Notes from the Museum

Fossil of the Week

2010-12-29T13:30:00.000-08:00

12/29/10 – Whale Blowhole

The 44-foot-long skeleton of a modern North Atlantic Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis), known as Right Whale #2030,* hangs in the atrium above the Museum of the Earth’s Borg Warner Gallery, fully visible from the lobby and from outside the building through its surrounding glass windows. It is an iconic specimen, salvaged for the Museum by PRI staff when the whale washed ashore in late 1999 at Cape May, New Jersey.

The whale’s blowhole is not immediately obvious from many angles of observation in our Museum. From outside the glass windows, however, this view makes it quite clear. It is through this orifice that a whale exhales in a geyser of air, saltwater, mucus, and metabolic wastes – prompting “Thar she blows!” from many a whaler in the past. The blowhole, high on the whale’s forehead, is the equivalent (the homologue** in scientific terms) to our nostrils. Although it looks like a single hole in the photograph, there are actually two holes here, which are angled slightly away from each other, producing the distinctively V-shaped opening characteristic of in right whales. [Toothed whales, such as the sperm whale, have only one opening – both openings are present, but only one opens to the surface.] The advantage to the air-breathing whale in having its nose in such a location is to be able to breathe while mostly submerged in water.

The earliest known fossil “whales” are called archaeocetes, and they were probably at least partly terrestrial (they had hind limbs!). Archaeocetes had nostrils near the tip of the snout, like land mammals do, rather than a blowhole on the top of the head. Genetic evidence suggests that the closest living relatives to whales are members of the family Hippopotamidae, which includes the modern hippopotamus.

The blowhole is also involved in whale sounds and communication. Air sacs just below the blowhole are filled with air, which is released to produce sound as happens when air is released from a balloon. The whale’s trachea or windpipe connects to the blowhole just as ours connects to our nose, but unlike us, there is no connection to the esophagus. So the whale has no risk of food accidentally ending up in the animal's lungs; likewise a whale cannot breathe through its mouth like we and most other mammals can.

*For more about Right Whale #2030, see Fossil of the Week 12/15/10 – Whale Pelvis and Hindlimb, and 12/22/10 – Whale “Hands.”

** Homologues are structure in two organisms that are alike or similar due to common ancestry.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

Fossil of the Week

2010-12-22T13:11:00.000-08:00

12/22/10 – Whale “Hands”

The 44-foot-long skeleton of a modern North Atlantic Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis), known as Right Whale #2030,* hangs in the atrium above the Museum of the Earth’s Borg Warner Gallery, fully visible from the lobby and from outside the building through its surrounding glass windows. It is an iconic specimen, salvaged for the Museum by PRI staff when the whale washed ashore in late 1999 at Cape May, New Jersey.

The front flippers of the right whale are large, broad, and blunt. According to PRI’s director Warren Allmon in his book A Leviathan of our Own: the Tragic and Amazing Story of North Atlantic Right Whale #2030 (Paleontological Research Institution, © 2004), the flippers of this whale weighed more than 400 pounds (150 kilograms) each. As you can see in the photograph, the front flipper of the whale has five digits or fingers. Despite their vastly different size and function, the arrangement and the relative size and shape of the bones in the human hand and whale flipper are remarkably similar, and are evidence of a common evolutionary ancestor.

In the photograph, you can see the triangular shoulder blade (scapula) in the upper left, connected to the upper arm bone (humerus), connected in turn to the two parallel bones of the lower arm (radius and ulna). The five loosely floating bones that follow (mounted on a large piece of plastic in our whale) are the homologues** of our wrist bones (carpels). Notice that each finger has five bones instead of the four that you can count on your own hand. The distalmost four bones of each finger are equivalent to our finger bones (phalanges). But the fifth or basalmost bones of the fingers are homologous to the bones in the back of your hand (metacarpals) – this is identical to their position in our hands, but in humans is covered by the fleshy palm – the similarity is more clearly visible when one looks at the hand bones of a skeleton.

Although the bones of the whale’s flippers are real, calcified bones, they are apparently a little "spongier" and less stiff than those of most land animal. They merely serve as supports for the solid flipper, and do not have to support the animal.

*For more about Right Whale #2030, see Fossil of the Week 12/15/10 – Whale Pelvis and Hindlimb.

** Homologues are structure in two organisms that are alike or similar due to common ancestry.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

This Weekend at the Museum...

2010-12-17T13:55:00.000-08:00

Genetically Engineered Fish: Threats or Food?
with Craig Altier, Associate Professor, Cornell University
Saturday, December 18
Noon
at the Museum of the Earth
Ocean populations of fish are being rapidly depleted by over-fishing. With the increase in the world’s human population, the need for stable fish production is acute. One way to mitigate this problem is through the increased use of aquaculture, but this practice itself can have damaging environmental consequences. In an attempt to produce farmed fish more efficiently, the Aquabounty company has created a genetically engineered salmon that grows at twice the rate of conventional salmon. This company is presently seeking approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to market the fish as the first genetically modified animal to be used for food in the US. This discussion will focus on the important societal and scientific issues inherent to such approval, including food safety, environmental, and animal welfare concerns.

Fossil of the Week

2010-12-15T12:54:00.000-08:00

12/15/10 – The Hind Legs of a Whale

The 44-foot-long skeleton of a modern North Atlantic Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis) hangs in the atrium above the Museum of the Earth’s Borg Warner Gallery, fully visible from the lobby and from outside the building through its surrounding glass windows. It is an iconic specimen, salvaged for the Museum by PRI staff when the whale washed ashore in late 1999 at Cape May, New Jersey.

Some of the most fascinating features of a whale are those clearly linking it as a mammal to its terrestrial ancestors. Perhaps the best example in this category is the vestigial pelvis and hind limbs. Shown here is the left pelvic bone, with the thick thigh bone or femur at the center in the photograph. According to PRI’s director Warren Allmon in his book A Leviathan of our Own: the Tragic and Amazing Story of North Atlantic Right Whale #2030 (Paleontological Research Institution, © 2004):

“The pelvis of a whale is an inherently fascinating structure because it is so clearly a vestige of evolutionary history, retained from the distant past when the whale’s ancestors had four legs and walked on dry land. Although fossils have been found that show that early whales did have external hind limbs, modern whales normally lack any such appendages, except as unusual “freak” occurrences. The “pelvic” bones of modern whales (which actually often include vestiges of the femur or thigh bone, and even the shin bone or tibia, as well as the pelvis or hips) are normally buried inside the flesh of the body, underneath the base of the tail. Although these bones are the site of attachment of several sets of muscles … they are clearly much reduced from their former size and function…”

“Almost everything we know about the pelvic bones of right whales is derived from the work of John Struthers M.D., who in 1880 published results of detailed dissections of at least 10 animals. The pelvic bones of #2030* consist of two bones, one from each side of the animal. Comparing these bones to the illustrations of Struthers … indicates that they represent the pelvic or hip bones and the femur, all fused together. Struthers’ work indicates that right whales are variable in the form of their pelvic bones; some are completely fused while others have the femur, and even the tibia, present as separate bones.”

Right Whale #2030 provides a striking visual display at the Museum of the Earth. It also illustrates two major themes of the Museum – evolution and conservation – in one unforgettable specimen.

*The number 2030 was assigned to this female right whale in Massachusetts Bay in June 1990 by the National Marine Fisheries Service. Subsequent sightings included the Bay of Fundy in 1994-1997 as well as several sightings off the southeastern U.S. in 1996. She became entangled in fishing gear in May 1999 and despite attempts to free her, she died off the New Jersey coast in October 1999.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

Art at the Museum

2010-12-10T13:13:00.000-08:00

Join us this weekend for the fifth annual Ithaca Fine Craft Show from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. This invitational gallery show features unique crafts by twenty of the area's finest artists in the Borg Warner Gallery of the Museum. Ceramics, Jewelry, Fiber, Wood and Photography will be available for viewing and purchase in a range of prices. This year's artwork includes porcelain functional ceramics by Stacy Esslinger, photographs by Dede Hatch, Marc Freedman's distinctive wood sculpture, handmade bags by Diane Richards and the fine jewelry of Brooklyn based artist, Cassandra Jackson. A percentage of sales will go to support the Museum of the Earth. Entrance to the show is included with regular museum admission.

Fossil of the Week

2010-12-08T13:12:00.000-08:00

12/8/10 – Bubble Snail with Borehole

This is a fossil “bubble snail,” so named because of its “involute” spire – the normally pointed tip of the snail shell is sunken into the top of the shell, so that all you see is the last whorl (the “body whorl”), creating a bubble-like shape with a dimple at the top. Bubble snails are members of several families of the gastropod order Cephalaspidea, which are very closely related to the shell-less sea slugs or nudibranchs. About 20 families of bubble snails are alive today. The word Cephalaspidea refers to the head shield – a shovel-shaped head that protects the opening of the shell and allows these snails to plow their way through soft sand.

This bubble snail is Abderospira leblanci, described by Katherine Palmer* in 1946 in the family Cylichnidae. It is from the Late Eocene Epoch (Jackson Group, Yazoo Formation) of Danville Landing, Louisiana. It is a paratype** specimen, described in Bulletins of American Paleontology no. 117, in a 560-page monograph entitled “The Mollusca of the Jackson Eocene of the Mississippi Embayment (Sabine River To the Alabama River).” The shell is only 4.5 mm in height (that’s 3/16ths of an inch).

The shell here is still filled with sand and tiny pebbles from the excavation, but another thing is really interesting. The round hole in the shell tells us how the snail died! This hole was created by another snail – probably a moon snail (family Naticidae) or a rock snail (family Muricidae) – that attacked, bored, and ate the bubble snail. The beveled sides of the hole reveal this kind predator, as opposed to other mollusks that drill (for instance, octopuses drill shells in this way, but the holes that they leave behind are straight-sided). The hole was made by a combination of acidic chemicals that softened the shell’s calcium carbonate and the teeth or radula of the predator that physically scraped it away. Once the hole was made, the predatory snail could squirt digestive enzymes into the bubble to turn it into a liquid lunch! So, traces like these left on fossils can often tell us a lot about the ecology of the animal, including how it lived and died.

*For more about Katherine Palmer, see Fossil of the Week 2/3/10 – A Rib-less Wentletrap.

**For a definition of paratype specimens, see Fossil of the Week 10/14/09 - Atrypa aperanta Crickmay.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

This Weekend at the Museum

2010-12-03T07:36:00.000-08:00

Looking for something fun to do this weekend? Head out to the Museum of the Earth for Cecil's Dinosaur Holiday Party from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Touch and feel history through hands-on exploration of fossils at the Fossil Lab and Dino Lab Discovery Stations. Take your picture with Cecil, make a fun winter snow globe, and more!

From 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. watch Amazing Pete create fantastical balloon sculptures and take one home with you!

Included with Museum admission, free for members.

This event made possible with generous support from the Cayuga Medical Center.

Fossil of the Week

2010-12-02T12:33:00.000-08:00

12/2/10 – A Slab of Many Fossils

This tiny fossiliferous slab (measuring only 8 x 5 centimeters, or 3 x 2 inches) contains over 60 individual fossils. Included in the piece are holotypes* of two new species of snails, Pleurotomaria floridensis and Murchisonia mohawkensis (indicated by the names and catalog numbers on the labels matching numbers written on the slab), each named by H. F. Cleland in 1900. Notice that the holotype specimens have been outlined on the slab in red ink rather than separated by cutting the slab, maintaining the integrity of the slab and a record of the species found together in the formation. The slab was found at Fort Hunter, New York. Fort Hunter is part of the town of Florida in Montgomery County, northwest of Albany. It lies in the Mohawk River Valley and in the 18th century, was the site of one of the two primary Mohawk Native American settlements. Knowing this, the two species names on these labels now make sense to us – they mean “from Florida” (New York – not the Florida off of Cuba) and “from Mohawk.” A third name (Gasconadia putilla Sardeson, 1896, now classified in Murchisonia) appears on the lower label, apparently indicating another species on the slab.

The weathered slab with its fossils was collected as part of a class in the Cornell Summer School of Geology taught by Professor Gilbert Harris (PRI's founder and first director). The material is from the Early Ordovician Period, about 475 million years old. Herdman Fitzgerald Cleland (1869-1935)** was a professor of geology at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and spent summers collecting fossils with Harris. He had many interests, including geology and early human cultures, so the Fort Hunter locality must have been doubly interesting to him. Cleland published the descriptions in Harris’s Bulletins of American Paleontology volume 3, number 13, entitled “The Calciferous of the Mohawk Valley,” 32 years before the founding of PRI, which now publishes the Bulletins. The word “calciferous” in this title might look like an adjective, but is actually the name of a geological outcrop, so think “The Calciferous [Stage] of the Mohawk Valley” for clarity.

Pleurotomaria floridensis is now classified in the genus Straparolina in the extinct family Straparollinidae. Murchisonia mohawkensis is a member of the extinct family Murchisoniidae. Members of both of these families are thought to have been suspension feeders, filtering organic particles from the water, probably through their gill filaments. This is in contrast to scraping the surface of rocks for food, which one might expect of snails today. Both species were rare at the time of their description.

*See Fossil of the Week 8/19/09 - Cerithium gainesensis for a definition of "holotype."

**See Fossil of the Week 11/11/09 - Bellerophon calcifer for more about H. F. Cleland.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

Fossil of the Week

2010-11-18T06:31:00.000-08:00

11/18/10 – Ultraviolet Cone

This week’s fossil is a cone snail from the Plio-Pleistocene of Florida (5.3 to 1.8 million years ago). It is shown here under ultraviolet light, which reveals the original color pattern of the bleached shell that looks chalky white under normal light. The PRI collections are particularly rich in shells such as this from the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs of the Gulf and Atlantic Coastal Plains.

There are approximately 500 living species of cone snails recognized today. Another 1,000 fossil species have also been named, dating back to the Eocene (approx. 55 million years ago). They are fascinating animals – active predators that capture prey by stinging them with a poisoned harpoon-like tooth before engulfing them for internal digestion. Prey ranges from worms to fish, and those cones that specialize on fish use very powerful neurotoxins (called conotoxins – needed to quickly subdue a fish), so powerful that they can be deadly to humans too. Although all cone snails can sting, the really dangerous ones are restricted to the Indo-Pacific region of the globe.

Cone snails are also among the most beautiful of gastropods, and their color patterns are varied and intricate. These color patterns make them popular with shell collectors and are important in identifying cone species. Yet cone snails have poor eyesight themselves, and spend most of their days hiding under rocks or below the surface of the sand (called “infaunal”). Some also hide their color patterns under a thick, dark organic layer called periostracum (note: all snails have periostracum – critical in producing the shell – but it is thin and nonpersistent in many species).

So of what use are these colors? That’s a difficult question to answer. Some researchers have proposed that the patterns are the result of the excretion of waste products, stored in the shell – but there are no proven examples to support this conclusion. Another explanation says that pigment strengthens the shell, so the color patterns might serve a structural function. Color, aligned as it often is with spiral or axial sculpture, can strengthen the shell against crushing predators such as crabs. Thicker shells might serve the same purpose, but color might be more energy efficient to produce. The same explanation is often used to explain the colorful interiors of clam shells.

This image appeared on the cover of American Paleontologist, May 2003.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

Fossil of the Week

2010-11-10T07:45:00.000-08:00

11/10/10 – K-Pg Boundary Samples

The PRI collections are full of fossil specimens, many of which are from groups that are entirely extinct. This is just one piece of evidence that life on Earth has changed through time, sometimes gradually and sometimes rapidly and catastrophically. Part of what paleontologists do is try to work out what triggers such changes by studying both the fossils and the rock in which the fossils are found, to reconstruct what the environment was like and how it changed over time. So the collections at PRI and other museums contain both fossil specimens and lots of things that you might not consider to be paleontological at first glance.

This Fossil of the Week “specimen” is one example of something that doesn’t look particularly fossil-like, but which is really useful. This is part of a bulk sample (PRI accession no. 1541), which is a sample that includes the actual rock or matrix rather than just individual fossils. In fact, in some cases there might not be fossils at all in the sample, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t valuable. Multiple samples are often collected from one outcrop in small increments up a sequence – they form a series through time so that changes over a period of time can be studied in detail.

What makes this perhaps-not-very-inspiring sample of rock really cool is its location and time frame: it was collected from the K-Pg boundary on Seymour Island in Antarctica. [K-Pg is short for Cretaceous-Paleogene – an important boundary between two geological time periods, 65 million years ago. It was formerly called the K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) boundary, until the name “Tertiary” was discouraged by the International Commission on Stratigraphy.] Seymour Island has one of the largest exposures of the boundary in the world and has been important in helping to figure out what was happening before, during, and after the extra-terrestrial impact that seems to have caused the mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs, ammonites, and many other groups. Sedimentary layers all over the world at the K-Pg boundary are unique in containing a concentration of the element iridium many times greater than normal.

These samples were donated to PRI in 2009 by Professor William Zinsmeister of Purdue University as part of a much larger collection of material from Antarctica*. Because of this gift, PRI now has one of the most extensive collections of Antarctic fossils in the country.

Text by Ursula Smith (reprinted from “Fossil Focus” in American Paleontologist, Winter 2009).

*For more about the Zinsmeister Antarctic collection, see Fossil of the Week 10/13/10 – Tropical Antarctica?

PRI at GSA

2010-11-01T14:34:00.000-07:00

The big blue bear at the Colorado Convention Center peers in at the 2010 annual Geological Society of America convention in Denver. More than 6,000 participants are giving about 3,700 presentations over 4 days. 56 associated societies (including PRI), 17 GSA divisions, and 160 exhibitors add to what will be a very busy week. Six PRI staff members are here, presenting, learning, meeting with colleagues, and selling PRI publications and plush trilobites at the PRI booth in the Exhibition Hall.

PRI on the Mall

2010-10-28T08:41:00.000-07:00

We had a great time last weekend on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Six PRI staff members traveled to our nation's capital for the first ever Science & Engineering Festival on October 23 & 24. We trucked down a van-load of Devonian shale and set up our booth with two large bins for participants to dig through. Anyone who found a fossil was invited to take it home with them as a souvenir. Over two days we interacted with around 5,000 people. Sometimes our booth was so crowded it was impossible to tell exactly how many people we met! We all had a lot of fun and hope that there will be a festival next year to participate in. Here are some pictures from the festival.

A view of the festival from outside our booth. We had great weather and a ton of people came out to explore science!

Kids examine shale for fossil brachiopods and trilobites

Staff member Richard Kissel helps identify fossils.

Staff member Kelly Cronin tells kids about the Devonian seas.

Fossil of the Week

2010-10-27T13:21:00.000-07:00

10/27/10 – Moa Pelvis

The moa are a group of extinct flightless birds found only in New Zealand. They belong to the ratites, a group of flightless birds including living members on four continents: the emu (Australia), the ostrich (Africa), the kiwi (New Zealand), the cassowary (Australia and New Guinea), and the rhea (South America). The moa, however, are distinctive from all other known ratites, and in fact all other birds, in lacking wings entirely.

There were probably ten to fifteen species of moa upon the Earth. The number of species names, however, exceeds the actual number of species because the two sexes were often mistakenly named separately, principally because females were significantly larger than males. Moa lived in a wide range of areas from the coasts to the mountains of New Zealand and ranged significantly in size, the largest being around 2 meters (6.5 feet) at the hip. Preserved gizzard contents consisted mainly of tree material, suggesting that they lived in forests. Most known moa specimens are subfossils rather than true fossils (still consisting of bone, not rock), and there are even some dried and one mummified specimens known, allowing paleontologists the opportunity to extract DNA for some species.

Moa became extinct at least 600 years ago due to human hunting. Prior to humans’ arrival on New Zealand, it is thought that their only predator was the enormous (and now also extinct) Haast’s Eagle. At least 40% of New Zealand’s endemic species have become extinct since humans arrived on the islands.

Pictured here is the extremely robust pelvis of a moa (Emeus crassus, PRI 50004-50005) viewed from the ventral side (the underside). The pelvis is a compound bone – a fused combination of several vertebrae, the ilium, ischium, and pubis bones. PRI has a large number of bones from this moa specimen and the skull, jaw, and one of the leg bones can be seen on display in the Museum of the Earth. Most moa bones are large, as they are necessary to support the immense weight of the bird, but the skull is significantly more fragile and a much rarer fossil find.

Text by Ursula Smith (reprinted from “Fossil Focus” in American Paleontologist, Fall 2010).

Fossil of the Week

2010-10-20T13:04:00.000-07:00

10/20/10 – Boring Bivalve

This week’s Fossil of the Week is another specimen from our type collection. It’s a boring bivalve, not in the sense of being uninteresting, but in the sense of a clam that burrows itself into solid rock. This is Lithophaga gainesensis [the species name was misspelled on the hand-written label in the photo], a member of the mussel family, Mytilidae. It was, as the label indicates, originally called Lithodomus, but that name is now (for technical nomenclatural reasons) considered a synonym of the genus Lithophaga, which still has members alive today. Lithophaga gainesensis was named from the Middle Eocene (Mcbean Formation), of Ft. Gaines, Georgia.

Lithophaga species are called Date Mussels because of their smooth cylindrical body form. The name literally means “rock eater,” an epithet that is partly true. The soft tissue lining the shells in life contains a gland that secretes an acid-like mucus that dissolves calcium carbonate or limestone (the soft “rock” that most date mussels inhabit). The Date Mussels do not literally consume the rock for nutrition, as the name might imply, but the rock is “eaten away” resulting in a smooth, blind-ended tube within which the mussel can safely protrude its siphons from the open end to access seawater for oxygen and food particles. The empty burrows of date mussels and other boring bivalves in the fossil record are given the trace fossil name Gastrochaenolites.

This species was named and described by PRI’s founder, Gilbert Harris, in the fourth issue of Bulletins of American Paleontology in 1896. The title of the monograph was simply “The Midway Stage,” referring to the basal-most subdivision of the Eocene Epoch in the southern United States. Ft. Gaines, Georgia, is on the Chattahoochee River at the border of Georgia and Alabama. Harris wrote, “[the deposits here] consist of light gray or yellowish impure limestone…frequently eroded in a peculiar rough and irregular manner. … Fossils are of frequent occurrence in this formation, but here… they consist only of impressions, moulds and casts … the shelly matter of the specimens inclosed [sic] is entirely removed, and hence one is left to work out the details of the various specific forms by means of gutta-percha moulds.” [“Gutta-percha” is an interesting phrase here – it’s a rubbery latex-like material produced by a tropical tree, and was one of the first natural plastics to be used by humans; it is waterproof, and has been used to insulate underwater cables or in dentistry for temporary fillings.] Indeed the syntype* here (PRI 58 – a really early catalog number!) is a shell-less internal mould (with its siphon end pointing toward the right).

*See Fossil of the Week 11/11/09 - Bellerophon calcifer for a definition of "syntype."

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

Fossil of the Week

2010-10-13T10:26:00.000-07:00

10/13/10 –Tropical Antarctica?
In a salute to Museum of the Earth’s new exhibition “Science on the Half Shell: How and Why We Study Evolution” (created by PRI’s Bivalve Evolution project), this week’s fossil of the week is Lahillia wilckensi Zinsmeister, 1984 (PRI 13176). Lahillia is a heart cockle, a member of the bivalve family Cardiidae. This group of clams still living today is prevalent in the tropics and subtropics of the world’s oceans. What is special about Lahillia is that it was discovered and described from Eocene deposits in Antarctica – a decidedly un-tropical location today!

The world during the Eocene Period, 56 to 34 million years ago, was very different from the modern world. Globally, it was a very warm “hothouse” world – the air temperature difference from pole to equator was only half of today’s and the deep-ocean currents were exceptionally warm. Tropical climates extended as far north as Maine and Hokkaido, Japan. On a map of Eocene Earth, most of the modern continents are recognizable, but they have not yet moved to their present positions. There are no polar ice caps, India is still free-floating, and Europe and Asia are bisected by the large shallow Paratethys Sea. The Paratethys was a center of origin for many tropical Pacific bivalves, including Giant Clams, which are now restricted to coral reefs in the Indo-West Pacific.

Lahillia wilckensi was described by Dr. William J. Zinsmeister, a professor of geology at Purdue University. It was collected during a 1974-1975 joint Argentine-American expedition to Seymour Island. PRI received Professor Zinsmeister’s entire research collection in April 2009, and just recently was awarded National Science Foundation funding to curate the collection. The Zinsmeister Collection contains approximately 5,510 lots (almost 22,000 specimens) of Cretaceous-to-Eocene fossil mollusks from Seymour Island, Antarctica, and its vicinity, and is widely recognized as among the largest and finest in the world from this region. The Seymour Island fossil fauna contains species from both southern South America and Australasia and provides the key to understanding the biogeography of the southern Pacific Ocean during the final break-up of the ancient continent Gondwana.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

This Weekend at Museum of the Earth

2010-10-08T12:22:00.000-07:00

Fossil of the Week

2010-10-06T11:25:00.000-07:00

10/6/10 – Chambered Nautilus

The living Chambered Nautilus is often considered a classic “living fossil.” It is a cephalopod – in the same group as squid and octopuses. Its subclass, the Nautiloidea*, once claimed extremely diverse and abundant marine predators, with approximately 2,500 fossil species currently known. Today, there are only two living genera and four to ten species. The genus Nautilus is the most common of the two modern genera and contains perhaps six species through the Indo-West Pacific. Pictured here is a modern specimen of Nautilus pompilius, the Chambered Nautilus (PRI acc. 1414), which is the largest and most common of the living species. Like our last Fossil of the Week, it was named by Linnaeus in Systema Naturae in 1758.

The first nautiloids appeared in the Upper Cambrian Period, approximately 490 million years ago, when cephalopods first developed shells. The shell allowed them to become neutrally buoyant (that is, no energy expenditure is required to maintain a constant depth) allowing them to expand their habitat off the sea floor. The group then underwent an evolutionary radiation in the early Ordovician Period, approximately 480 million years ago, becoming an extremely important group of predators in the Early Paleozoic. Fossil nautiloids were diverse and abundant, with many different morphologies known, from straight cone-shaped shells to coiled shells. Today, the only shape remaining is the discus-like, planispiral shell of N. pompilius. The living nautiloids appear to have undergone extremely little change during the nearly 500 million years since their first appearance.

Nautilus has often been used as an analog for understanding its better-known but extinct cousins, the ammonoids. Although there are many similarities in shape and appearance, the ammonoids are a much younger group that first appeared in the Silurian Period (420 million years ago). The ammonoids might in fact have been descendents of the older nautiloids. Nevertheless, reconstructions of the soft parts of extinct coiled ammonites owe much to studies of Nautilus specimens. We know that Nautilus today uses jet propulsion to swim shell-first through the water, and it is likely that some ammonoids moved in a similar way.

Text by Ursula Smith (reprinted from “Fossil Focus” in American Paleontologist, Winter 2008)

*For more about fossil nautiloids, see Fossils of the Week 6/16/10 – The Fourth Variant and 5/5/10 - Bradfordoceras.

Teacher Resource Day

2010-10-01T07:39:00.000-07:00

Teacher Resource Day 2010!

Teachers and Guests Free

Saturday, October 2, 2010
9 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Museum of the Earth

This year’s highlights include…

Meet Museum of the Earth scientists and educators.
Free fossil & modern specimen giveaway, featuring an amazing collection of minerals from around the world!
Free publications!
View our newest exhibit, Science on the Half Shell: Why and How we Study Evolution.
Behind-the-scenes tours of the Institution.

Refreshments provided.

The first 100 registrants will receive gift bags!

Teacher Admission is free 9am - 1pm
Guest Admission is free 9am - 10 am

This Weekend at Museum of the Earth

2010-09-24T07:22:00.000-07:00

Science on the Half Shell Opening Reception
Friday, September 24
6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Tickets $10
Join us at the Museum of the Earth on Friday, September 24 to celebrate the opening of our newest exhibit, Science on the Half Shell: How and Why We Study Evolution. Come learn about all different kinds of bivalves - clams, scallops, oysters, mussels, and more - while snacking on raw fresh-shucked oysters and little neck clams provided by Maxie's Supper Club. In addition to the raw bar, sample some of Maxie's famous Jambalaya (vegetarian and non-vegetarian) and sip on wine from Atwater Estate Vineyards. Purchase your tickets online.

Science on the Half Shell Family Day
Saturday, September 25
11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Come participate in a fun-filled day with activities for the whole family. We'll be celebrating our newest temporary exhibit, Science on the Half Shell: How and Why We Study Evolution. Included with Museum admission, free for Members.

A Sneak Peak...

2010-09-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

Assembling the Tree of Life at the Museum of the Earth with a new exhibition:
Science on the Half Shell: Exploring How and Why We Study Evolution

The Museum of the Earth will be opening its newest temporary exhibition, Science on the Half Shell: How and Why We Study Evolution, tomorrow -- September 24th, 2010. This exhibition is made possible through a multimillion-dollar award from the National Science Foundation’s Assembling the Tree of Life Program to study the evolution of bivalves. The Museum of the Earth, in conjunction with the Field Museum of Natural History and Harvard University, are the lead recipients of this grant.

Bivalves (clams, oysters, mussels, scallops, etc.) are a diverse and familiar group of mollusks with an old and well-preserved fossil record, important ecological roles in marine and freshwater ecosystems, and economic roles including fisheries, the ornament industry, and health sciences. With 20,000-30,000 living species, bivalves are the second largest class of living mollusks, which in turn form the second largest animal phylum and the largest in the sea. Despite the ubiquitousness of bivalves, past efforts to study and understand their evolution have been poorly coordinated. This project takes an in-depth look at bivalve anatomy, emphasizing gills, the stomach, shell ultrastructure, and sperm, and will sequence 10-12 selected molecules (genes) for the same set of approximately 300 species.

Dr. Paula Mikkelsen, PRI’s Associate Director for Science and one of the Principal Investigators on the NSF grant, explains “This exhibition gives us an opportunity to show visitors what evolutionary biologists do in the field and in the laboratory every day – using tools ranging from a simple sieve to a sophisticated CT scan – plus a little bit of why ordinary clams are such extraordinary animals.”

This exhibition emphasizes evolution and its many components (including diversity, taxonomy, biogeography, speciation) using bivalves – a group of organisms that is morphologically “simple,” familiar, and attractive, diverse enough to show examples of many different kinds of evolutionary processes, easy to obtain, and represented by an ample fossil record. After the exhibition’s run at the Museum of the Earth, it will travel around the country with stops scheduled at Harvard and the Field Museum in Chicago.

An evening opening reception will take place on September 24th, 2010 from 6:30PM-8:30PM. Guests will have the opportunity to socialize with friends, meet the scientists, and be among the first to see the exhibition. The event will feature a raw bar and other delectables from Maxie’s Supper Club and wine from Atwater Estate Vineyards. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased online at museumoftheearth.org or by calling 607.273.6623 x11.

On September 25th, there will also be a Family Day celebration, where kids and their families can explore living and fossil bivalves and this new exciting exhibition.

Science on the Half Shell: How and Why We Study Evolution will be on display at the Museum of the Earth from September 24, 2010 through January 17, 2011. Accompanying the exhibition will be an art exhibit entitled, Enduring Shells: Bivalves and Other Mollusks, a collection of 10 drawings of mollusks created by Groton, NY artist Marla Coppolino.

The National Science Foundation was awarded to Dr. Paula M. Mikkelsen of the Paleontological Research Institution (Ithaca, New York), Dr. Rüdiger Bieler of the Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago, Illinois), Dr. Gonzalo Giribet of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts), and twelve other international collaborators. A second NSF research grant to Dr. Scott Steppan at Florida State University (also involving Drs. Bieler and Mikkelsen) provided additional funding for the exhibition.

Science on the Half Shell: How and Why We Study Evolution is made possible with support from the National Science Foundation, M&T Bank, and Maxie's Supper Club.

Fossil of the Week

2010-09-22T06:48:00.000-07:00

9/22 – Giant Clam

Our exhibition Science on the Half Shell: How and Why We Study Evolution opens at the Museum of the Earth this Friday, September 24. In recognition, this week’s “Fossil” of the Week is the living Giant Clam, Tridacna gigas.

With a weight reaching 270 kilograms (500 pounds) and a size of 1.2 meters (4 feet) across, Tridacna gigas is the largest living bivalve. Its average lifespan is more than one hundred years and one individual produced the largest pearl on record, weighing 7 kilograms (15.4 pounds) with a length of 23 centimeters (9 inches). These clams live in symbiosis with algae (zooxanthellae) that live in the colorful body tissues lining the upward-facing zig-zag margin of the clam. This exposes the algal cells to the light that they need for photosynthesis; this need also limits this species to shallow-water reef habitats. The zooxanthellae provide a major portion of the clam’s food (the clam also filter feeds) and also recycle its waste products.

Many myths surround Tridacna, which lives in the shallow waters of the southern Pacific and Indian oceans. Its height of popularity was arguably as a man-eating killer clam trapping unsuspecting divers, stories that persist today in cartoons and B-movies that portray drowning divers in the stranglehold of the vicious clam. But despite its gruesome reputation, nobody has ever been attacked by a Giant Clam; it lives solidly embedded in the reef and because of its bulk, closes its valves very, very slowly, allowing almost any potential victim ample time to escape its grasp. In medieval times, Tridacna shells were used in churches as holy water stoups and baptisteries. Tribes in the Indo-Pacific region made ceremonial figurines out of these clams, and Solomon Islanders used pieces of its shell as money and symbols of wealth. Today, the Chinese and Japanese enjoy the meat of Tridacna as a delicacy, and their large shells are still much-sought curios. The continuous popularity of the Giant Clam has lead to intense overharvesting and has put Tridacna on the list of worldwide endangered species.

The fossil record of Tridacna is only poorly preserved, but it can definitely be traced back to the Miocene Epoch (Quaternary). The subfamily Tridacninae (in the family of heart-cockles, Cardiidae) originated in the Tethys Sea – in the middle of modern-day Europe – but is now restricted to the Indo-Pacific region. The Tridacna gigas specimen pictured here (PRI 50338) was collected in 1946 from the lagoon at Bikini Atoll, eight years before the famous nuclear tests were conducted there. The name Tridacna gigas is attributed to Linnaeus, 1758 – this is the 10th edition of Systema Naturae, the first work to use binomial nomenclature (the two-part names, genus and species, for each kind of animal and plant).

Text by Judith Nagel-Myers (reprinted from “Fossil Focus” in American Paleontologist, Fall 2007)

Fossil of the Week

2010-09-16T07:59:00.000-07:00

9/16 – “Pre-Scallop”

Scallops – today members of the bivalve family Pectinidae – have been alive on Earth since the early Triassic Period, approximately 240 million years ago. They are characterized by “ears” (called auricles) on the shell and a notch below one of them through which a set of elastic threads (a byssus) emerge to help hold the scallop, during at least its juvenile life, to the sea bottom. At the edge of the byssal notch in most scallops is a comb-like set of spines (the ctenolium) that separate and support the byssal threads. The direct ancestors of scallops were scallop-like bivalves of the family Entoliidae, which lived during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic Eras (400-65 million years ago). Entoliids had auricles and a byssal notch only as juveniles, but they did not have a ctenolium. The ctenolium – a defining feature of the modern family Pectinidae – is a feature that evolved within the scallop lineage.

This Fossil of the Week is Entolium aviculatum (Swallow, 1858) (PRI 14077, 2.25 cm in diameter), from the Carboniferous Period (approximately 330 million years ago) of Henry County, Missouri. This specimen is a “steinkern” or internal cast – a mold of the inside of the shell made when the mud inside the shell turned to rock, and the pieces of shell fell away; the inside of the other valve shows on the other side of this fossil. The auricles of the specimen are to the right and left of the umbo (the oldest part of the bivalve, including the larval shell) at top center. Entolium aviculatum was originally described in the genus Pecten in the scallop family Pectinidae. The genus Entolium was distinguished by F. B. Meek in 1865 (still in the scallop family Pectinidae) as different from most scallops in having indistinct auricles and no notch for the byssus (these features are now known to be present and most obvious only in juvenile entoliids). The family Entoliidae was not separated from Pectinidae until 1960 by the Russian paleontologist I. A. Korobkov. This is a good example of the complicated string of events that often ensues in naming and distinguishing species, especially in paleontology, in which the number of specimens and/or the quality of specimens may limit our knowledge (at least for a time) about the features that define families, genera, and species.

George Clinton Swallow (1817-1899) led an interesting and varied life. He was a native of Maine, was educated at Bowdoin College, and was Missouri State Geologist when he described this species. He held professorships and state geologist positions in both Missouri and Kansas, but later left paleontology to become a medical doctor. He was teaching at a medical school in Missouri when he had a dispute with the President and was dismissed. He then became a newspaper editor and state inspector of mines in Montana. In 1858, Fielding Bradford Meek (1817-1876; who described the genus Entolium) accused him of unfairly taking credit for being the first to recognize Permian fossils in North America, which ignited a long controversy over the Permian Period in Kansas. Swallow was also accused of disloyalty during the Civil War, and was jailed twice in 1862.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

Natural History @ Noon

2010-09-15T09:24:00.000-07:00

The School of Rock

2010-09-13T10:49:00.000-07:00

(Image courtesy www.joideresolution.org)

Don Duggan-Haas, Education Research Associate here at PRI and its Museum of the Earth is currently aboard the JOIDES Resolution for the School of Rock 2010, Deep Earth Academy's signature professional development program for educators.

During School of Rock, participants will spend 12-hour days working along-side a dynamite team of instructors and crew who will guide them in their own exploration of cores, CORKS, and logging data from the Cascadia region and beyond. Using the high-tech laboratories on board, and their own observational and problem-solving skills, they will be challenged to integrate diverse sets of data from deep in the ocean floor to recreate the geology and history of the Earth. Much of their experience will also involve developing programs and products that focus on their experience, the JOIDES Resolution, and scientific ocean drilling.

Follow along as Don and his other shipamates blog about their experience: School of Rock
Don's latest post: The JR isn't just big. It's a big deal.

Fossil of the Week

2010-09-08T12:04:00.000-07:00

9/8 – Flowering Plants of the Green River Formation

If you’ve ever heard of the Green River Formation – an Eocene Lagerstätte found in western Colorado, southwestern Wyoming, and eastern Utah – your first thought is probably about a spectacular fossil fish. Although less familiar, Green River fossil plants are equally spectacular. The PRI collections contain a large number of fossil vertebrates, insects, and plants from the Green River.

The Green River Formation* beds represent about six million years of freshwater lake sedimentation during the Eocene Epoch approximately 48 million years ago. Many of the sediments are so fine grained that they have preserved soft parts not usually found in fossils, including the scales of fish, and the delicate leaves and flowers of trees that fell into the lakes. There are even known cases of insects preserved in the act of eating some of the leaves. In addition to angiosperms (flowering plants like those pictured here), the Green River flora includes fossils of freshwater algae, and terrestrial plants such as ferns, conifers, and horsetails.

Although interesting from a taxonomic and evolutionary point of view, the plant fossils found in the Green River Formation are also particularly useful as climate indicators. They show that despite being centered at about the same latitude as they are today, the Eocene Green River plants were living in the moist subtropics.

In this photo are (clockwise from the left) a tropical hardwood stump, Yellow Point Playa, Wyoming (PRI 2007, Acc 1484, K22079); Schinoxylon Pepper Tree log, Blue Forest, Wyoming (PRI 1999, Acc 1104, K16976); Styrax transversa twig, Garfield County, Colorado (PRI 1979, Acc 722, K6312); Celastrus winchesteri, Staff Tree leaf, Garfield County, Colorado (PRI 1979, Acc 722, K6318); and (at center) a flower, Garfield County, Colorado (PRI 1979, Acc 722, K6188).

Of course, the Green River Formation shows just one way in which fossil plants can be preserved and there are many others. In the Museum of the Earth permanent exhibits, you can see plants from other locations and time periods, including some microscopic flowers that have been burnt and preserved as charcoal.

Text by Ursula Smith (reprinted from “Fossil Focus” in American Paleontologist, Fall 2009)

*For more about the Green River Formation, see Fossils of the Week 10/8/09 - Flower and 7/9/09 - Sycamore Leaf.

This Weekend at Museum of the Earth...

2010-09-03T05:49:00.000-07:00

Fossil of the Week

2010-09-01T12:30:00.000-07:00

9/1 – Blastoids

Blastoids are extinct echinoderms (related to living seastars, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, and crinoids) that are quite common fossils. Although not as well known as crinoids*, they share many similarities in life style and history. Blastoids appeared during the Ordovician Period and disappeared during the end-Permian extinction, having reached their peak during the Lower Carboniferous (approx. 350 million years ago). Like other echinoderms, they have radial symmetry, which is particularly obvious in the specimen pictured here on the right in which five ridges radiate away from the mouth.

The part of the organism that is pictured here is called the “theca” and is made up of a series of tightly interlocking calcium carbonate plates. This makes the theca quite robust, so blastoids have a good fossil record and are common as fossils in rocks of the right age and environment. Blastoids are often described as looking like fossilized hickory nuts, but the thecae vary in shape and size from fairly globular, like these specimens – Pentremites godani from the Mississippian of the Paint Creek Formation, St. Clair County, Illinois, PRI Acc. #1493 – to more elongated or much more angular.

Like crinoids, living blastoids had a stalk that was attached to the ocean floor by a holdfast. The stalk held the theca above the sediment, allowing the organism to feed. The stalks were not as tough as the thecae, and they fell apart more easily after death, so fossilized thecae are usually found without stalks. You can see in the specimen on the left where the stalk would have been attached to the theca at the bottom. Blastoids fed on plankton that they filtered from the water using delicate structures called “brachioles” that are rarely preserved. The brachioles radiated from the five “ambulacra” that are clearly visible on these specimens – they form the ridges that radiate away from the top of the specimen on the right and can be seen to truncate before reaching the bottom end of the theca on the left.

Text by Ursula Smith (reprinted from “Fossil Focus” in American Paleontologist, Spring 2010)

*See Fossil of the Week 4/29/09 - Crinoids.

'Stocky dragon' dinosaur terrorized Late Cretaceous Europe

2010-08-31T12:51:00.000-07:00

'Stocky dragon' dinosaur terrorized Late Cretaceous Europe

Balaur bondoc used extendable claws to attack and tear apart prey



		IMAGE: This reconstruction shows the skeletal anatomy of Balaur bondoc. While only a few bones exist, they reveal a great deal about the organism, and represent one of the most complete... Click here for more information.

Paleontologists have discovered that a close relative of Velociraptor hunted the dwarfed inhabitants of Late Cretaceous Europe, an island landscape largely isolated from nearby continents.

While island animals tend to be smaller and more primitive than their continental cousins, the theropod Balaur bondoc was as large as its relatives on other parts of the globe and demonstrated advanced adaptations including fused bones and two terrifyingly large claws on each hind foot.

A team of Paleontologists from the University of Bucharest and the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) present their findings as the cover story of the Aug. 31st issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"While we would expect that there were carnivorous animals in these faunas, finding one as unusual as Balaur is thrilling and is testament to the unusual animals found on islands today and in the past," said paleontologist and co-author Mark Norell of AMNH.

The Balaur bondoc bones (Balaur from an archaic Romanian term for dragon, bondoc meaning stocky) represent the most complete predator skeleton paleontologists have found in sediments from the end of the Mesozoic in Europe.

While few in number, the fossils reveal an animal perhaps six to seven feet long with a stockier build than similarly sized Velociraptors elsewhere on the globe, but numerous similarities to the more familiar predator.



		IMAGE: The fossilized hindlimb of Balaur bondoc shows the double-sickle claws of the foot, one of 20 unique features found on the animal, which lived on a Late Cretaceous island in... Click here for more information.

"Although Balaur is so extremely divergent morphologically, it is closely related to animals like Velociraptor and the feathered dinosaurs in China," said lead author Zoltan Csiki, a paleontologist at the University of Bucharest. "The finding indicates that this area of the world, despite its archipelago geography, had at least intermittent faunal connections with the mainland up to the end of the Cretaceous. This connection was not really acknowledged until very recently."

The Balaur research was funded in part by the American Museum of Natural History, the National Science Foundation through grant EAR-0207664 , the Columbia University Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, the Romanian National University Research Council, and Richard and Lynn Jaffe.

For more information about the discovery, read the embargoed AMNH press release at: http://www.eurekalert.org/emb_releases/2010-08/amon-spd082510.php

Fossil of the Week

2010-08-26T07:47:00.000-07:00

8/26 – Darwin’s Barnacles

Barnacles – the Cirripedia – are a type of arthropod in the subphylum Crustacea, but until just before Charles Darwin’s travels on the HMS Beagle, they were classified as mollusks (along with clams and snails because of their hard shells). Although there are many different types of barnacles*, what we would most commonly recognize as one – little hard volcano-shapes such as those shown here – is only the calcium carbonate shell with which the organism surrounds its soft body. Inside, the barnacle animal lies on its back and extends specialized legs out of the opening at the top to catch food particles when the tide covers it. This opening can be closed when the water level around the barnacle drops, allowing it to survive until the tide comes up again.

Charles Darwin became interested in barnacles while working his way through material that he’d collected during his travels. He found an unusual specimen that he couldn’t classify. In an attempt to understand it, he examined other barnacles, which led to his eight-year project studying and publishing on the living and fossil barnacles of Great Britain. This work helped him to refine many of his ideas about species and evolution, such as homology (similarity due to common ancestry). It is in large part this work and his geological publications from his travels that established him as a competent and thorough researcher and gained him a receptive audience to the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859.

Although the Acorn Barnacles shown here aren’t from Great Britain, they are quite similar to those that Darwin would have worked on. This fossil is Balanus concavus (PRI Acc. No. 1459) from the Choptank Formation, a silt and sandstone unit that forms part of the Miocene Chesapeake Group. It outcrops extensively in Maryland – this particular locality at Governor Run is on the western coast of Chesapeake Bay, not far from the famous Calvert Cliffs.

Text by Ursula Smith (reprinted from “Fossil Focus” in American Paleontologist, Spring 2009)

*For more on barnacles, see Fossils of the Week 7/21/10 - Coronula macsotayi, 3/17/10 – Goose Barnacle, and 2/17/10 – Big-Mouthed Barnacle.

An Evening with John Gurche

2010-08-25T12:22:00.000-07:00

The New Human Origins Hall and a Sneak Peek at a New Discovery
Friday, August 27
Reception 6 p.m. Lecture 6:30 p.m.
Join Artist-in-Residence John Gurche as he discusses the newly discovered hominin Australopithecus sediba from South Africa. He is currently working on this discovery for National Geographic. John will also talk about the sculptures he worked on at the Museum of the Earth which are now on display at the Smithosonian Museum in Washington, DC. Snacks and wine will be provided.

Admission:
NonMembers: Adults $10, Student/Senior $7, Youth $5
Members: Adults $5, Student/Senior $3, Youth $2

Fossils + Fried Dough = FUN

2010-08-24T07:52:00.001-07:00

Dig This!
Visitors to the New York State Fair can dig for fossils
with the Museum of the Earth

The Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) and its Museum of the Earth will be bringing its popular Fossil Dig Pile to the New York State Fair in Syracuse, NY from August 26 to September 6, 2010. Visitors will have the chance to dig through 380-million-year-old shale from the Ithaca area hunting for fossils.

The Central New York area is filled with fossils from the Devonian period (about 350-400 million-years-ago), and it’s quite common to find them at parks or in your own backyard. These fossils can tell us a great deal about what life was like millions of years ago and about the geology of our landscape.

“Geology is a local subject,” stated Rob Ross, Associate Director of Outreach at the Paleontological Research Institution and its Museum of the Earth. “No two places share exactly the same sequence of geological events that led to the way they are today. In this sense, geology is a subject to be explored in one’s own neighborhood, examining the detailed sequence of rocks for the history that has gone on under our feet, and finding clues to what life was like as the earth evolved over the last 4-billion years.”

To dig for fossils and find your very own Trilobite, or Crinoid, or Ammonoid be sure to visit the Museum of the Earth at the Youth Building at the New York State Fair. If you can’t make it to the fair, you can dig for fossils at the Museum located in Ithaca, NY every day!

We hope you can join us! It's always a fun time!

Scinetiest find oldest record of animal life on Earth...

2010-08-20T08:35:00.001-07:00

Scientists find oldest record of animal life on Earth

The fossils were found in an Australian glacial deposit.

Fossils from Australia show animal life on Earth began at least 650 million years ago, 70 million years earlier than previous estimates, Princeton University scientists report.

James Potorti Interpretive Gorge Walks

2010-08-19T12:48:00.000-07:00

Gorge Walk Trivia

Q. Why is this limestone in the below video, taken at Taughannock Falls State Park, rippled? Take a look nd see if you can figure it out! (The answer will be at the bottom of the post.)

Have you joined us on one of our Gorge Walks? If not you should! They are a lot of fun and you can explore our local geology with Museum educators. You can journey into the rock at a different state park each Friday in August from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. No registration is required! Free for everyone (you must pay for any parking fees)!

Tomorrows walk:

August 20th: Watkins Glen State Park
Meet at the end of the lower (main) parking lot, near the beginning of the trail.

Next weeks walk:

August 27th: Buttermilk Falls State Park
Meet near the bottom of Buttermilk Falls and the start of the Gorge Trail

About the James Potorti Interpretive Gorge Walks:

PRI has been offering summer gorge walks for 12 years. They were officially renamed in 2005 to the James Potorti Interpretive Gorge Walks in memory of Ithaca native James E. Potorti, who died in the September 11, 2001 attacks. The renaming of the walks was a result of an endowment gift to the Museum from his widow, Nikki Stern, Executive Director of Families of September 11. Potorti, 52, was a vice president at Marsh & McLennan, a financial services company, and worked on the 94th floor of 1 World Trade Center. His first career, however, was as a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He grew up in Ithaca and attended SUNY Oswego.

A.) The pits in the limestone are caused by acid in the rain.

Fossil of the Week

2010-08-18T12:54:00.000-07:00

Picture an ammonite and you’re probably thinking about something that looks rather like a discus – flat and coiled only in one plane in the typical planispiral shape that’s familiar in most of the ammonoids and nautiloids. Heteromorph ammonites, however, are not “normal” ammonites. In fact, they grow into all sorts of strange shapes and look really weird. The one pictured here [Didymoceras sp., from the Campanian Stage (Upper Cretaceous Series, ca. 80 million years ago) of Bélo sur Tsiribina, Madagascar, PRI K22064, Klose Collection] is relatively tame. It’s still basically a spiral, just a very loose one. Many of the heteromorphs remained quite coiled, just not in one dimension, sometimes ending up looking rather like gastropod shells, while some started growing as standard planispiral shells then de-coiled. Some groups, though, abandoned normal ammonite coiling altogether and came almost totally unraveled. Some became hooked J shapes, some U shapes, or even trombone-like. Still others straightened out completely and looked superficially like belemnites or orthoconic nautiloids. Some of the heteromorphs seem to have just tied themselves in knots!

We tend to think of ammonites as having been speedy predators, propelling themselves through the ocean by jet propulsion. But the heteromorphs don’t look particularly streamlined, and in fact, biomechanical and hydrodynamic studies of models in flume tanks support the idea that these odd ammonites probably weren’t going anywhere fast. Some probably floated around in the open ocean, eating whatever happened to pass by (rather than actively hunting), and some might actually have been benthic, living slow or sedentary lives on the sea floor.

It is not clear what adaptational advantages favored the evolution of heteromorph ammonites, but they are common and occurred in a number of lineages throughout the history of the group. Some of them (such as the straight Baculites that could reach up to 6½ feet, or 2 meters, long) were extremely diverse, so they must have been doing something right. At the beginning of the twentieth century, they were cited as being a wonderful example of a phenomenon dubbed “racial senescence” in which a lineage was thought to go through a period of degeneration as it declines and eventually becomes extinct. The whole idea of racial senescence has since been abandoned, but it is clear that heteromorph ammonites don’t fit that pattern anyway: they were a successful, if strange, part of the ammonite story.

Text by Ursula Smith (reprinted from “Fossil Focus” in American Paleontologist, Summer 2010)

Dogs Love Trilobites!

2010-08-17T13:04:00.001-07:00

Yes, even dogs love the Museum of the Earth's stuffed trilobites! Here's a 4 year old French Bulldog, Curry, enjoying some playtime with his stuffed trilobite!

Curry is the beloved companion of David Thompson from Ann Arbor, Michigan. David is a member of the Friends of the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology and some of his fossils can be seen on the website for them at http://strata.geology.wisc.edu/mibasin this site is maintain by U. of M. and University of Wisconsin.

If you are interested in getting your own stuffed trilobite be sure to stop by the Museum Shop and pick one up!

An Eveing with John Gurche...

2010-08-13T11:34:00.001-07:00

Admission:
NonMembers: Adults $10, Student/Senior $7, Youth $5
Members: Adults $5, Student/Senior $3, Youth $2

Fossil of the Week

2010-08-11T12:29:00.001-07:00

8/11/10 - Concretion

Although this might look like a fossilized turtle shell, it is neither a turtle nor a shell. It's a concretion, and a big one, approximately 30 centimeters (12 inches) in diameter. Concretions are not fossils at all. They are common geologic phenomena found in all types of sedimentary rock, especially the shales and siltstones of central New York, so they are quite common in the Ithaca area. Concretions form when minerals (such as calcium carbonate, which forms limestone) within soft sediment precipitate in concentric layers around a nucleus, such as a shell or pebble. So a concretion often actually contains a fossil. Concretions are spherical to oval masses, and are harder than the surrounding rock, so the rock weathers first, exposing the concretion. They can range in size from less than an inch to several feet in diameter. Sometimes the concretion will crack and the cracks will fill with matrix, forming a rounded rock that looks like a turtle shell, like this one here.

Descriptions of concretions date from geological publications of the 18th century. They have been misinterpreted as dinosaur eggs, animal and plant fossils, extraterrestrial debris, and human artifacts. Bowling Balls Beach in Mendocino County, California, is well known for its ball-shaped concretions that weather out of the Cenozoic mudstone. Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota has concretions that are almost 10 feet in diameter. Small hematite concretions, called "blueberries," have even been observed on the planet Mars. Other names that have been applied to concretions are Kansas Pop Rocks, Moki Marbles, Koutu Boulders, septaria, cannonballs, and doggers.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

ARTfest at the MOTE!

2010-08-06T12:33:00.001-07:00

Join us Sunday, August 8th from 10am to 5 pm for ARTfest at the MOTE! It's Ithaca's newest fine art festival! Be inspired and spend the day browsing and buying original artwork throughout the grounds, watching and listening to live entertainment and visiting the Museum. For a complete list of artisans check out the website: http://artfestmote.com/

Fossil of the Week

2010-08-04T13:26:00.000-07:00

8/4/10 – Worm Snails

This tangled mass of calcareous tubes is a colony of worm snails in the gastropod (snail) family Vermetidae. There are at least three individuals in this cemented mass – one at the top (you can see the opening, or aperture, of the shell at top left), one at the bottom (aperture at bottom right), and one at the lower left (beside the “1.0 cm” marker). A fourth one might be the bulge at lower right. Worm snails begin their lives as “normal” snails, crawling around on a muscular foot. But very soon after the larva settles, it cements itself to a hard surface, like a rock or shell. After this, its regular shell coiling becomes irregular as it builds new coils around itself, often in a colonial mass such as this one. The worm snail is thus forever immobile. So, how does it eat? It can’t hunt down prey, or even graze on algae, in its upright position. Well, worm snails have evolved an ability possessed by many immobile animals – it filter feeds! Like all mollusks, the worm snail produces mucus with a gland in its foot. But it does something very clever and unusual with this mucus – it sends the mucus out in big webs in the seawater, where the sticky surface gets covered with organic particles and small bits of plankton that float by. The worm snail then reels in the mucus web and eats it – organic bits and all! Good recycling too!

This particular worm snail is Petaloconchus transcostatus Dockery, 1977, from Town Creek, Hinds County, Mississippi, in layers of the Upper Eocene Epoch, Jackson Group, Moody Branch Formation. It is the holotype* specimen, catalog number PRI 8232.

David T. Dockery III, the author of this species, was the recipient of PRI’s Gilbert Harris Award in 1993, the very first time that the award was given. The Harris award is given annually in recognition of excellence in contributions to systematic paleontology; it is named after PRI's founder who dedicated his career to the pursuit of systematic paleontology. Dockery is best known for his many publications on the fossils of Mississippi, including “Mollusca of the Moody Branch Formation,” where this worm snail first appeared. He has been a member of PRI since the 1970s, having been nominated by Katherine Palmer (PRI’s second director) herself in 1972. He has spent his career as a geologist for the state of Mississippi, and now lives and works in Clinton, Mississippi.

*See Fossil of the Week 8/19/09 - Cerithium gainesensis for a definition of "holotype."

Text by Dr. Paula Mikkelsen

Notes from the Field...Thailand

2010-08-02T11:54:00.001-07:00

Dr. Paula Mikkelsen is back from attending the World Congress of Malacology in Phuket, Thailand, and sends the following wrap-up:

The Grand Assembly of the World Congress of Malacology indicated that the meeting had 326 attendees (30% of which were students), 236 papers (31% by students), 115 posters (40% by students) – what a great turnout, especially with regard to attracting participation by students, who are indeed the future of our science. The BivAToL Project held its full-day symposium on Bivalve Evolution on Thursday of the meeting. The 20 presentations to a packed audience spanned all of the morphological, molecular, and phylogenetic working groups within the Project, plus fascinating talks on bivalve larvae, shell shape morphometrics, symbiotic cyanobacteria, fossil bivalves, gene evolution, and biogeography by colleagues from England, Russia, China, Germany, Spain, and the U.S. A celebratory dinner at a hillside restaurant the evening after the symposium was the icing on the cake for hardworking Project participants! This meeting was superbly organized, in an enchanting land, and will be a hard act to follow. The next WCM in 2013 will be in Ponta Delgada, Sao Miguel, University of the Açores, organized by incoming President Antonio Frias Martins.

The Gulf Under Siege...

2010-07-30T06:52:00.000-07:00

Despite the hopeful news on CNN, the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill are far from over. PRI is pleased to announce the launch of "Under Siege" - our website about the threats of the oil spill on the subsurface biota of the Gulf of Mexico and Florida Keys. Check it out!

http://www.museumoftheearth.org/undersiege

Fossil of the Week

2010-07-28T12:07:00.001-07:00

Our fossil for this week belonged to one of the most fearsome predators ever to swim our planet’s oceans. Carcharocles megalodon was a massive shark that likely exceeded 50 feet in length as an adult, making it the largest known shark species. It is believed that C. megalodon preyed upon other large marine animals, including whales!

Like modern sharks, C. megalodon had numerous rows of teeth to rapidly replace those that fell out of its mouth. These teeth, along with rarely found skeletal remains, have led scientists to believe that the closest living analog of C. megalodon is most likely the Great White shark (Carchardon carcharias). In fact, C. megalodon was initially placed in the same genus as the Great White and some scientists still believe that this giant should retain the genus name Carcharodon.

C. megalodon had a global distribution during its reign in the seas; fossil remains are known from localities ranging from North America to Europe, Africa, East Asia, and Australia. These deposits range in age from the Miocene epoch to the Pleistocene epoch (about 15 – 2 mya), indicating this giant lived for over 10 million years. This particular specimen comes from a locality along the Río Gurabo in the Dominican Republic’s Cibao Valley. It was discovered by Harold and Emily Vokes during their expedition to the valley in 1976. The tooth’s exact age is difficult to determine because the tooth was found in river float, meaning it was washed away from its original site of preservation. However, fossil snails found with this tooth suggest it is most likely from the Gurabo Formation, which is lower Pliocene in age, indicating this specimen is about 5 million years old. Some of the fine serrations around the edge of the tooth are beautifully preserved, and the slight bend in the tooth indicates it probably came from the right anterior section of the shark’s upper jaw. Teeth from more posterior sections become smaller and are far less symmetrical, with a pronounced curve.

Text by Steve Durham

This Weekend at the Museum of the Earth...

2010-07-23T08:06:00.000-07:00

Got plans? No, then stop by the Museum tomorrow at noon for a great lecture in our Natural History at Noon series:

You might also consider bringing the family by for Biodiversity Rocks!

Biodiversity Rocks!

Saturdays in July & August

11 a.m. to Noon

Join Museum of the Earth educators in celebrating the International Year of Biodiversity with fun hands-on activities every Saturday in July and August.

Saturday, July 24 - Lunchtime - Examine different foods and track how your lunch affects biodiversity.

We hope to see you there!

Notes from the Field...Thailand Day 3

2010-07-22T07:52:00.000-07:00

Sampling new cuisines is one of the best parts of traveling, and that at the World Congress of Malacology in Phuket Thailand is no exception! Dr. Paula Mikkelsen and her colleagues in the Bivalve Tree of Life Project ventured out for some unusual Thai food. This is grilled mantis prawns (really a type of big shrimp) in garlic and cracked pepper. Also sampled were squid, tiger prawns, fish, and heaps of rice and noodles, some of them very spicy. Tomorrow we have a day off to see the local sights, then it's back to work on Thursday for our bivalve evolution symposium.

Here is Dr. Mikkelsen communing with an oversized model of the landsnail Amphidromus africallosa at the World Congress of Malacology in Phuket, Thailand.

Fossil of the Week

2010-07-21T11:05:00.000-07:00

If you have ever seen a majestic whale breaking the surface of the ocean then you have very likely encountered a relative of this fossil as well. This interesting bowl-shaped specimen is a whale barnacle. These specialized barnacles attach only to whales, and once an individual whale is chosen, the barnacle will remain attached for its entire life, feeding on the same clouds of plankton that their host consumes.

All barnacles belong to the phylum Arthropoda, meaning they are related to crabs and lobsters- this may seem surprising since their lifestyle and hard shell resemble that of many sedentary mollusks. In fact though, barnacle shells are not single, solid units like mollusk shells, but instead are composed of multiple plates arranged around the soft body of the animal. In life, this barnacle would also have had two opercular valves, the shelly “doors” that cover the opening of living barnacles today, but they were not preserved in the fossil. The photograph shown here was taken above the barnacle, looking down into the cavity in which the animal lived.

The whale barnacle above belongs to the family Coronulidae. Its scientific name is Coronula macsotayi and it hails from Venezuela. It was found at an exposure of the Mare Formation on a hillside above the west bank of Quebrada Mare Abajo, about 22 miles north of the city of Caracas. This exposure is Lower Pliocene in age, meaning our fossil here lived about 3 to 5 million years ago. Coronula macsotayi was named for Oliver Macsotay, the paleontologist and stratigrapher who discovered this barnacle. Macsotay sent this specimen to Norman Weisbord at Florida State University in 1969 and in 1971 Weisbord published a manuscript in Bulletins of American Paleontology volume 60 (No. 265) describing the specimen as a new species of Coronula and discussing the stratigraphy of its locality in Venezuela. Since this specimen (PRI catalog no. 28292) was the first used to describe Coronula macsotayi it is known as the holotype for this species, making it a very important resource for scientists interested in studying this fossil species.

Text by Steve Durham

Notes from the Field...Thailand Day 2

2010-07-20T05:19:00.000-07:00

(Meeting Program)

Dr. Paula Mikkelsen is in Phuket Thailand attending the 17th World Congress of Malacology (the study of mollusks). The WCM is hosted by the international society Unitas Malacologica. This is the first time that this group has met in Asia. 372 delegates have registered, including over 100 students. 236 papers and 120 posters will be presented. The first day included the symposium "The Last 50 years of Malacology." Paula presented her paper today on "Publishing in Malacology: Past, Present, and Future Trends," in which she compared the field of publishing in 1959 and 2009.

Notes from the Field...Thailand Day 1

2010-07-19T11:16:00.000-07:00

En route to the World Congress of Malacology in Phuket, Thailand, Associate Director for Science Dr. Paula Mikkelsen discovered an origami museum shop in Narita Airport in Tokyo japan. These are origami dinosaurs - T Rex, 3 velociraptors, Stegosaurus, and Apatosaurus in the background. Origami is the ancient oriental art of paper folding.

"Four red Velociraptor are facing off with a Tyrannosaurus, with two little tyrannosaur babies right behind. The 'fin-backed' fellow is a Spinosaurus. All three dinosaurs lived during the Cretaceous Period, but they never would have met in reality; Velociraptor lived in Asia, Spinosaurus in Africa, and Tyrannosaurus in North America. In the case behind are two long-necked dinosaurs, called sauropods!" -- Caption courtesy of PRI's resident paleontologist and dinosaur expert Dr. Richard Kissel.

Happenings at the Museum of the Earth

2010-07-16T06:57:00.000-07:00

Mastodons and Martinis
Friday, July 16
6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Join us at the Museum of the Earth for a fun summer evening in support of science. Explore exhibits, mingle with friends, and enjoy martinis from Felicia’s Atomic Lounge. Hors d’oeuvres by Serendipity and your first cocktail are included with your ticket. We hope you can join us for this swinging good time in support of science education at the Museum of the Earth! Social Membership* Tickets: $25. Purchase by clicking here or for more information and to purchase by phone, please contact 607.273.6623 x11.

*Social Membership includes entrance to Mastodons & Martinis on July 16, as well as advance notice of other social events at the Museum of the Earth. Entrance to this event in not included with regular Museum membership.

Natural History at Noon Series
Saturday, July 24
"Fossil Trees, Climate Change, and Arctic Resources" with Kyle Trostle, Ph.D. Candidate, Cornell University

Biodiversity Rocks!
Saturdays in July & August
11 a.m. to Noon
Join Museum of the Earth educators in celebrating the International Year of Biodiversity with fun hands-on activities every Saturday in July and August. For more information on each week's topic visit our website.
July 17 - New Species Arise
July 24 - Lunchtime
July 31 - Extinction!

Support Science at the Museum of the Earth

2010-07-15T06:30:00.000-07:00

I want to let our local or close to local readers know about a fun event that is coming up tomorrow, Friday, July 16 at the Museum of the Earth -- Mastodons and Martinis!

Join us at the Museum of the Earth on Friday, July 16 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. for a fun summer evening in support of science. Explore our temporary exhibit, One Fish, Two Fish, Old Fish, New Fish*: Exploring the Evolution of Biodiversity; take a journey through time in our permanent exhibits; and enjoy martinis from Felicia’s Atomic Lounge. Hors d’oeuvres by Serendipity Catering and your first cocktail are included with purchase of a social membership ticket. We hope you can join us for this swinging good time in support of science education at the Museum of the Earth!

Social Membership Tickets**: $25

Purchase online at: Mastodons & Martinis

Purchase your social membership ticket by clicking below or for more information and to purchase by phone, please contact 607.273.6623 x11.

**Social Membership includes entrance to Mastodons & Martinis on July 16, as well as advance notice of other social events at the Museum of the Earth. Entrance to Martinis & Mastodons is not included with regular Museum membership. You must purchase a social membership to attend this event.

Fossil of the Week

2010-07-14T06:12:00.000-07:00

This week’s fossil is a gastropod (snail) from the family Fasciolariidae named Fasciolaria apicina from the upper Pliocene epoch, roughly 2 million years ago, and found in localities ranging from North Carolina to Florida. This fossil species is related to the modern banded tulip snail, Fasciolaria lilium hunteria, a fierce and abundant predator in many near-shore marine ecosystems throughout the southeastern United States and the Gulf of Mexico. Their shells are also common beach comber’s treasures- see if you can find F. apicina’s younger cousin F. hunteria in your shell collection at home! Hint: look for the six to eight very thin, dark brown or black bands along the growth axis (spiral) that are its namesake.

Don’t let this plain looking shell fool you, we know from the pattern of repair scars left on the shells of many of these animals (unfortunately they are very difficult to see on this particular specimen, but look for slight jaggedness in some of the growth lines on the lowest whorl) that they, like their modern banded tulip relatives, were likely voracious predators capable of propping the two valves (shells) of a clam or oyster open using their shell lip to access the meat inside (this behavior is really impressive- think about how hard it is sometimes to open an oyster or clam to cook with!). In fact, F. apicina was probably an important predator of members of various other marine invertebrate groups as well, including other snails and even worms! However, even these hunters became the hunted on occasion. The circular hole you see in the second to last whorl of the shell is the characteristic trace left by the drilling attack of naticid snails (perhaps better known as moon snails) and tells us how this animal died- he became lunch for a large moon snail.

This fossil species was named by renowned American malacologist William Healey Dall in 1890. Our specimen shown here was figured in Palaeontographica Americana volume 3 in 1945 for a manuscript authored by Burnett Smith. It was found in Acme, North Carolina at an exposure of the Waccamaw Formation, a sandy unit (it has not yet become rock) that dates back to the upper Pliocene epoch, approximately 2 million years ago. Acme is a small town located about 25 - 30 miles northwest of the beautiful beaches of Wilmington, NC.

Text by Stephen Durham

Happenings at the Museum of the Earth...

2010-07-09T05:26:00.000-07:00

Featured Events:

Natural History at Noon Series
Saturday, July 10
"The Other 15,000: Marine Biodiversity at Risk in the Gulf of Mexico" with Dr. Paula Mikkelsen, PRI's Associate Director for Science.

Saturday, July 24
"Fossil Trees, Climate Change, and Arctic Resources" with Kyle Trostle, Ph.D. Candidate, Cornell University

Biodiversity Rocks!
Saturdays in July & August
11 a.m. to Noon
Join Museum of the Earth educators in celebrating the International Year of Biodiversity with fun hands-on activities every Saturday in July and August. For more information on each week's topic visit our website.
July 10 - Animal Adaptations
July 17 - New Species Arise
July 24 - Lunchtime
July 31 - Extinction!

Fossil Fun-Day Monday
Mondays in July & August
Bring a fossil to show the Museum and receive $1 off the cost of admission! (Offer good for up to 5 people. Not to be used with other offers.)

Summer Field Trips!

Spend your summer with the Museum of the Earth! Once again, we've got a great slate of programs happening this summer for you to choose from. Learn more about our Fossil Collecting Field Trips and Royal Ontario Museum Trip below. We look forward to seeing you in the field!

Fossil Collecting Field trips 2010

July 10th: Sheds, NY
August 7th: Morrisville, NY
Sept 11th: Jamesville, NY (adults only)

All trips are from 11am to 2pm.

Members: Adults $10, Student/Senior $7, Youth $5
Non Members: Adults $20, Student/Senior $15, Youth $10

Register today online or by calling 607-273-6623 x13.

Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) Trip
Saturday, August 14, 2010. 6am to midnight.

Travel to Toronto, Canada with our staff and join us for a special personalized tour of the newly renovated dinosaur halls and other renowned exhibits at one of the world's finest natural history museums. Book a seat today!

Members: Adults $75, Seniors $65, Youth $60
Non members: Adults $90, Seniors $80, Youth $75

Register today online or by calling 607-273-6623 x13

**Please note that due to the necessary border crossing a valid passport or enhanced driver's license will be required to participate in this trip. You can learn more about what documentation you may need here: http://www.nydmv.state.ny.us/edl-main.htm and http://travel.state.gov/passport/passport_1738.html.**

Not a member but want to become one? Choose your membership level online or give us a call at 607.273.6623 x11.

Fossil of the Week

2010-07-08T09:52:00.000-07:00

7/7/10 - Tusk Shell

Scaphopods, or "tusk shells," are mollusks, thus related to clams, snails, squids, and octopuses. The shell is tube-shaped, open at both ends, and (as the common name implies) usually gently curved like an elephant's tusk and similarly tapered. The animal inhabits the tube, using its foot to dig at the larger (anterior) end, and bringing oxygen-laden water for respiration at the other (posterior) end. There are no gills - the scaphopod is small enough that oxygen can infuse its tissues simply by water washing over its organs. The animal eats using minute tentacles - called captacula - surrounding its foot. These probe the sand for bits of food (detritus, foraminiferans, etc.), then bring them into the shell to the mouth. Scaphopods also lack eyes and other distinct sense organs, as well as a heart and blood vessels; blood is circulated through sinuses throughout its body by the muscular actions of the foot. Scaphopods are all marine, living buried in the sand with one end of the tube at the surface to contact the water. The name "Scaphopoda" means "shovel-footed." Because of the many organs missing in scaphopods (head, eyes, heart, gills), they are difficult to compare to other mollusks to understand their evolution and relationships. Classifications have traditionally placed them near the bivalves (both have evolutionarily lost the head), however, modern molecular studies suggest that they are more closely related to the Cephalopoda (squids, octopus, Chambered Nautilus, etc.).

If you know scaphopods at all, you probably know members of the genus Dentalium, which literally looks like a small elephant tusk (though hollow and open at both ends). The genus Cadulus (represented here by the Eocene species Cadulus marginata) is less well known. Its shell is also a hollow tube open at both ends, but the shell can be unevenly tapered, often bulging in the center. This specimen is a paratype of the species, which was collected near Jackson, Mississippi, and was named by Katherine Palmer in 1947.

Scaphopods are the last molluscan class to appear in the fossil record, thus the youngest and last to evolve. The earliest known fossils are from the Middle Ordovician (460 million years ago).

Let's Take a Field Trip!

2010-07-06T07:44:00.001-07:00

Every year the Museum of the Earth hosts a trip to a larger natural history institution. In the past we've been going to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. This year, we wanted to try something different. We wanted to keep the trip about the same distance to avoid that added costs of an overnight stay, but we also wanted to have some sort of relationship or knowledge of the institution.

With a four hour drive as our guide -- we looked at museums and institutions in Philadelphia, New York, Buffalo, Albany, and Toronto. We settled on Toronto!

Dr. Richard Kissel, Director of Teacher Programs here at PRI recently completed his PhD program in Paleontology at the University of Toronto and has first hand knowledge of the Royal Ontario Museum (R.O.M.) -- especially the dinosaur hall! If you like dinosaurs, you will love the experience that you will have as Richard leads you through the R.O.M.'s world famous exhibits.

Join us as we travel to the

Royal Ontario Museum (ROM)

Saturday, August 14, 2010. 6am to midnight.

Travel to Toronto, Canada with our staff and join us for a special personalized tour of the newly renovated dinosaur halls and other renowned exhibits at one of the world's finest natural history museums. Book a seat today! Trip check-in at 5:45 am from the Museum of the Earth. Bus leaves promptly at 6 am with an estimated return of 11 pm.

Members

Adults $75
Seniors $65
Youth $60

Non members

Adults $90
Seniors $80
Youth $75

Register today online or by calling 607-273-6623 x13

Please note that due to the necessary border crossing a valid passport or enhanced driver's license will be required to participate in this trip. You can learn more about what documentation you may need here: http://www.nydmv.state.ny.us/edl-main.htm and http://travel.state.gov/passport/passport_1738.html.

** Please Note: Refunds will only be given due to PRI cancellation of the trip. **

Museum of the Earth Responds to the Gulf Oil Spill

2010-07-02T11:32:00.000-07:00

It has been just over two months since the first day of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that occurred on April 20, 2010. In addition to the surface slick and tar balls washing ashore, a deep-water oil plume, being carried by a clockwise Loop Current, now threatens the third largest coral reef and marine ecosystem in the world and endangers thousands of invertebrate species indigenous to the Gulf and Florida Keys.

Although dozens of oily pelicans have become the iconic symbol for the recent disaster to hit the Gulf, thousands of forgotten creatures such as the spiny flower coral, yellow mussel, red heart urchin and the purple sea snail are equally under siege by the immeasurable plume of dense oil and dispersants. The Museum of the Earth recognizes the severity of the spill beyond the sandy beaches and below the murky surface.

World renowned malacologist, Dr. Paula Mikkelsen, associate director for science at the Paleontological Research Institution, remarks; “Our intent is not to say that the turtles and pelicans are not important. Our intent is to spread awareness of the high levels of biodiversity in the Gulf that are at risk in this devastating disaster. I hesitate to even suggest this because it’s so grim – there’s a lot we don’t know, as researchers and a society, about what’s going to happen. But it’s a much larger story than tar washing up on the beach.” Mikkelsen has specialized her professional research around the aquatic biodiversity of these now-threatened marine organisms.

Every habitat– from intertidal oyster bars and mangroves, to shallow seagrass beds, to coral reefs, deepwater sand plains, and pelagic Sargassum algae – includes thousands of species of invertebrates (coral, barnacles, snails, clams, starfish, sea urchins, sponges, and others) that depend upon clean water to survive. The deep-water oil plume looping through the Gulf, and heading toward the Florida Keys, is severely threatening aquatic biodiversity through contamination. The relationships of these marine ecosystems could soon be impacted, starting at the most basic levels, as the oxygen quality is compromised and the organisms’ food sources are killed. Many of these species are filter feeders, sieving food particles from the water, while others graze on algae or wait to feed on the filter feeders and grazers. All of these animals “breathe water,” extracting life-giving oxygen with their delicate gills. Oil in the water or their food sources will kill them, along with the algae and marine plants that they depend upon. The devastating reality is that there are no clean up efforts or rescue excursions that can help the eastern oysters, tube coral and other marine invertebrates that could be affected by the spill. As many as 15,000 species are indigenous to the Gulf and are threatened by this disaster.

Visit the Museum of the Earth to learn more about what is happening to the marine life in these affected areas and see some of the amazing specimens from the world famous PRI collection. Seeing the immaculate shells and coral on display creates immediacy to visitors and shatters apathy for these delicate, deep-water creatures. These heart breaking yet stunning displays should be a definite addition for your weekend “to do” list. On Saturday, July 10 at noon, Dr. Mikkelsen will be giving a Natural History at Noon lecture in the Museum’s classroom entitled "The Other 15,000: Marine Biodiversity at Risk in the Gulf of Mexico." For more information on the exhibit and the Museum’s Natural History at Noon lecture series please visit the Museum of the Earth online at www.museumoftheearth.org or call 607-273-6623 x33.

Fossil of the Week

2010-07-01T06:24:00.000-07:00

7/1/10 - Solitary Coral

This is a solitary coral, approximately 3 centimeters (1¼ inches) in diameter. You probably have learned that coral is actually a colony of thousands of soft polyps embedded in a hard calcareous skeleton. Solitary corals are similar but have just one large polyp (so a lot like an anemone), surrounded by a hard skeleton (which anemones lack). This is oversimplified slightly, but you probably get the idea. Although they form single "corallites," solitary corals often aggregate together in large populations. This is in part a product of their most common mode of reproduction - fragmentation - in which breakage results in two or more new polyps, which would naturally "land" not far from the original. The most common living solitary corals to non-specialists are the Mushroom Coral Fungia, sold dried and bleached in curio shops, and the Button Coral Scolymia, which is sold alive for the aquarium trade. The flesh of one common Scolymia species is bright florescent green.

This fossil is a paratype* (PRI 24412) of Cyclomussa concinna, described by John W. Wells** (a student of PRI's founding director, Gilbert Harris) in 1941. It is from the Lower Oligocene, Chira Formation, near Casa Saman, Chira Valley, in northern Peru. It was published in volume 26 of Bulletins of American Paleontology, PRI's monographic series. This and other specimens described in that publication were collected in Peru by another Harris student, Axel Olsson***. Part of Gilbert Harris' original intent in founding PRI was to provide a regional center where young students and professionals could interact and study - it seems that his students did just that! Many of Harris' students ultimately served on PRI's Board of Trustees or otherwise supported the institution through monetary and other donations.

PRI honors the author of this species by its student grant called the John W. Wells Grants-in-Aid of Research Program. This annual award supports collections-based research in any field of paleontology with up to $500 to assist with the student's visit to PRI to use the collections. PRI has one of the largest collections of invertebrate fossils, including corals, in North America.

*For a definition of paratype specimens, see Fossil of the Week 10/14/09 - Atrypa aperanta Crickmay.

**For more about John W. Wells, see Fossil of the Week 12/23/09 - Ichthyodorulite (Fish Spine).

***See Fossil of the Week 11/5/09 - Echinocaris punctata for more about Axel Olsson.

A Note from the Author...

2010-06-30T12:25:00.000-07:00

Dr. Richard Kissel, PRI's Director of Teacher Programs and cartoonist/artist extraordinaire is the artist behind PRI's newest publication: Cecil's Colossal Journey Through Time!

Composting at the Museum of the Earth...

2010-06-25T08:23:00.000-07:00

Did you know that we compost as much of our waste as possible at the Museum of the Earth? From visitors and staff persons alike we encourage each other to be good stewards of our planet. With that in mind, once a week a different staff person goes through our campus and collects our compostable waste to take to our compost bin that lives behind our facilities. This week was my week.

Fossil of the Week

2010-06-24T08:23:00.000-07:00

6/23/10 - Burrowing Sea Urchin (3838.jpg)

The round shape and five radial rays are clues that this fossil is a sea urchin (Phylum Echinodermata, Class Echinoidea). This is Brissus camagueyensis, from the Upper Eocene of Camaguey Province, Cuba, named by Norman Weisbord* in 1934. Brissus is a genus of burrowing sea urchins that first appeared in the Eocene Epoch (40 million years ago) and still has living representatives today. In life, they are covered with long thin spines that easily fold toward the hind end as the urchin burrows through the sand, much the same way that your dog's or cat's fur lays down as you pat her. Burrowing (more technically called the "infaunal" habit - as opposed to "epifaunal" or living on top of the sand) is generally an adaptation against detection by predators (including sea otters and fish), but also can result in reduction of other anti-predator devices, such as (in this case) a thick shell (called a "test" in sea urchins). Brissus has a very thin fragile shell, and thin fragile spines.

This specimen (PRI 3838) is the holotype**. It is 40 millimeters greatest diameter, or approximately 1 ½ inches. It was originally described in Bulletins of American Paleontology, volume 20, no. 70C. Camaguey Province, which this species is named after, is the largest province in Cuba. It lies in central Cuba and stretches from coast to coast across the entire island. [Hint: the "-ensis" at the end of the species name tells us that it was named after a place. It literally translates as "from." So this is the Brissus "from Camaguey."] The exact locality is Loma Calisto, near the port city of Nuevitas on the shore of the Bahia [Bay] de Nuevitas, on the north shore of the island.

*See Fossil of the Week 4/1/2010 - Irregular Heart Urchin about another urchin described by Weisbord in 1934, and for general information on sea urchins.

**See Fossil of the Week 8/19/09 - Cerithium gainesensis for a definition of "holotype."

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

This Weekend at Museum of the Earth

2010-06-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

On the Rebound: The Earth's response to the changing polar ice sheets

Saturday, June 19

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Dr. Mike Willis, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University

The surface of the Earth flexes and deforms in response to the changing mass of a nearby ice sheet. Measurements of this deformation made in Antarctica over the last decade, and in Greenland more recently, is used to get a handle on the viscosity (stickiness) of the sub-crustal mantle. With this information, we can separate out how much of the observed, contemporary ice mass change is due to the ice sheet shrinking since the end of the last ice age, and how much is due to modern effects.

Up Next!

June 26th: Hamilton, NY
July 10th: Sheds, NY
August 7th: Morrisville, NY
Sept 11th: Jamesville, NY (adults only)

Register Today!

Summer Camp
June 28-September 3, 2010
With summer approaching, it's time to find the right summer camp. Museum of the Earth is delighted to once again be partnering with the Cayuga Nature Center for Summer Camp. Building on the strengths of the CNC's landscape, tree house, and animals, Museum of the Earth will be on hand to add fossils, rocks, and so much more to the camp offerings. There will be ten weeks of Camp this year. Each week has a specific theme. For more information and to register click here.

Fossil of the Week

2010-06-16T12:05:00.001-07:00

6/16/10 - The Fourth Variant

Is it a fossilized flower or a crinoid? Neither! This is Striacoceras typum variety delta, a straight-sided ("orthoconic") nautiloid cephalopod*, related to the modern Chambered Nautilus. This is the "phragmocone," the collective term for the multi-part body chamber of the squid-like animal. The "segments" of the phragmocone are actually chambers that in life were filled with gas to give the animal buoyancy. An earlier name for this species (the name was judged invalid due to a nomenclatural technicality) was Orthoceras marcellense - named for natural-gas-rich Marcellus Shale Formation so prevalent in the news these days in Upstate New York.

This fossil is the holotype** (PRI 5346) of the variety described by Rousseau Flower*** in 1936 from the Cherry Valley limestone of the Middle Devonian Period (390 million years ago) of Stockbridge, a small town in Oneida County in central New York, in Bulletins of American Paleontology no. 76. Also in the limestone were numerous specimens of thin-shelled pteropods ("sea butterflies," actually highly specialized, pelagic snails) that are presumed to have been the food items for the nautiloids.

Flower described five "varieties" of the species Striacoceras typum in his monograph. These varieties blend into one another in morphology, so are not regarded as full species and the usefulness of naming such growth forms can be debated and is not generally done today. The name "delta" for this particular variant means nothing except that it is the fourth variant described. Flower used Greek letters for the five variants (alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and epsilon), so this is simply "variant D." It is characterized by being more noticeably tapered ("a greater rate of expansion") and having smaller chambers ("shallower camerae") than other variants. At the time of description, it was known from only the single specimen. Flower found these varieties fascinating, and named them as a tool for easier discussion of what he considered a rare occurrence - the availability of a large number of individuals that lived at or around the same time. The study of intraspecific variability in a population is indeed relatively uncommon in paleontology.

Did you know that issue no. 76 and other early issues of BAP can be viewed and downloaded freely online at the Biodiversity Heritage Library website (http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/39837)?

*See earlier installments of Fossil of the Week to read about other orthoconic nautiloids: 5/5/10 - Bradfordoceras and 11/19/09 - Virgoceras cancellatum.
**For a definition of holotype, see Fossil of the Week 8/19/09 - Cerithium gainesensis.
***See Fossil of the Week 11/19/09 - Virgoceras cancellatum for more about the author, Rousseau H. Flower.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

Scientist-in-Residence

2010-06-15T12:42:00.001-07:00

PRI has just successfully completed its first ever "scientist-in-residence" program with Ithaca's Fall Creek Elementary this past May. The program took the place of the school's more traditional science fair, in an effort to make an equitable, science-based activity in which all students had an opportunity to work on real science projects with real scientists. Kindergarteners learned about dinosaurs with Dr. Richard Kissel, 1st & 2nd graders worked with their 5th grade "buddies" to examine ice age life with Christine Besemer, while 3rd & 4th graders examined local Devonian fossils with Dr. Carlyn Buckler. Over the course of this program, PRI staff worked with a total of 215 students for a total of 35 contact hours. This program was coordinated by PRI's Sara Auer Perry, and it was funded through teacher grants from the Ithaca Public Education Initiative and the Fall Creek PTA.

Sara Auer Perry
Geoscience Education Resource Developer

Another Sneak Peek...

2010-06-10T08:18:00.000-07:00

Birds, sea turtles, and dolphins get most of the press, but all organisms in the Gulf of Mexico are threatened by the catastrophic oil spill that followed the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig on April 20, 2010.

Next week the Museum of the Earth will be unveiling a new temporary exhibit featuring amazing specimens from the world renowned PRI collection. These specimens are some of the organisms that may be affected as the spill spreads through the Gulf Coast and into the Florida Keys.

Steve Durham from collections assists Tonya Cribb from exhibits
with the exhibit install.

A giant Sponge from the PRI Collection.

A coral specimen from the PRI collection.

Fossil of the Week

2010-06-09T11:04:00.000-07:00

6/9/10 – Canadian Brachiopod

Here’s a fossil whose identity might not be immediately obvious. It is a brachiopod (or lamp shell*) from the Middle Devonian (approximately 390 million years old) of Redfern Lake, British Columbia, in western Canada. The locality is a river cliff known as the “The Ramparts” of the Mackenzie River only a short distance south of the Arctic Circle. It consists of approximately 200 feet of limestone that is very fossil-rich and equivalent to the upper part of the Elk Point Formation. Fossils at this locality include corals, plant spores, and brachiopods, including this new one, described by C. H. Crickmay** in 1954.

This fossil is a paratype*** (PRI catalog number 270000) of Geranocephalus inopinus. I do not know the etymology (the meaning of the word) of the genus name, but the species name means “unexpected,” so the species must have been a surprise! The specimen is unusual in that it includes both surfaces and a cross section – the part facing you is a cross section through the articulated specimen. One valve of the brachiopod is the yellow-colored surface at the top in the picture. The other valve is the tan-colored surface at the bottom (on which white paint has been applied as a background for the catalog number in black ink – a very common practice in some museums). The gray matrix in the center is the “space” between the valves, which in life would have been occupied by the soft body of the brachiopod, and during fossilization, was filled with mud or sand that has lithified into rock. The tan structure that is attached to the lower valve, and that extends into the central space is part of the cardinal process (for muscle attachments) and part of the fused crura (singular crus), the internal shelly supports for the lophophore, the ciliated, filament-bearing feeding organ of the brachiopod that is used to filter food from seawater.

Next time you see a slab of marble on a museum wall or floor, look for cross sections of fossils like this one – they are very common!

*For more about brachiopods, see Fossils of the Week 10/14/09 - Atrypa aperanta Crickmay, 5/12/10 – Colombian Brachiopod, and 7/15/09 - Brachiopods.

**Crickmay, C. H., 1954, Paleontological correlation of Elk Point and equivalents, in: Ralph Leslie Rutherford Memorial Volume, Symposium, Western Canada Sedimentary Basin, American Association of Petroleum Geologists, pages 143-158. For more about the author, see Fossil of the Week 10/14/09 - Atrypa aperanta Crickmay.

***For a definition of paratype specimens, see Fossil of the Week 10/14/09 - Atrypa aperanta Crickmay.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

The Ithaca Festival Parade...

2010-06-08T12:25:00.000-07:00

For the past several years the Museum of the Earth has participated in Ithaca's official kick-off of the summer season -- the Ithaca Festival Parade. This years theme was "Singing in the Rain." Our uniforms were Museum of the Earth rain ponchos and dinosaur masks!

Here are a couple pictures from the parade that took place on Thursday, June 3, 2010 -- courtesy of Rachel Philipson Photography & Design:

Friday Night - Got Plans?

2010-06-04T06:08:00.000-07:00

No? Then join us at the Museum of the Earth tonight from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. for the opening of our latest art exhibition, They're Alive! Dinosaurs in our Mind's Eye featuring the artwork of Chris Wildrick. We'll also be celebrating our temporary exhibit One Fish, Two Fish, Old Fish, New Fish*: Exploring the Evolution of Biodiversity. Snacks and wine will be provided.

Tonight's wine is courtesy of Atwater Vineyards. Get a glimpse and taste a drop of Cecil's Chard - Atwater's new wine label for the Museum of the Earth!

Tickets: $10

Purchase your tickets by clicking below or for more information and to purchase by phone, please contact 607.273.6623 x11.

Exhibit Opening Single Ticket

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A Sneak Peek...

2010-06-03T13:33:00.000-07:00

The coloring book that PRI's Richard Kissel authored and illustrated-- Cecil's Colossal Journey Through Time -- is now published and in hand! It will be on the shelves in the Museum's gift shop and available for purchase on our website (museumoftheearth.org/publications) very soon!

Fossil of the Week

2010-06-02T12:32:00.000-07:00

6/2/10 - Moss Animals

This week's fossil is a bryozoan or "moss animal." The triangular yellow label with the catalog number on it is pointing toward the fan-shaped colony on the right side of the rock. Bryozoans are colonial animals, just like corals. Each one of the "dots" in life was the opening of a calcified chamber in which lived one of the bryozoan animals. The animal, more properly called a zooid, reaches out of its chamber with a ring of tentacles to filter feed, that is, to capture food particles in the water. There are about 4,000 species of living bryozoans, and another 15,000 fossil species, dating back to the Early Ordovician Period (480 million years ago). The Phylum Bryozoa is the only animal phylum with a fossil record that does not date back to the beginning of multicellular life - the Cambrian Period. Scientists speculate that perhaps the earliest bryozoans were entirely soft-bodied, so did not leave a fossil record during that time.

This bryozoan is Fenestrellina harrisi, named for PRI's first director Gilbert Harris by Andrew H. McNair, of Dartmouth College (now University) in 1940. It is from the Devonian Period (416-359 million years ago = the same geological age as Ithaca, NY) of Colombia, in northern South America. This is the holotype*, PRI catalog number 5901.

*For a definition of holotype, see Fossil of the Week 8/19/09 - Cerithium gainesensis.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

What's Going On?

2010-05-28T03:21:00.000-07:00

They're Alive! Dinosaurs in Our Mind's Eye
They're Alive! Dinosaurs in Our Mind's Eye, which opens at the Museum of the Earth on May 29, is an exhibition of work by artist Chris Wildrick, who teaches at Syracuse University. Chris is interested in why these extinct animals, which no human has ever seen, have such a expansive role in our culture and imaginations. How have artists translated scientists' ideas into the images that saturate our books, movies, toys, and pajamas? How do everyday people re-envision these images when we are reading, playing, and dreaming?

The work in this show is the result of years of participatory projects Chris has done with kids and adults at schools, science museums, and art galleries, in an attempt to learn more about how we see dinosaurs in our mind's eye. These artworks, which range from hundreds of examples of kids' dinosaur art to sophisticated analytic graphs, have been collected into books, posters, videos, and interactive projects that provide an insight into dinosaurs' relevance to our lives today. Join us at Museum of the Earth to explore it all!

Join us at the Museum of the Earth on Friday, June 4 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. for the opening of our latest art exhibition, They're Alive! Dinosaurs in our Mind's Eye featuring the artwork of Chris Wildrick. We'll also be celebrating our temporary exhibit One Fish, Two Fish, Old Fish, New Fish*: Exploring the Evolution of Biodiversity. Snacks and wine will be provided. Tickets: $10. Purchase your tickets online or for more information and to purchase by phone, please contact 607.273.6623 x11.

Fossil of the Week

2010-05-27T10:40:00.000-07:00

5/27/10 - Jingle Shell (26589.jpg)

This rather uninteresting-looking yellow blob is a bivalve (clam) called a Jingle Shell. This is the "top" or "free" valve - when the animal was alive, the other valve was permanently attached to a rock or another shell like an oyster. However, it did not cement itself to the rock like an oyster does. Instead it held on using a byssus. In most bivalves, the byssus is a set of elastic threads that are produced by the bivalve's foot - you might be familiar with them in Blue Mussels attaching to rocks at the seashore. In Jingle Shells, the byssus is a calcified plug that passes through a permanent hole in the "bottom" or "attached" valve; that plug is cemented to the rock. Nature has found many, many ways for clams to "stay put"!

This species is Anomia catiana, described by Norman Weisbord* in 1964, from the Playa Grande Formation of northern Venezuela. It is the holotype**, and is a left valve (the one without the hole. In fact, the entire original material (all of the specimens that Weisbord had available to him when he described the species) were left valves - the valve with the hole was completely unknown at the time of the species' description. The original publication is Bulletins of American Paleontology no. 204 - a 500-page monograph entitled "Late Cenozoic pelecypods from northern Venezuela." It and other early issues of BAP can be seen and downloaded freely online at the Biodiversity Heritage Library website (http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/39837).

Jingle Shells all look fairly boring, as seashells go. They are thin-shelled, have no hinge teeth and little sculpture, and the interior surface only shows a couple of muscle scars - so despite the fact that it doesn't look like much of anything, this is actually a pretty good specimen! It is quite well inflated, but Jingle Shells can be very variable in this respect - they take the shape and curvature of whatever rock or other surface that they are attached to. If that surface has wavy undulations, the Jingle will also have wavy undulations - such features are sometimes misinterpreted as features of the Jingle Shells.

The family Anomiidae is known since the Jurassic Period (~180 million years ago). Today it is represented by 15 living species, all marine or estuarine, distributed worldwide mainly in temperate waters. The common name "Jingle Shell" is taken from the shell craft industry - empty shells shaken together in a jar or hanging in a mobile sculpture, make a pleasant jingling sound.

*See Fossil of the Week 11/24/09 - Arca zebra abisiniana for more about the author Norman Weisbord.

**For a definition of holotype, see Fossil of the Week 8/19/09 - Cerithium gainesensis.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

Notes from the Marcellus...

2010-05-21T14:54:00.000-07:00

Marcellus Shale Science this Week

By Robert Ross

This week PRI announced the receipt of a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support our ongoing educational outreach efforts around the Marcellus Shale. For the past year, PRI has been part of a collaboration with Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) and Cornell's Water Resources Institute, the goal of which was to help landowners and governmental officials in the Southern Tier of New York understand some of the scientific, environmental, economic, and social issues surrounding potential drilling for and production of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale. The new funds from NSF will allow PRI to expand on this effort by producing more comprehensive educational materials on many science-related aspects of the Marcellus. We plan that these materials will begin to become available this summer.

Meanwhile, of course, discussion and decisions continue to take place regarding the Marcellus. For example, this week, the Tompkins County Legislature voted for a resolution that urges New York State to ban hydraulic fracturing operations pending further independent scientific assessments -- including a study from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, and research on the life-cycle assessments of greenhouse gas emissions associated with producing shale gas, and the social and economic impacts of the industry.

The rapid pace of events connected to Marcellus Shale gas development, the heated emotions that surround some public discussions, and the very real and immediate need for government officials and members of the public to make informed decisions, make any effort at unbiased public educational outreach very challenging. From the very beginning, CCE and PRI have been simultaneously praised for bringing information to the public and criticized for not bringing the "right" information. This comes with the territory of such a controversial issue. But it also touches on some fundamental aspects of how science works, how the public understands it, and how it can and should be communicated beyond scientists themselves.

Earlier this week I was interviewed about the new NSF grant on WHCU radio's Morning Report by host Dave Viezer. And a few minutes later, County Legislature Chair Martha Robertson was interviewed about the vote to ban hydraulic fracturing operations until the EPA assessment. After discussing the vote, she expressed great concern about PRI's Marcellus Shale website and general approach to the topic. Her comments highlight several important points that we will all need to understand and think about as this important issue develops.

What Ms. Robertson remarked upon was the "resources" part of the PRI Marcellus website, which was a list of links to other websites that she considered to be biased. Firstly, I should note that the short list of resources we had on our website was a work in progress, and we accept responsibility for not having made this clear and having consequently been perceived as biased; we only recently started the grant and had not yet developed a monitored system for which links to present. The two critiques Ms. Robertson made, however, are a useful segue for exploring what how science is done and presented, and how we should treat Marcellus drilling-related topics about which there is great scientific uncertainty.

The first critique referred to the life-cycle assessment of drilling in tight shales with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. Our resources list included a blog entry by Cornell Professor Richard Allmendinger in which he summarized and discussed scientific results -- published by others -- to the effect that production, transport, and combustion of natural gas from conventional drilling releases less into the atmosphere than burning coal to produce the same amount of energy. This conclusion, however, is not agreed upon by all scientists, and may not apply to the sort of unconventional drilling that would be used in the Marcellus Shale. The list did not include a reference to work by another Cornell professor, Robert Howarth. Dr. Howarth has been investigating the potential greenhouse effects of natural gas development throughout its "life cycle" -- that is, from drilling through to burning. The main component of natural gas (methane) is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO₂, and during drilling , production, and transport of natural gas, a certain amount of methane is released directly to the atmosphere where it adds to the greenhouse effect. Further, extracting the gas from shale takes more energy – and releases more CO₂ when using this energy – than does extraction from conventional sources.

This controversy surrounding life cycle analysis raises an important issue regarding the pace of science versus the pace of demand for information for decision making. Because of the significance of the issue, in late fall Dr. Howarth began researching the life cycle of carbon emissions associated with natural gas drilling. In March he wrote a progress report on his work that became widely distributed over the internet. In the meantime he has continued his work and posted a revised version (linked to here) and he plans to submit a version to a peer-reviewed scientific journal within the coming months.

Because of the limited scientific investigation to date, rather little is known about the emissions of greenhouse gasses from extraction of gas from shale formations like the Marcellus, and no scientific consensus exists on this particular issue. Responding to this poor knowledge base, the Council of Scientific Society Presidents, in early May wrote a letter to senior government officials and legislators in Washington stating that before any shale-gas is further developed, “prior thorough science-based studies are required to evaluate the impact of massive shale development on rural land uses, water supply and quality, and full life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions.”

The other critique was that on our resources page we had included resources from industry claiming that the water used in local drilling will be recycled, and that we should have included other information from Cornell Professor Anthony Ingraffea, who has been active in increasing awareness of the lack of adequate waste water solutions. Water use and recycling is, indeed, an essential issue that deserves our attention. Perhaps the one area of agreement of all concerned, including those in our community who are most knowledgeable about the topic, is that waste water remains an unknown, with a great deal of apparently conflicting available information. Our challenge in this case will be working with a wide variety of individuals, from environmental advocates to water treatment experts to those most familiar with drilling, to separate what is likely from what may be heresay.

Our goal going forward will be to provide the best quality information available, but also to help provide insight into why certain kinds of information are considered tentative or unreliable, and what kinds of data and modeling must be done before we can address some topics with confidence.

Fossil of the Week

2010-05-19T11:21:00.001-07:00

5/19/10 – Eocene Coral (3769.jpg)

Coral is a colonial “animal” made up of many individual flower-shaped polyps protected by a hard skeleton. In this specimen from the Upper Eocene of Cuba, each tiny depression was a chamber for one of these fragile polyps. There are two kinds of corals living today: colonial and solitary*. This one is a colonial coral. Living coral colonies are one of the world’s most protected and most threatened groups of animals. They require warm, clear, shallow water within the “photic” zone of the ocean, that is, shallow enough for sunlight to penetrate. This is because their tissues contain algae that live symbiotically with the coral, metabolizing carbon dioxide discarded by the coral and producing energy that helps the coral grow. Unfortunately, warm, shallow water, usually near the coast, is also where people like to play and work – for commercial and recreational fishing and boating, swimming, scuba diving, etc., - and which is also susceptible to run-off from septic systems and fertilized golf courses.

Anyway, back to our fossil. This is Astrocoenia calixtoensis (paratype** no. PRI 3769), named by John W. Wells*** (a Cornellian and student of Gilbert Harris) in 1934. The species was named for its locality, Loma Calixto near Nuevitas, Camaguey Province, Cuba. The ending “-ensis” on the name tells us that the word is a patronym named after a place. The original paper (in Bulletins of American Paleontology, vol. 20, no. 70B) says that the specimens were collected by Norman Weisbord another Cornellian and Harris student. [Harris students were a very strong force in PRI’s early days, and one academic “grandchild” of Harris (a student of one of his students) is still a member and Trustee of the organization.] Astrocoenia is apparently so far still known only from Cuba. As such, it is called an “endemic” species, that is, restricted to only one place. Endemic species are often the most fragile ecologically – we assume that something in their physiology or mode of life prevents them from spreading further geographically. So if anything happens to that particular environment, the species could be in real trouble.

PRI honors the author of this species, John Wells, by its student grant called the John W. Wells Grants-in-Aid of Research Program. This annual award supports collections-based research in any field of paleontology with up to $500 to assist with the student’s visit to PRI to use the collections. PRI has one of the largest collections of invertebrate fossils, including corals, in North America.

*For other corals, see Fossils of the Week 8/26/09 - Heliophyllum halli and 8/6/09 – Coral.
**See 10/14/09 - Atrypa aperanta Crickmay for a definition of paratype specimens.
***For more about John W. Wells, see Fossil of the Week 12/22/09 – Ichthyodorulite (Fish Spine).

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

The Science Underneath the Marcellus Shale...

2010-05-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

PRI Receives National Science Foundation Award
to do Public Outreach on Marcellus Gas Drilling

The Paleontological Research Institution and its Museum of the Earth (PRI), along with colleagues in the department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (EAS) at Cornell University and Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE), have been awarded nearly $100K from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The award will provide resources to promote public understanding of science and the relative risk associated with natural gas drilling, and to help stakeholders who might consider leasing their land for drilling make informed decisions based on existing scientific evidence.

This award from NSF will allow PRI and its partners to continue the work started by CCE and to expand on them in order to reach a much broader audience across New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. Over the past year, CCE initiated an outreach campaign that has included a website, "Natural Gas Resource Development Center" (gasleasing.cce.cornell.edu), webinar presentations, and workforce investment and regional planning workshops. PRI is a partner within this outreach team, providing outreach on the earth science aspects of the issues. CCE also provides information about potential water and land use impacts, leasing, local and state regulations, workforce development, municipal officer leadership training, and rural development strategies.

"Our outreach campaign has strived to provide objective information, not for or against gas development, but rather aiming to help stakeholders make scientifically informed decisions about their land and communities," stated Dr. Robert Ross, associate director for outreach at PRI. "Part of our outreach effort has been and will continue to make the distinction between a neutral and advocacy role. It became very clear in 2008 that this was going to become a 'hot-button' issue for our communities. When we began talking to the public in 2009 we knew that we needed more resources to make this outreach initiative effective and to provide the guidance and scientific background these stakeholders needed. This award allows us to provide the much-needed information for these stakeholders to make the best informed decisions for themselves, their properties and their communities"

The outreach effort will be coordinated by a project team comprised of Dr. Robert Ross, associate director for outreach at PRI and an adjunct assistant professor in the department of EAS, Cornell University; Trisha Smrecak, evolution and climate change projects manager, PRI; Dr. Terry Jordan, professor of Geology in the department of EAS, Cornell University; and Dr. Larry Brown, chair and the Sidney Kaufman professor of Geophysics chair in the department of EAS, Cornell University. The CCE Marcellus Team is led by Dr. Rod Howe, assistant director for community and economic vitality at Cornell Cooperative Extension. Outreach efforts planned include:

A user-friendly guide to drilling in the Marcellus Shale with clear explanations of the multitude of issues surrounding the debate. Information will be available in print as a booklet and pamphlets summarizing content of individual chapters, and online (at museumoftheearth.org), with chapters available to download.

A network providing a comprehensive, cohesive source for the scientific information surrounding the Marcellus Shale, including geology, water resources, energy, and technology, through establishing relationships with researchers doing work in the Marcellus Shale and other tight shale deposits throughout the U.S. Particular emphasis will be placed on integrating geology and hydrology (water) research, as these comprise the largest environmental concerns.

Forums to selected communities in NY and in PA, WV, and OH, about the economic and environmental impacts of drilling in “tight shales” like the Marcellus Shale. It will include communication with government officials in affected states, including where research is still being undertaken to examine potential impacts.

Dr. Howe believes, "working with local government officials and community task forces has identified the need for ongoing education focused on different energy development scenarios and the potential impacts on communities."

During this past year the outreach team held a series of public sessions broadly covering gas drilling in communities around the Southern Tier of New York state. They focused on the Marcellus Shale geology, the regional environmental impacts of this type of drilling, the potential positive and negative socio-economic impacts of drilling, and information concerning property leasing.

The issue of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale is an extremely complex one. There are a number of interdisciplinary and competing interests. These include producing natural resources while balancing environmental concerns, global and regional interest in a relatively clean energy source compared to local concerns for the socioeconomic fabric of communities, and degradation of regional landscapes. Quality-of-life concerns about noise, air, and water pollution balanced against economic growth from increased business, and even concerns of limited energy resources vs. limited water resources must be considered by people in the region affected by Marcellus Shale drilling.

For further information or to learn about PRI's position on the Marcellus shale gas drilling visit www.museumoftheearth.org/outreach.php.

Fossil of the Week

2010-05-12T12:34:00.000-07:00

5/12/10 – Colombian Brachiopod

Everyone loves brachiopods, and this is a really nice one. It is Brachyspirifera palmerae, named from the Devonian of Colombia, South America, by Kenneth Caster* in 1939. It is named after Katherine Palmer** (remember the “-ae” ending on a patronym*** tells us that the species was named after a woman). This fossil is an external mold, like a footprint that you might leave in wet sand. So we only see external shape, and none of the original animal is fossilized.

The most startling feature of this (and in my opinion, many other brachiopods) is the central rib or sulcus, which is thicker than those to the left and right. This is the midline of the brachiopod and signals the most obvious difference between a two-shelled brachiopod and a two-shelled clam (or bivalve). The midline of a bivalve is along the hinge line, and each valve lies on the side of the clam. In a brachiopod, one valve is on top (dorsal) and one on the bottom (ventral) of the animal. So the symmetry is completely different. The reason for the brachiopod’s central rib or sulcus, which is mirrored by a central sulcus or rib in the other valve, is for the attachment of internal structures, especially muscles and the internal lophophore, the bilobed feeding organ of the brachiopod. We can tell from the direction of this central feature that this imprint (the holotype****) is the dorsal valve of the specimen; all other specimens in the original material are also molds, but show us features of the external ventral valve, the internal surface of the dorsal valve, and many fine surface details.

*For more about the author, Kenneth Caster, see Fossil of the Week 5/5/10 – Bradfordoceras.

**For more about Katherine Palmer, see Fossil of the Week 2/3/10 – A Rib-less Wentletrap.

***For the definition of patronym, see Fossil of the Week 1/20/10 – Texas Scallop.

****For a definition of holotype, see Fossil of the Week 8/19/09 - Cerithium gainesensis.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

Museum of the Earth provides Scientist-in-Residence to Fall Creek Elementary School

2010-05-10T08:01:00.000-07:00

(Museum of the Earth's Chris Besemer shows
Mr. Bell's first grade class a cast of a Mastodon tusk.)

Four staff members from the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) and its Museum of the Earth have been named “Scientists-in- Residence” for Fall Creek Elementary School. The four scientists are Dr. Carlyn Buckler, Dr. Richard Kissel, Chris Besemer, M.S., and Sara Auer, M.S.

The purpose of the program is to provide all students in grades K-5 with equal access to a scientist to answer their questions and get them more involved in their science classes. A concerned PTA member who noticed that science fairs were not enough to involve all students first approached the Museum of the Earth with the idea for this program. The school had previously done an “Artist-in-Residence” program that proved helpful in getting students excited about art, so it was suggested that the idea be adapted to aid the science program.

"We just finished our first week with the students and it was a great success," stated Dr. Richard Kissel. "It's a fantastic opportunity to be able to work with the staff and students at Fall Creek Elementary. As a child, I was fascinated by fossils and other aspects of science, but my experience was limited to books and museum visits. While those resources were (and are still) tremendous for young minds, meeting with actual scientists is an opportunity that I would have loved. Our working with these students can really help foster a lifelong interest in the natural sciences."

The scientists will visit the school throughout the month of May to teach each grade about a different geological time period. Kindergarten students will be learning about dinosaurs, the first and second grades will be studying life during the ice age, grades three and four will be learning about the ancient seas, and fifth graders will be mentoring the first and second graders.

PRI scientists will visit each classroom two times per week to help teach and mentor the students via various science projects. When the scientists are not at the school, students will be working to put together a final research project that will be finished by the end of the school year and which will culminate everything they learned by working with the Scientist in Residence.

The Scientist in Residence program was made possible through a $3,000 grant from the Ithaca Public Education Initiative (IPEI) and $1,000 from the Fall Creek Elementary School PTA.

Fossil of the Week

2010-05-05T11:43:00.000-07:00

5/5/10 – Bradfordoceras

Bradfordoceras sinuosum is a straight-shelled nautiloid cephalopod, that is, a close relative of today’s Chambered Nautilus, which has an uncoiled shell. This is a member of the extinct order Orthocerida, which lived from the Early Ordovician Period (490 million years ago) to the Late Triassic Period (230 million years ago). Orthocerids were particularly common from the Ordovician to the Devonian Period – this species is Late Devonian in age, that is, approximately 365 million years old.

Like the modern Chambered Nautilus, the shell of Bradforoceras had internal chambers linked by a central tube called the siphuncle. Gas could be pumped through the tube from chamber to chamber, giving the animal a way to regulate its buoyancy (how well it could float) in the water column. Also like modern species, orthocerids used jet propulsion to quickly move from place to place, however their long, bulky shells and weak muscle attachments (detectable on some shells) make it unlikely that they were as agile as the Chambered Nautilus or their close relatives, the ammonoids. They probably fed on trilobites and other small arthropods.

This species, from Lewis Run, Pennsylvania, was named by Rousseau Flower* and Kenneth Caster in 1935, in Bulletins of American Paleontology no. 75, “The Cephalopod Fauna of the Conewango Series of the Upper Devonian in New York and Pennsylvania.” The paper included many new species, as well as the new genus Bradfordoceras and new family Pseudorthoceratidae to which this species belongs. Bradfordoceras was obviously named for “Bradford” but I was not able to find out whether this was a person or a place. This is the holotype** specimen and the PRI collection also has three paratypes*** of this species; other paratypes were deposited at the American Museum of Natural History (New York City) and Yale University’s Peabody Museum. These two museums are today among the largest and most important fossil mollusk repositories – a club to which PRI also belongs.

Kenneth E. Caster (1908-1992) was a well-known paleontologist at University of Cincinnati. He was a Gilbert Harris student, receiving his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1933. He served as President of the Paleontological Society, and three times as President of PRI. In 1975, his many students presented him with a Festschrift volume in honor of his 45 years of teaching. He was especially interested in echinoderms and arthropods. The Paleontological Society now presents student awards named after Ken Caster.

An interesting acknowledgement appears in the published paper. Recall that this was 1935, only three years after the founding of PRI: “…our type material will be securely housed and properly cared for in the fireproof vault of the Paleontological Research Institution which Professor [Gilbert] Harris has sponsored, to his everlasting credit. May this institution grow and prosper and ever increase in usefulness to students of paleobiology. May it also quicken interest in and appreciation for paleontologic research in the community in which it was established.” Although PRI no longer stores its type specimens in a fireproof vault (there are just too many!), I think that Professors Flower, Caster, and Harris would be pleased at our progress.

*See Fossil of the Week 11/19/09 - Virgoceras cancellatum for more about the author, Rousseau H. Flower.

**See Fossil of the Week 8/19/09 - Cerithium gainesensis for a definition of "holotype."

***See 10/14/09 - Atrypa aperanta Crickmay for a definition of paratype specimens.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

The Big Thaw...

2010-04-29T07:55:00.001-07:00

You are cordially invited to celebrate the beginning of spring at The Big Thaw, our 5th annual T.REX Alive Gala Fundraiser.

Join us at the Museum of the Earth on Saturday, May 1, 2010 from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. for a delightful evening that we are sure you’ll want to be a part of.

The evening will be catered by an Ithaca favorite, The Heights Cafe. Be sure to enjoy their excellent spreads throughout the Museum as you explore our silent auction. This year, with both our live and silent auctions we invite you to take a piece of the Museum home with you.

The event will also feature a special performance by The Chordials, one of Cornell University's premier a cappella groups. Writer Amy Dickinson (of the syndicated advice column "Ask Amy") will be the evening's guest emcee.

Learn more about the event, take a sneak peak at the auction, and purchase your tickets by clicking here.

Fossil of the Week

2010-04-28T12:59:00.001-07:00

4/28/10 – Freshwater Clam

Freshwater pearl mussels are a large and varied group, today consisting of six families within the taxonomic order Unionoida. Collectively, they are sometimes called naiads or freshwater clams. They are important ecologically (filtering water, providing food for muskrats and raccoons) and economically (as a source of natural and cultured pearls, and pearl buttons and inlay), and are today one of the most threatened invertebrate groups on Earth, having been reduced severely by pollution, dams, and the introduction of non-native species such as zebra mussels. Freshwater pearl mussels have proliferated most especially here, in eastern North America, but approximately 70% of their original 300 species are either extinct or classified as endangered or threatened today.

Unionoida has a long fossil history, back to the Triassic Period, more than 200 million years ago. Here is one relatively new example. This paratype* of Diplodon liddlei, described by Katherine Van Winkle Palmer** in 1941, is from the Pliocene of Ecuador. This fossil is actually a conglomerate of many fossils still embedded in rock. There are several pieces and several more impressions of a high-spired snail (you can see three whorls of one good one just below center on the rock). The Diplodon specimen that we are discussing is the light-yellow crescent-shaped piece along the bottom edge. Only half of the shell is present, but you can clearly see the most important feature of the species (and in fact for its entire family, the Hyriidae) – the wavy radial ribs that form a pretty, complex pattern on the shell. It was collected by, donated to PRI by, and is named for Ralph Alexander Liddle (1896-1963), who coauthored the geological description of this material with Katherine Palmer. Liddle was a geologist from Fort Worth, Texas, who worked for Standard Oil Company.*** He received his AB degree from Cornell University in 1918, having studied under Gilbert Harris. Liddle is perhaps best known for his 1928 book The Geology of Venezuela and Trinidad (J. P. MacGowan, Forth Worth), which was dedicated to Harris.

*The holotype and three additional paratype specimens are also in PRI’s collection. See 10/14/09 - Atrypa aperanta Crickmay for a definition of paratype specimens.

**See 2/3/10 – A Rib-less Wentletrap for more about Katherine Palmer.

***See 4/14/10 – Scallop Bed and 3/10/10 – The Hodson Collection for more about paleontologists working for commercial oil companies.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

MotE Cast

2010-04-27T10:53:00.001-07:00

Why Darwin Still Matters by Dr. Warren Allmon

A Field Trip to Fall Creek Gorge...

2010-04-23T08:41:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, April 21, 2010 PRI's Rob Ross, Trisha Smrecak, Richard Kissel, Sara Auer and Chris Besemer lead 50 7th grade girls from New York City on a tour of the Fall Creek Gorge on Cornell's campus. After the gorge tour, the group visited the museum and spent time at stations throughout the Museum. The above picture is just a glimpse of the kind of day it was.

Happy Earth Day!

2010-04-22T14:16:00.000-07:00

Fossil of the Week

2010-04-21T12:50:00.000-07:00

4/21/10 – Planktonic Snail

Typical snails, at least in the sea, are usually thought of as rather thick-shelled and lumbering, crawling slowly across the seafloor, grazing on algae or the occasional worm. This snail is absolutely none of that! This is a “heteropod” snail from the Eocene – it was (like its close relatives today) entirely planktonic (drifting mid-water in the ocean currents throughout its life, never settling on the bottom), with an extremely fragile, light-weight shell and a body modified for catching the currents. These and other holoplanktonic snails are sometimes called Sea Butterflies, referring to their wing-like appendages that flap in delicate swimming motions. Notice also how tiny the shell is – only about a half-centimeter across (that’s approximately 3/16 of an inch) – keeping it again very lightweight. In life, the shell and animal were probably almost transparent, as are many members of the zooplankton, to avoid being seen by visual predators such as fish or squid. Assuming that it lived like its congeners today, it was itself a veracious predator, with large eyes to spot likewise delicate prey in dim light and a huge snout equipped with a ribbon of chitinous fang-like teeth. That’s another reason to be transparent – to avoid being seen as one approaches its prey! Good images and descriptions of the remarkable image-forming eyes and sharp teeth of this and other heteropods are found on a Tree of Life webpage (http://tolweb.org/Carinarioidea).

This is Atlanta eocenica, named by PRI’s second director, Katherine Van Winkle Palmer*, in 1937 in her massive, 730-page monograph, “The Claibornian Scaphopoda, Gastropoda and Dibranchiate Cephalopoda of the Southern United States.” It is the holotype** (PRI 3383) from the Lower Claiborne Formation (Eocene) at Moseley’s Ferry, Texas. At the time of its description, it was the only Atlanta species known earlier than the Miocene (therefore the oldest Atlanta in the fossil record), and was the only one known with sculptured early whorls; the significance of this last character is not really known. Most species of Atlanta today are cosmopolitan in tropical and subtropical seas, that is, they are pretty much found worldwide in warmer waters. The Tree of Life website has a very complete description, with beautiful images, of all of the living species of Atlanta (see http://tolweb.org/Atlanta/28752), presented by one of the world’s experts on this group, Dr. Roger Seapy at California State University, Fullerton.

*See Fossil of the Week 2/3/10 – A Rib-less Wentletrap for more about Katherine Palmer.

**See Fossil of the Week 8/19/09 - Cerithium gainesensis for a definition of "holotype."

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

Celebrate Earth Day with the Museum of the Earth

2010-04-20T06:45:00.001-07:00

Earth Day Programming
This Earth Day celebrate the planet with Museum of the Earth!

Saturday, April 17
Join us at Syracuse's Rosamond Gifford Zoo's Party for the Planet.

Thursday, April 22 - Noon
PRI's Trisha Smrecak will give a lecture "Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future" at TC3 in Dryden, NY.

Thursday, April 22 - 6 p.m. reception, 6:30 p.m. lecture
An evening lecture at the Museum of the Earth entitled "The Revolution in Sustainability Education" by Peter Bardaglio, senior fellow at Second Nature, a non-profit committed to the promotion of sustainability in higher education. Tickets $10. Learn more by visiting our website.

Saturday, April 24 - 10 a.m. to Noon
Earth centric activities for the whole family at the Museum of the Earth

Satruday, April 24 - Noon
A special Natural History at Noon lecture in the Museum Classroom given by PRI's Warren Allmon, Rob Ross, and Trisha Smrecak, authors of the new book Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future. The book will be available for purchase and a book signing will occur after the talk.

All Earth Day events at the Museum of the Earth are made possible by the continued generosity of Wegmans!

Scandal at the Museum of the Earth...

2010-04-16T07:21:00.000-07:00

Join us at the Museum on Saturday at noon to learn the scandalous details of the Philandering Housewrens! Yes, you read that right -- birds that cheat! We hope you can make it!

"Philandering Females: investigating the potential benefits of extra-pair mating in housewrens" with Anna Forsman, Cornell University

House wrens, like other socially monogamous birds, form pair-bonds between males and females for the purpose of rearing offspring. However, both sexes have been found to engage in extra-pair copulations with other individuals, resulting in broods of mixed paternity. Males benefit directly through increased number of offspring sired, whereas females do not because of limitations on the number of eggs she can produce and care for at any given time. Therefore it has been hypothesized that females may instead gain indirect genetic benefits from extra-pair males that increase the quality of the resulting offspring. In this talk I will discuss the results of my Master’s work investigating condition and immune responsiveness of nestlings in relation to paternity in a population of house wrens breeding in central Illinois.

Did You Know?

2010-04-15T12:38:00.000-07:00

This week is the National Environmental Education Week (EE Week)! What a great thing. It really is important to celebrate the environment. EE Week is celebrated annually the week prior to Earth Day. Earth Day is celebrated around the world on April 22. What are your plans?

Here's what's happening at the Museum of the Earth:

Earth Day Programming
This Earth Day celebrate the planet with Museum of the Earth!

Saturday, April 17
Join us at Syracuse's Rosamond Gifford Zoo's Party for the Planet.

Thursday, April 22 - Noon
PRI's Trisha Smrecak will give a lecture "Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future" at TC3 in Dryden, NY.

Thursday, April 22 - 6 p.m. reception, 6:30 p.m. lecture
An evening lecture at the Museum of the Earth entitled "The Revolution in Sustainability Education" by Peter Bardaglio, senior fellow at Second Nature, a non-profit committed to the promotion of sustainability in higher education. Tickets $10. Learn more by visiting our website.

Saturday, April 24 - 10 a.m. to Noon
Earth centric activities for the whole family at the Museum of the Earth

Satruday, April 24 - Noon
A special Natural History at Noon lecture in the Museum Classroom given by PRI's Warren Allmon, Rob Ross, and Trisha Smrecak, authors of the new book Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future. The book will be available for purchase and a book signing will occur after the talk.

Fossil of the Week

2010-04-14T12:04:00.001-07:00

4/14/10 – Scallop Bed

This is a fossil scallop, or rather three scallops, all of the species Pecten macdonaldi described by Axel Olsson in 1922. It is from the Miocene of Gatun, in Panama’s Canal Zone.

The most interesting thing to me about this specimen is that it is a snapshot of part of a scallop bed - three specimens are resting one on top of another, captured in this position by the lucky process of fossilization. Empty scallop shells (and other bivalves) often collect in undersea swales (“valleys” in the sand plain) after the animals have died, a remnant of large congregations of scallops that hang out together when the scallops are alive. Baby scallops, which are planktonic at first, need to sense chemical signals from the shells of adults (either living or dead) in order to settle and metamorphose into juvenile scallops. One unfortunate thing about the commercial scallop industry in this country is that it usually puts its shell waste (after living scallops are collected by trawl, brought ashore, and the scallop meat is removed for market) into landfills instead of returning them to the scallop grounds. It is obvious why they do not do this – lugging the empty shells back out to sea would cost time and fuel. However, over time, fewer and fewer scallop shells lie on the sea floor, making it harder and harder for planktonic scallop larvae to cue on a place to settle. As a result, many of the larvae die before they find an acceptable place to settle. In this way, many scallop fisheries have already been depleted to the point that harvesting is no longer commercially viable.

Pecten macdonaldi is treated now as a subspecies of Flabellipecten gatunensis, a scallop distributed in Miocene and Oligocene deposits from Mexico through Venezuela. Its proper name nowadays is therefore Flabellipecten gatunensis macdonaldi (Olsson, 1922). Taxonomists put parentheses around the author’s name and original date of description to signify when a species is now placed in a genus (the first word in the taxonomic name) other than that originally used. Why was it moved from Pecten to Flabellipecten? Well, taxonomists often redefine genera and families, usually based on new collections and/or new analyses. Originally, the genus Pecten literally included all scallops, but at some point, some expert decided that Pecten should be restricted to scallops of a certain appearance, and so other genera were created for scallops that did not fit that revised description. Scallop taxa (genera and species) are most often distinguished on the basis of overall shape and inflation of the shell, the relative shape and size of the two “ears” or auricles, and the characteristics of the radial ribs – that is, whether the ribs are wide or narrow, spiny or smooth, closely or widely spaced, etc. This species is relatively flat (not greatly inflated), with ears of equal size, and low, smooth ribs with relatively wide interspaces. Scallops are one of the largest families of Bivalvia (the molluscan class containing clams, oysters, scallops, mussels, and their relatives), and one of the most popular, with brightly colored, large shells to delight the eyes of professional malacologists and collectors alike.

This specimen in sandstone, a paratype*, was collected during Axel Olsson’s fieldwork in Panama and Costa Rica as part of his duties with Sinclair Exploration Company, in cooperation with the Costa Rica Oil Corporation. Remember that Sinclair Oil Corporation is the one that uses a sauropod dinosaur silhouette on their logo. Sinclair was founded in 1916, so this exploration work was very early in their history – the company was only a few years old. Sinclair is still in business, based out of Salt Lake City, Utah, and still uses the green dinosaur – dubbed “Dino” – on its corporate logo. As frequent readers might recall, oil companies once employed paleontologists and relied upon fossils to identify likely places to drill for oil – such was apparently the case here. Olsson spent most of his career in the petroleum industry.** This scallop species was named after Dr. D. F. MacDonald of the Sinclair Exploration Company, who was probably part of the expedition, perhaps even its leader. The original description of this species was published in Bulletins of American Paleontology when its founder, Gilbert Harris (who would found PRI in 1932), was still a geologist at Cornell University; Olsson received an Associates Degree from Cornell under Harris’ guidance in 1913.

*See 10/14/09 - Atrypa aperanta Crickmay for a definition of paratype specimens.

**See Fossil of the Week 11/5/09 - Echinocaris punctata for more about Axel Olsson.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

This Weekend at the Museum of the Earth...

2010-04-09T07:21:00.000-07:00

A Night at the Museum of the Earth
Friday, April 9 - Saturday, April 10

Have you ever wondered what happens at Museum of the Earth when the lights go out at night? Now you have a chance to find out! Come join us for a slumber party full of fun and educational activities. The night includes a flashlight tour through the Museum, a scavenger hunt for a chance to get up close and personal with our specimens, and more before you snuggle in for the night under our Right Whale skeleton! We will provide bedtime snacks and breakfast in the morning. You provide a sleeping bag and a sense of adventure!

Members: $30 for children, $20 for adult
Nonmembers: $40 for children, $30 for adult
Ages 5-12 welcome, 1 adult per 3 children
Register Today by emailing batman@museumoftheearth.org

Creation (The Movie) at Cinemapolis with a Talk Back with PRI's Dr. Warren Allmon
April 9, 2010
7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Join Dr. Warren Allmon at Cinemapolis in Ithaca for a screening of the movie that some creationists DON'T WANT YOU TO SEE! After the showing Dr. Allmon will be leading a discussion on how Darwin reconciled his theories with his faith and family. Warren is the Director of the Paleontological Research Institution and its Museum of the Earth and he is also the Hunter R. Rawlings III Professor of Paleontology at Cornell University.

For more information and admission prices please visit: www.cinemapolis.org

Cayuga Archaeology in Your Backyard
Saturday, April 10
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Jack Rossen, Associate Professor & Chair, Anthropology, Ithaca College

Ten years of archaeological research around Cayuga Lake is revealing new information on the Cayuga lifeway and the Haudenosuanee (Iroquois) Confederacy. This talk describes excavations conducted at an early Cayuga village dating between A.D. 900 and 1100. This work is most important for promoting collaborative research with Native people, countering politically motivated historical revision and supporting repatriation of human remains and artifacts from museums. Included with Museum admission.

Spend the Night at the Museum?

2010-04-08T12:52:00.000-07:00

A Night at the Museum of the Earth

Friday, April 9 - Saturday, April10

Have you ever wondered what happens at Museum of the Earth when the lights go out at night? Now you have a chance to find out! Come join us for a slumber party full of fun and educational activities. The night includes a flashlight tour through the Museum, a scavenger hunt for a chance to get up close and personal with our specimens, and more before you snuggle in for the night under our Right Whale skeleton! We will provide bedtime snacks and breakfast in the morning. You provide a sleeping bag and a sense of adventure!

Members: $30 for children, $20 for adult

Nonmembers: $40 for children, $30 for adult

Ages 5-12 welcome, 1 adult per 3 children

Fossil of the Week

2010-04-07T13:02:00.001-07:00

4/7/10 – Lobolith

Think you know crinoids? Well, here’s one that you might not know about. This is a lobolith from the Silurian-Devonian boundary (ca. 444 million years ago) of Oklahoma. A lobolith is a float at the surface of the ocean – kind of like a bobber that a fisherman would use – from which a stalked crinoid hangs, upside down, spending its life as a pelagic organism. This makes perfect sense – what better place to gather plankton, than hanging freely in the water? It is unusual but not rare for normally-benthic organisms to have a close relative in the plankton. Gastropod (snails) have one – the Blue Ocean Slug, Glaucus atlanticus, is a pelagic nudibranch or sea slug.

Most crinoids (Phylum Echinodermata, Class Crinoidea, AKA “feather stars”) – both living and extinct, and either stalked or sessile – are flower-like benthic animals that filter-feed from the bottom of the ocean, usually attached by a holdfast to a rocky perch with their feathery-armed “crowns” extended into the water column, capturing plankton as it drifts by. [FYI - Some crinoids are not as sedentary as you might think, and have been observed to “walk” from rock to rock.] Planktonic crinoids (family Scyphocrinitidae) occur almost worldwide at the Silurian-Devonian boundary formations of Europe, Asia, North Africa, and North America. These are the only known pelagic members of the Crinoidea, past or present. This specimen, which is approximately 3 inches (75 mm) in width, has been halved – the surface facing you is part of the interior, showing several of the spaces inside the lobolith that were filled with gas or air to provide buoyancy.

You might ask, how did this adaptation evolve? The answer is: we do not know for sure. One hypothesis is an intermediate “pseudoplanktonic” stage or a crinoid that lived attached to floating driftwood; we have such fossils and they were also really, really huge – stalks 20 meters (60 feet) long with crowns one meter (3 feet) in diameter. Fossil evidence also suggests that the life history of lobolith-bearers includes a juvenile that remains attached to its parent until its lobolith is of sufficient size to float independently. Another obvious question is: why wasn’t this life strategy successful enough to persist until today? Again we do not know for certain, but it could have something to do with the evolution of fishes, which experienced their greatest radiation in the Devonian – perhaps floating crinoids were just too delicious to endure!

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

Notes from the Field -- Sara Auer

2010-04-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

It's important as staff members of PRI to make sure we get out into the field. In light of all the attention on the Marcellus hydrofracture horizontal drilling debate I've been trying to learn about the geology of the Marcellus Shale. Yesterday I finally got to see it for myself at the Seneca Stone Quarry (with prior permission of course). The Seneca Quarry is a very interesting mix of limestone, sandstone, shale, and even an ash layer here and there from pre-historic volcanic eruptions. The Marcellus Shale sticks out with its striking black coloring, which is due to its high organic content. The shale has many color gradations from lighter-less carbon rich to dark black bands. Some of pieces of the shale that I picked up even had lenses of pyrite or fools gold inside. For me at least, I can read all the geology papers in the world but they don't sink in until I can actually touch what it is I'm reading about. Here's a few pictures so you can see what I saw!

Myself at and outcrop of Marcellus Shale

A view of the Seneca Stone Quarry.
Marcellus shale is visible in the foreground while the wall in the background is limestone.

Marcellus Shale-up close and personal with a rock hammer for scale.

Climate in Your Backyard

2010-04-05T06:49:00.001-07:00

Dino Bunny?

2010-04-02T07:54:00.000-07:00

Look who's ready for tomorrows Dino Eggstravaganza at the Museum of the Earth -- none other than Cecil himself!!!!

He's already decked out for the occasion. Do you like his bunny ears? (Special thanks to Cecil's good friend Alicia for making him those super special ears!)

Are you ready for tomorrow? Got your basket? Here are some Dino Egg Hunt Tips:

Wear clothes with pockets -- this way you can stuff yourself full with eggs after your basket is full!
No pushing -- there are 100s of eggs hidden throughout the Museum you will find tons. (I promise that you will get a prize no matter what!)
Have Fun! How often do you get to go on a hunt for dinosaur eggs? I'm guessing not often -- so enjoy it. I know I will!

See you tomorrow...

Fossil of the Week

2010-04-01T13:38:00.000-07:00

24 March 2010 – Irregular Heart Urchin

Echinolampas nuevitasensis, named by Norman Weisbord* in 1934 is this week’s fossil of the week. It is the shell of a sea urchin (Phylum Echinodermata, Class Echinoidea). The shell, called a “test,” of a sea urchin, living or extinct, is roundish and in life bears many small spines. The word “urchin” is an old name for a hedgehog – the connection seems clear! Urchins move quite slowly, on a series of tiny tube feet run by a hydraulic like circulatory system. They graze on marine algae using shelly mouthparts that are located in the center of its bottom side. Sea urchins are preyed upon by sea otters and fish, and humans harvest them for their “corals” or “roe” (ovaries + eggs), which are served as a delicacy in many parts of the world.

This is an irregular urchin (meaning asymmetrical), more properly called a sea biscuit or heart urchin. Living representatives of this type of urchin burrow below the sand. The five-fold symmetry of echinoderms (called “pentamerism”; most evident in a starfish) is expressed in an urchin as the five rays faintly visible on the test. The earliest sea urchins date back to the Ordovician Period (450 million years ago), but many of the oldest fossils are merely isolated spines or pieces of test from crushed individuals.

This specimen (PRI 3829) is the holotype**, from the Upper Eocene of Camaguey Province, Cuba. It is 54 mm in greatest diameter, or a little over 2 inches. It was originally described in Bulletins of American Paleontology, volume 20, no. 70C. Nuevitas, which this species is named after, is a port city on the northeastern coast of Cuba. [Hint: the “-ensis” at the end of the species name tells us that it was named after a place. It literally translates as “from.” So this is the Echinolampas “from Nuevitas.”]

*See Fossil of the Week 11/24/09 - Arca zebra abisiniana for more about the author Norman Weisbord.

**See Fossil of the Week 8/19/09 - Cerithium gainesensis for a definition of "holotype."

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

A Dino Eggstravaganza?

2010-04-01T13:16:00.000-07:00

DinoEggstravaganza
Saturday, April 3
11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Join us for a Dino Eggstravaganza! Bring a basket and go on a Dino Egg hunt in the Museum.

Egg Hunt for children under 5 in the Ray Van Houtte Museum Classroom
Egg Hunt for children 5 and older in our permanent exhibition space
Experiments and a touch table in the Borg Warner Gallery

This event made possible with support from Egner Architectural Associates. Learn more about the event here. Included with Museum admission, free for members.

I Got the Surprise - the Surpise of My Life and You'll Never Guess Where?

2010-03-29T11:19:00.000-07:00

Chicago!

I couldn't resist quoting an old Judy Garland classic, but it really wasn't a surprise. Dr. Paula Mikkelsen, Associate Director for Science at PRI is "on location" in Chicago doing some research on her BivAToL project and she sent home a great picture from The Field Museum of Natural History. Can you guess what that picture is? Come on guess!

Well OK -- it's a picture of one of the first casts of Museum of the Earth's very own Hyde Park Mastodon. How cool is that?

The cast of our Hyde Park Mastodon is part of the Field Museums newest temporary (and soon to travel) exhibition entitled: Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age on display through September 6, 2010.

PRI's Hyde Park Mastodons skeleton is 95% complete and is one of the most complete skeletons on display in North America. If you can't make it to the Museum of the Earth here in Ithaca to see the original be sure to make it to the Field or see it "on the road."

The Award Goes To...

2010-03-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

Jim Dufoe surrounded by Middle Ordovician dolomite in a quarry just west of Beloit, Wisconsin.

The Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) will be awarding its annual Katherine Palmer Award to Jim Dufoe today, Friday, March 26 at the Mid-Atlantic Paleontology Societies (MAPS) annual Fossil Expo at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois.

Each year, PRI recognizes an individual who is not a professional paleontologist for the excellence of their contributions to the field. The Katherine Palmer Award is named after PRI’s second director, Katherine Palmer, who held avocational paleontologists in high regard and collaborated with many during her long career.

Dufoe is an avid collector of Ordovician fossils in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. He has an especially good eye for finding unusual fossils such as chitons – multivalved mollusks also known as polyplacophorans or “coat-of-mail shells.” Over the past 15 years, he has worked closely with Dr. John Pojeta Jr. of the U.S. Geological Survey and a member emeritus of PRI's Board of Directors, who nominated Jim for this award and named a chiton species after Jim in 2003. Jim is also active with local colleges and museums and has organized fossil and mineral collections at Beloit College and Milwaukee Public Museum.

Congratulations to Jim for an award that is very well deserved!

Beverly J. Martin Students Visit the Museum

2010-03-24T11:42:00.000-07:00

Tracking Climate in Your Backyard

2010-03-22T13:01:00.001-07:00

4-H Educators working on a weather activity at PRI's 2009 workshop.

More than twenty 4-H educators and volunteers from across New York state will be meeting at the Paleontological Research Institution's (PRI) Museum of the Earth from March 23-24 to take part in a citizen science initiative called Tracking Climate in Your Backyard. These educators will be introduced to a new curriculum on climate and weather created by PRI's Global Change Project manager Trisha Smercak.

Tracking Climate in Your Backyard is a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project that seeks to engage youth in real science through the collection, recording, and understanding of precipitation data in the forms of rain, hail, and snow. The partners in this collaboration are the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) and its Museum of the Earth, New York State 4-H, and the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS). The latter is a citizen science project that has participants record precipitation measurements in an online database.

"We teach the teachers," stated Dr. Rob Ross, associate director for outreach at PRI. "The participants in these trainings go back to their home groups and use the tools and the curriculum that we've created to teach their constituents about weather and climate in ways that best fits with their needs." Nancy Robertson, a 4-H educator in Saratoga County and is attending next weeks workshop for the second year, believes that this program "fulfills a need in the local 4-H community." She goes on to say, "The information and activities have been useful. It has made me more secure in my knowledge of weather and sparked my interest to learn more. The basics of atmospheric pressure and temperature fluctuation are very important to understand, especially now."

The purpose of this project and its associated curriculum is to encourage youth, specifically ages 8-12, to better understand the scientific process by engaging in it themselves through the collection and understanding of meteorological data in their community. By following the precipitation measurement guidelines of CoCoRaHS, youth develop an understanding of scientific methods and standardization, and by recording their precipitation records (including recording the lack of precipitation), they recognize the importance of accurate data collection. Finally, by importing their data into a national database, they can see how their community precipitation data compares to communities near and far. Their data is then analyzed by scientists to better understand the spatial variability of precipitation and develop warning systems for flooding and other natural disasters. In particular, hail is very poorly understood in the scientific community, and data provided by public in communities like ours can help illuminate better scientific understanding of hail and of meteorology in general.

Trisha Smercak of PRI believes "that just the idea that youth know that they are contributing to a scientific cause can be tremendously influential.” This workshop, now in its second year, along with this new curriculum gives these participating informal educators the tools they need to go back into their communities and give young people the opportunity to fully participate in real world scientific research.

Fossil of the Week

2010-03-19T07:52:00.000-07:00

17 March 2010 – Goose Barnacle

This interesting looking fossil is part of a goose barnacle, or stalked barnacle (Phylum Arthropoda, Infraclass Cirripedia, Order Pedunculata). It is the holotype specimen* (PRI 3412) of Euscalpellum crassissimum Withers, 1951, from the Upper Eocene, of Tierra del Fuego, at the southernmost tip of South America.

Like all barnacles, this is a sessile crustacean that filters food particles from seawater by fanning the water with modified legs.** Unlike more typical barnacles, goose barnacles have a long neck (hence the common name) called a peduncle, the base of which is attached to the substrate. Shelly plates cover the body of the barnacle at the other end of the peduncle. Interestingly, this fossil species is so far apparently known only from its plated peduncle, but it’s a very large peduncle, 104 mm (more than 4 inches) long in the holotype. So when alive, this specimen was likely over 6 inches in length.

Living goose barnacles are eaten by humans in Portugal and Spain, as an expensive delicacy known as percebes.

*See Fossil of the Week 8/19/09 - Cerithium gainesensis for a definition of "holotype."

**See Fossil of the Week for 2/17/10, Big-Mouthed Barnacle!, for more general information about barnacles.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen

Exploring the Evolution of Biodiversity at the Museum of the Earth

2010-03-16T11:51:00.000-07:00

The Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) and its Museum of the Earth unveil their latest exhibit -- One Fish, Two Fish, Old Fish, New Fish*: Exploring the Evolution of Biodiversity which details how new species arise through a process called speciation. This exhibit was designed and developed in cooperation with Dr. Richard Harrison, chair and professor in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University, and is the continuation of a nearly $700K grant that was awarded Harrison from the National Science Foundation.

Earth is home to nearly 2-million species, that we know of, and countless more await discovery! Many scientists think that the actual number might be over 10-million, and if you add extinct species to the equation that number reaches into the 100's of millions! Species are the raw materials for biodiversity— the variety of life, both past and present. This includes humans, along with plants, animals, fungi, and microbes ¬— from bacteria to grass, insects to cats, and dogs to dinosaurs.

As we look at all the diversity of life around us we are constantly reminded —speciation happens! This new and exciting exhibit at the Museum of the Earth explains what a species is and how new species evolve—it looks at what creates barriers to gene flow—at the ways species diverge or change enough to become new species—and at how new species endure. What would an exhibit about new life be without live specimens— chirping crickets, cichlids, and lizards help us tell the tale. Cases of taxidermied specimens (spiders, scorpions, and finchs), along with fabulous fossils from PRI's world-class collection (snails, trilobites, eurypterids, and bivalves) help pull the story through time.

Leaping Lizards! Visitors to the Museum of the Earth are checking
out some of the live specimens on display in our temporary exhibit.

"It's been fantastic working with Dr. Harrison and his team at Cornell," stated Dr. Sarah Chicone, director of exhibits at PRI. "We are in a really unique position because we get such high quality scientific content from our relationship with researchers at Cornell University which then gives us the opportunity to make that same high quality content accessible to the public in a way that is understandable for people on all levels. For this exhibit we were able to work with other departments and researchers at Cornell through relationships with Dr. Kerry Shaw from Neurobiology and Behavior, and Dr. Linda Rayor from Entomology, along with Dr. Richard Glor a Cornell alum and now in the Biology department at the University of Rochester. Their help and guidance aided us in making this exhibit fun and exciting."

This exhibit celebrates the International Year of Biodiversity. 2010 has been declared by the United Nations as the International Year of Biodiversity. It is a celebration of life on Earth and of the value of biodiversity for our lives. The major goal of the year is to encourage everyone to become educated and take action in 2010 to safeguard the variety of life on earth, what is commonly called “biodiversity”. To that end, PRI has committed its 2010 programming, its research, and its temporary exhibits to this theme.

*ONE FISH, TWO FISH, RED FISH, BLUE FISH™ & © 1960 Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Gurche Reconstructions | Smithsonian Human Origins Program

2010-03-12T11:51:00.000-08:00

Photo courtsey of Rachel Philipson Photography & Design

Check out this video of PRI's Artist-in-Residence as he discusses his latest work set to go on display at the Smithsonian on March 17!
Gurche Reconstructions | Smithsonian Human Origins Program