Geobulletin alpha

Wooster Geologists explore Bristol, England 

Bristol, England — Cassidy Jester (’17) and I spent the day in Bristol as we await our trip to London tomorrow. We began a rainy, gray morning in the harbor region in museums and historical ships. We were turned away from the Cathedral because it was, naturally enough, Sunday morning. We did get a peek

Earth Science Week 2016: 8th – 16th October 

This year’s Earth Science Week is still more than four months away, but we’re already making plans! A 9 day long celebration of the geology all around us in the UK and Ireland, Earth Science Week is an opportunity for museums … Continue reading

An SV-POW! challenge: what is this vertebra? 

Here is a vertebra that Matt and I saw on our recent travels through Utah: I will explain in a subsequent post where we saw it, who gave us access, where and when it is from, and so on. For now, I want people’s gut reactions: what is

When evolution just gives up, part 4 

Go home Eremotherium laurillardi, you are drunk.

When evolution just gives up, part 2 

[Previously on SV-POW!] And now: Damn, Wedel, you really let yourself

When evolution just gives up 

Damn, Megalonyx jeffersonii, you really let yourself

This Dino Toy’s All Wrong! What’s Up With That!? 

With the exception of our feathered friends, dinosaurs are all but gone today. So what are the ways to connect to these long lost creatures? Well as a child I had three options — museums, media and models. Going to … Continue reading

October 29th will be #SEASLUG DAY!! 

Hypselodoris zephyra image by Steve Childs via Wikipedia ATTENTION all photographers, divers, bloggers, scientists, natural historians, citizen scientists, museums, zoological parks, aquaria, big ocean organizations, and other colorful mollusk enthusiasts (in no particular order)!  Let it be announced herein that October 29th of this year (Thursday) will be SEA SLUG DAY!!  #seaslugday

The First Dinosaur from Washington State 

The First Dinosaur from Washington State. 2015. PLoS One The fossil is 16.7 inches long and 8.7 inches wide. Because the fossil is incomplete, paleontologists aren't able to identify the exact theropod family or species it belonged to. However, Sidor and Peecook compared the fossil to other museums' specimens and were able to calculate that the complete femur would have been over 3 feet

The scale model of the AMNH apatosaurine skeleton, AMNH 460 

In a recent post I showed some photos of the mounted apatosaurine at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, AMNH 460, which Tschopp et al. (2015) regarded as an indeterminate apatosaurine pending further study. A lot of museums whose collections and exhibits go back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries

No love for Ichthyodectes? 

It seems like nearly every year a new book, film, or television program comes out featuring the long-dead seaway that covered most of the central part of North America back in the late Cretaceous. Invariably they have cameos featuring Xiphactinus, Cretoxyrhina, Protosphyraena, and even the "bait fish" Gillicus and Enchodus. They have mosasaurs, pterosaurs and even sea turtles. If you didn't follow the science closely, you'd understandably figure that's about all that lived in that shallow [...]

The American Museum Brontosaur - A History In Pictures 

The wooden model used to explore poses for the original brontosaur mount is now on display beside therevised mount at the AMNH. Photo by the author.Here's one more post to commemorate the revival of the name Brontosaurus for the beast formerly known as Apatosaurus excelsus. As I mentioned in my last post, the mounted skeleton of the so-called "Nine-Mile Quarry Brontosaur" at the American Museum of Natural History, while it may or may not actually be a Brontosaurus, is probably [...]

Founded This Day: The British Museum 

image From Today in Science History: In 1753, the British Museum was founded by an Act of Parliament. Since then, the museum has been collecting, conserving and studying millions of artifacts. The British Museum was among the first museums to recognize that in-house scientific expertise was essential, both for the care of its collections and for their proper interpretation. Its

Stromatolite at the Strasburg Museum 

The other fossil I saw at the eclectic and haphazardly-curated Strasburg Museum was this stromatolite. Top view: Side view: Probably this comes from the Cambrian-aged Conococheague Formation, although the Beekmantown Formation (early Ordovician) is another

A redesign for 2015 

With a new year comes a new design for LITC, keeping up with our roughly two year schedule for such things. I decided to go in a pop art direction this time around, after playing with different treatments, all centered around the new logo design. That logo, as revealed a few weeks back, is a sort of "back-to-basics" approach which places a big-headed chasmosaurine in a heart. When working on the header, I liked the idea of using multi-colored, comics-inspired panels and it worked nicely with a [...]

It’s Alive! Dr. Bakker Tells us how to make skeletons dance 

Some museums buy fossil-kits, all the bones drilled and filled with pipe fittings so that they click together to make the whole skeletal assembly. It’s quick. But if you have an anatomically sophisticated eye, and you scrutinize the kits, you’ll … Continue reading

Saying Good-bye to the Glaciers of Glacier National Park 

The view north from Logan Pass in Glacier National Park Make no mistake about it. Glacier National Park is one of the most spectacular parks in the United States, and indeed is one of my favorite places on planet Earth. That said, it's losing something important, and the change is profound. How many animals are in this picture? When I was a child, I loved museums, but I knew there was

Where'd Everyone Go? Why is it so Quiet? Dealing with Dinosaurs in Drumheller 

We continued our Northern Convergence exploration of British Columbia and Alberta by heading over the Great Plains for several hours to reach Drumheller, the self-proclaimed (and fairly reasonably so) Dinosaur capitol of the world. On a field trip, our students would normally expect to spend time in the field, but sometimes there are museums that simply must be seen. The Royal Tyrrell

Fossils at San Gimignano Italy 

My visit to Italy was mostly a vacation just to relax so I did not do much research to find museums or fossil/mineral sites to visit. I read that it is illegal to collect fossils in Italy and their museums have some odd schedules about being open. That said, I did keep my eyes open to geological features at places we stopped to visit. One town we spent a few hours at was San Gimignano, Italy.One of the walls had a stone block that had some fossils in it. The fossil I could see was a small [...]

iDigBio's Push for Digitization 

Some of you may have heard of a little group called iDigBio. It started a few years back with a big grant from NSF. It is working to help natural history collections around the United States (both university collections and museum collections) digitize their materials. I have worked with iDigBio on various projects over the last few years, and I wanted to extol their virtues here briefly.iDigBio (which stands for Integrated Digitized Biocollections) has been the first group I know of that has [...]