimonia and the fish Birkenia and Thelodus.

The upper part of the formation, the ‘Pterygotus beds’, contain abundant eurypterid fauna together with the brachiopods Lingula and Ceratiocaris. The faunas in the Kip Burn Formation reflect the start of the transition from marine to quasi- or non-marine conditions in the group.

Ceratiocaris are also well known from the Silurian Eramosa Formation of Ontario, Canada (which also has rather nice eurypterids). Photo credit / collection of: York Yuxi Wang and Tianyi Zhang

Joseph H. Collette; David M. Rudkin (2010). "Phyllocarid crustaceans from the Silurian Eramosa Lagerstätte (Ontario, Canada): taxonomy and functional morphology". Journal of Paleontology. 84 (1): 118–127. doi:10.1666/08-174.1.

M. Copeland; T. E. Bolton (1985). Fossils of Ontario part 3: the eurypterids and phyllocarids. Volume 48 of Life Sciences Miscellaneous Publications. Royal Ontario Museum. ISBN 0-88854-314-X.

Thursday 25 April 2019

SOLAR POWERED: TABANIDAE

Horsefly / Diptera / Tabanidae; Latreille, 1802
Horseflies are true flies in the family Tabanidae, order Diptera. They are quite large as flies go and adept little aviators. If you've had the pleasure you'd recall meeting them as they have a nasty bite when they do.

It's the female horseflies that do the chomping, preferring livestock and the occasional human as they hike or enjoy the great outdoors.

Horseflies are sun lovers, they are out in force on nice sunny days and set a healthy bedtime as they become inactive and rest when the sun goes down.

Wednesday 24 April 2019

VICTORASPIS LONGICORNUALIS

This lovely specimen is an armoured agnatha jawless bony fish, Victoraspis longicornualis, from Lower Devonian deposits of Podolia, Ukraine. The specimen shows both the positive and negative of the fossil in high relief.

Victoraspis longicornualis was named by Anders Carlsson and Henning Bloom back in 2008. The new osteostracan genus and species were described based on material from Rakovets' present-day Ukraine. This new taxon shares characteristics with the two genera Stensiopelta (Denison, 1951) and Zychaspis (Javier, 1985).

Agnatha is a superclass of vertebrates. This fellow looks quite different from our modern Agnatha, which include lamprey and hagfish. Ironically, hagfish are vertebrates who do not have vertebrae. Sometime in their evolution they lost them as they adapted to their environment. Photo: Fossilero Fisherman

Tuesday 23 April 2019

JOHN DAY FOSSIL BEDS

More than a 100 groups of mammals and a wide variety of plants have been found in the early Miocene, 39-19 million year old, John Day Formation near Kimberly, Oregon. The fossiliferous strata that have yielded beautifully preserved specimens of many of the animals we see domesticated today.

Dogs, cats, swine and horses are common. Oreodonts, camels, rhinoceros and rodents have also been found in this ancient deciduous forested area.

Here my talented young paleontologist cousin Spencer is holding a well preserved Oreodont skull.Many sites in Oregon yield beautifully preserved fossil shells laid down over 60 million years.
The asteroid that hit the Gulf of Mexico at the end of the Cretaceous caused a seafloor rift that split ancient Oregon. The massive hole left behind as the coastal lands slid northward filled in with sediment, refilling the basin.

These marine sediments were uplifted around the time of the birth of Oregon's Coastal Range. Easily collected and identified, as they look very similar to their modern cousins, you can dig for marine fossils all along Oregon's beachfront. I'll post some photos when I return from collecting later this year.

Monday 22 April 2019

Sunday 21 April 2019

MUMMIFIED BRANCHIOSTEGUS

An amazing mummified tilefish, Branchiostegus japonicus (Houttuyn, 1782) from Holocene deposits near Shizuoka, Japan. This specimen shows remarkable detail right down to the scales. Quite spectacular, truly.

Modern cousins of this fellow live as far south as the Arafura Sea today. Collection and photos from the deeply awesome Takashi Ito. サンさん、ありがとうございました

Saturday 20 April 2019

DEEPLY GROOVED DECAPOD

A beautiful example of the "deeply groovy" decapod, Dorippe sinica, from Holocene deposits near Shizuoka, Japan. This regal fellow has a strongly sculptured carapace. He looks like he would have been quite the bruiser moving about on the seafloor looking for tasty snacks. He likely enjoyed just about any form of meat, potentially dining on fish, worms, eggs, squid, starfish or even a few of his slow-moving cousins.

The carapace is deeply grooved with conspicuous wart-like tubercles; anterolateral margin, between the base of the exorbital tooth and cervical groove, smooth, without tubercles or denticles.

The teeth on the lower orbital margin in the cluster. Carpus of cheliped distinctly granulated on the upper surface and with a conspicuous row of granules along the anterior margin. Though missing here, the merus of second and third pereiopods are almost cylindrical. (Türkay 1995). This specimen was collected and is the collection of the deeply awesome Takashi Ito of Japan

Friday 19 April 2019

FRENCHMAN MOUNTAIN TRILOBITE: BRISTOLIA INSOLENS

Bristolia insolens
A stunning Cambrian trilobite, Bristolia insolens, from Frenchman Mountain near Las Vegas, Nevada.

The mountain provides an example of the Great unconformity with the tilted Paleozoic Tapeats Sandstone underlain by Paleoproterozoic Vishnu Schist. An unconformity is a buried erosional or non-depositional surface separating two strata of different ages. We know when we find these that the sediment was not laid down in a continuous deposition. The range also boasts some of the oldest rock on the North American continent, at about two billion years old.

This spectacular specimen is in the collection of York Yuxi Wang. It is about 4-5cm long; 3-4cm wide.

Thursday 18 April 2019

Wednesday 17 April 2019

MOLLUSCA GASTROPODA

Gastropods, or univalves, are the largest and most successful class of molluscs. They started as exclusively marine but have adapted well and now their rank spend more time in freshwater than in salty marine environments.

Many are marine, but two thirds off all living species live in freshwater or on land. Their entry into the fossil record goes all the way back to the Cambrian.

Slugs and snails, abalones, limpets, cowries, conches, top shells, whelks, and sea slugs are all gastropods. They are the second largest class of animals with over 60,000–75,000 known living species.

The gastropods are originally sea-floor predators, though they have evolved to live happily in many other habitats. Many lines living today evolved in the Mesozoic. The first gastropods were exclusively marine and appeared in the Upper Cambrian (Chippewaella, Strepsodiscus).

By the Ordovician, gastropods were a varied group present in a variety of aquatic habitats. Commonly, fossil gastropods from the rocks of the early Palaeozoic era are too poorly preserved for accurate identification. Still, the Silurian genus Poleumita contains fifteen identified species.

Most of the gastropods of the Palaeozoic era belong to primitive groups, a few of which still survive today. By the Carboniferous period many of the shapes we see in living gastropods can be matched in the fossil record, but despite these similarities in appearance the majority of these older forms are not directly related to living forms. It was during the Mesozoic era that the ancestors of many of the living gastropods evolved.

In rocks of the Mesozoic era gastropods are more common as fossils and their shell often very well preserved. While not all gastropods have shells, the ones that do fossilize more easily and consequently, we know a lot more about them. We find them in fossil beds from both freshwater and marine environments, in ancient building materials and as modern guests of our gardens.

Tuesday 16 April 2019

Monday 15 April 2019

IDENTIFYING FOSSIL BONE

If you’re wondering if you have Fossil Bone, you’ll want to look for the telltale texture on the surface. It’s best to take the specimen outside and photograph it in natural light.

With fossil bone, you will be able to see the different canals and webbed structure of the bone, sure signs that the object was of biological origin.

As my good friend Mike Boyd notes, without going into the distinction between dermal bone and endochondral bone —  which relates to how they form - or ossify — it's worth noting that bones such as the one illustrated here will usually have a layer of smooth — periosteal — bone on the outer surface and spongy — or trabecular — bone inside.

The distinction can be well seen in the photograph. The partial weathering away of the smooth external bone has resulted in the exposure of the spongy bone interiors. Geographic context is important, so knowing where it was found is very helpful for an ID. Knowing the geologic context of your find can help you to figure out if you've perhaps found a terrestrial or marine fossil. Did you find any other fossils nearby? Can you see pieces of fossil shells or remnants of fossil leaves? Things get tricky with erratics. That's when something has deposited a rock or fossil far from the place it originated. We see this with glaciers. The ice can act like a plow, lifting up and pushing a rock to a new location, then melting away to leave something out of context.

Sunday 14 April 2019

ZEACRINITES MAGNOLIAEFORMIS

This lovely specimen is Zeacrinites magnoliaeformis, an Upper Mississippian-Chesterian crinoid found by Keith Metts in the Glen Dean Formation, Grayson County, Kentucky, USA.

Crinoids are unusually beautiful and graceful members of the phylum Echinodermata. They resemble an underwater flower swaying in an ocean current. But make no mistake they are marine animals. Picture a flower with mouth on the top surface that is surrounded by feeding arms. Awkwardly, add an anus right beside that mouth. That's him!

Crinoids with root-like anchors are called Sea Lilies. They have graceful stalks that grip the ocean floor. Those in deeper water have longish stalks up to 3.3 ft or a meter in length.

Then there are other varieties with that are free-swimming with only vestigial stalks. They make up the majority of this group and are commonly known as feather stars or comatulids.

Unlike the sea lilies the feather stars can move about on tiny hook like structures called cirri. It is this same cirri that allows crinoids to latch to surfaces on the sea floor.

Like other echinoderms, crinoids have pentaradial symmetry. The aboral surface of the body is studded with plates of calcium carbonate, forming an endoskeleton similar to that in starfish and sea urchins.

These make the calyx somewhat cup-shaped, and there are few, if any, ossicles in the oral (upper) surface called a tegmen. It is divided into five ambulacral areas, including a deep groove from which the tube feet project, and five interambulacral areas between them. The anus, unusually for echinoderms, is found on the same surface as the mouth, at the edge of the tegmen.

Crinoids are alive and well today. They are also some of the oldest fossils on the planet. We have lovely fossil specimens dating back to the Ordovician.

Saturday 13 April 2019

CROCODILIAN UPSTARTS: THE CRUROTARSANS

Dinosaurs, long hailed as the rulers of the Triassic almost lost the title belt to a group of crocodilian upstarts, the crurotarsans. In a short-lived battle for survival, geologically speaking, the two groups ran head-to-head for about thirty million years.

The Crurotarsi or "cross-ankles" as they are affectionately known, are a group of archosaurs - formerly known as Pseudosuchians when paleontologist Paul Serono, the darling of National Geographic, renamed them for their node-based clade in 1991. Image: By Nobu Tamura (http://spinops.blogspot.com) - Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19459679

Thursday 11 April 2019

HEXACORALLIA

Hexacorallia is a subclass of Anthozoa comprising approximately 4,300 species of aquatic organisms formed of polyps, generally with six-fold symmetry. Their temporal range is from the Fortunian to the Holocene. The subclass includes all of the stony corals, most of which are colonial and reef-forming, as well as all sea anemones, and zoanthids, arranged within five extant orders.

The hexacorallia are distinguished from another subclass of Anthozoa, Octocorallia, in having six or fewer axes of symmetry in their body structure; the tentacles are simple and unbranched and normally number more than eight. These organisms are formed of individual soft polyps which in some species live in colonies and can secrete a calcite skeleton. As with all Cnidarians, these organisms have a complex life cycle including a motile planktonic phase and a later characteristic sessile phase. Hexacorallia also includes the significant extinct order of rugose corals.

Wednesday 10 April 2019

AURELIA AURITA: MOON DANCERS

Moon Jelly Fish / Aurelia Aurita
Aurelia aurita (also called the common jellyfish, moon jellyfish, moon jelly or saucer jelly) is a widely studied species of the genus, Aurelia. All species in the genus are closely related, and it is difficult to identify Aurelia medusae without genetic sampling; most of what follows applies equally to all species of the genus.

The genus Aurelia is found throughout most of the world's oceans, from the tropics to as far north as latitude 70° north and as far south as 40° south. The species Aurelia aurita is found along the eastern Atlantic coast of Northern Europe and the western Atlantic coast of North America in New England and Eastern Canada. In general, Aurelia is an inshore genus that can be found in estuaries and harbours.

The genus Aurelia is found throughout most of the world's oceans, from the tropics to as far north as latitude 70° north and as far south as 40° south. The species Aurelia aurita is found along the eastern Atlantic coast of Northern Europe and the western Atlantic coast of North America in New England and Eastern Canada. In general, Aurelia is an inshore genus that can be found in estuaries and harbours.

Tuesday 9 April 2019

OH MAXIMUS: ISOTELUS REX

This lovely big fella is Isotelus rex from Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. He was found along the Hudson Bay and is the largest complete trilobite ever found. Isotelus is a genus of asaphid trilobites, an extinct group of arthropods, from the middle and upper Ordovician

Discovered by a paleo dream team, including the deeply awesome, Dave Rudkin, assistant curator of paleobiology at the Royal Ontario Museum, along with Robert Elias (Project Lead), University of Manitoba, Graham Young (Project Lead), associate curator of geology at the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature (and adjunct professor at the University of Manitoba) and Edward Dobrzanski, Manitoba Museum during a long-term field project in 1998-1999.

The specimen measures in at a whopping 28 inches in length and is 70 percent larger than the previous record holder and warranted a new species name. The image here shows one of several replicas (casts), not the actual holotype specimen which is on exhibit at the Manitoba Museum.

There is a second complete specimen (430 mm in length) of Isotelus rex in the collections of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC 85292 - a designated paratype). As with many such projects, financial contributions make field work and research possible. A nod to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the University of Manitoba, the Manitoba Museum Foundation nd the Royal Ontario Museum Foundation.

Kudos as well to field crew, David Wright, Curtis Moffat and Janis Klapecki. You arrived four hundred and forty-five million years too late for sunscreen and tropical weather.

In the prophetic words of Eddard Stark, "Winter is Coming." And so it did to the Canadian prairies. Thank you to everyone involved for enduring the frozen cold, wind, rains and hail of northern Manitoba. For those who haven't had the pleasure, dear Manitoba gets blasted by cold Arctic high-pressure that drops it to a frigid -47.2 Celsius. That's a sweet, sweet -52 with wind chill.

Paper: Rudkin, D.A.; Young, G.A.; Elias, R.J.; Dobrzanski, E.P. (2003). "The World's biggest Trilobite: Isotelus rex new species from the Upper Ordovician of northern Manitoba, Canada". Palaeontology. 70 (1): 99–112. doi:10.1666/0022-3360(2003)077<0099:twbtir>2.0.CO;2. ISSN 0022-3360.

Photo credit: Mike Beauregard from Nunavut, Canada. Cast of Isotelus rex. Churchill Manitoba. 2 foot long replica housed at the University of Manitoba. Original specimen is in the Manitoba Museum. The original specimen was recovered the intertidal zone of Hudson Bay.