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EMSP SOAPBOX
By Tom Lee
Fall is in full swing and it’s time to get your last fossil trips in for the year. Speaking of field trips, Bruce Stinchcomb has volunteered to lead a trip to Cedar Creek on Sunday, November 5th (see details below). Additionally, for those that have the time and inclination to travel long distances, the Tucson Show occurs in late January, early February. This is the world’s best fossil show (also gems and minerals). Now is the time to make travel arrangements for this event. Finally, the club will be choosing its leadership for 2007 at November’s meeting, so please consider taking a leadership role for 2007.
Upcoming Events
Nov. 10-12--FENTON (ST. LOUIS), MISSOURI: 49th annual show; St. Louis Mineral & Gem Society; Stratford Inn, 800 S. Highway Dr., I-44 Bowles exit; Fri. 4-8, Sat. 10-7, Sun. 10-5; contact M. Perucca, 1307 Mystic Seaport, Fenton, MO 63026.
November Meeting (Friday, Nov. 10th, 2006). The focus of this meeting will be the election of officers for 2007. A speaker for November’s meeting had not been identified at the time of the publishing of the newsletter.
December Meeting:
Holiday party. Date and place to be discussed at
December’s meeting. By tradition, this event has occurred on the Saturday following the 2nd Friday of the month. The tentative date is therefore Dec 9th. Please keep this date open.
Need help using your GPS?
REI is holding a free clinic December 7th at 7pm the store on Brentwood Blvd. See www.rei.com for details. Registration is required at 314-918-1004.
1/26-2/6--TUCSON, ARIZONA: Show; J.O.G.S. International Exhibits; Tucson Expo Center, 3750 E. Irvington Rd.; Fri. 11-6; free admission; rough rock, polished rock, findings, finished jewelry, Brazilian gems and stones, amber, jewelry designers, minerals, fossils, mammoth bones and carvings; contact Vitaliy, 650 S. Hill St., Ste. 612, Los Angeles, CA 90014, (213) 629-3030; e-mail: ; Web site: www.jogsshow.com
1/27-2/10--TUCSON, ARIZONA: Show, "Arizona Mineral & Fossil Show"; Martin Zinn Expositions; five locations: The InnSuites Hotel, 475 N. Granada; The Mineral & Fossil Marketplace, 1333 N. Oracle Rd.; Clarion Hotel - Randolph Park, 102 N. Alvernon Way; Quality Inn, 1025 E. Benson Hwy.; Ramada Limited, 665 N. Freeway; 10-6 daily, 10-5 last day; free admission; more than 400 international dealers, free shuttle among locations, Artist Gallery at InnSuites Hotel; contact Martin Zinn Expositions, P.O. Box 665, Bernalillo, NM 87004-0665, fax (505) 867-0073; e-mail: ; Web site: www.mzexpos.com.
DUES ARE DUE
Our treasurer, Pete Smith will accept dues payment for a full year. Dues are $15.00 per household per year and are payable on the anniversary date printed on your newsletter address label. See Pete at the next meeting or mail a check (payable to Eastern Missouri Society for Paleontology) to:
EMSP
P.O. Box 220273
St. Louis, MO. 63122
Thanks!
Dr. Janis Driver Treworgy- Associate Professor and Program Chair of Geology, at Principia College eloquently detailed the ongoing excavation of a 17,000 year-old mammoth un-earthed right on the Elsah, Illinois campus. She described how she has turned the discovery into a class- complete with its own prep-lab and outreach program. The presentation was well attended and well received. This possibility of a field trip to get a closer look at the mammoth site at some point in the future was discussed.
November Meeting
The next meeting of the Eastern Missouri Society for Paleontology will be on Friday, November 10th, 2006 at 7:30 pm in room 203 of the new Earth & Planetary Sciences Building on the campus of Washington University. The Earth & Planetary Sciences building is on the southwest corner of Hoyt Drive and Forest Park Pkwy. There is a large parking lot just across the street. Please see the map below for more information.
The speakers for November’s meeting will be Abby Lee and Tom Lee. The title of their talk will be “The Real Jurassic Park: Detection of Ancient DNA and Other Really Interesting Things Organic in Fossils.”
For those that arrive late to the meeting, a cell phone number will be posted on both doors to call. Someone will come down to promptly let you in, but please try to arrive on time.
Field Trips
Sunday, November 5th. Bruce Stinchcomb will lead a Field Trip to Cedar Creek near Fulton, MO. The trip will depend on good weather. Basically, if it isn’t raining, the trip is on. This is an easy hike up a creek bed to collect blastoids, brachiopods, crinoids and other Mississippian-age fossils Petrified wood is often found on this trip, as well. Rumor has it that a quick stop at Devonian location may happen on this outing. This trip is appropriate for kids that can hike comfortably.
Plan to meet a 9:00 a.m. at the Burger King restaurant across from what used to be called the Beltz Outlet Mall near I-70 and Hwy 61. The mall appears to be now called the Mall at Wentzville Crossing.
This trip involves a creek so hiking boots are appropriate. Also, bring you hammer, chisel, sack lunch, newspapers for wrapping you finds, and a backpack or bucket to lug around your tools and collected fossils This should be a fun trip. See you there! Please call Bruce Stinchcomb if you have questions (314-521-2642).
RAFFLE
The EMSP is holding a raffle to raise money for the club. The prize is a Carcharodon megladon tooth from Bahia Inglesa, Chile, age ~12-20 MYA. The tooth is in very good condition, 41/4 in. x 4 in. and brown in color. This is an excellent tooth worth well over $100.00. Tickets for the raffle are $5.00 each. Tickets will be sold at the October and November meetings. The winning ticket will be drawn at the Holiday Party (the winner does not need to be present to win). Buy as many tickets as you want. Now is your chance to own a Megladon tooth. Many thanks go to Dave Lukens for the donation of this tooth for the raffle. A picture of the tooth will be available at the meetings.
Correction: In the October newsletter, the article entitled; “Evidence of Shark Predation on Blastoids” was contributed by John Stade, not John Stage as published in the newsletter. This error was not caught by during the QC review stage prior to publishing. We apologize for the error.
Distribution of the Newsletter by email
We keep adding to the list of club members who have elected to receive the newsletter by email. Many will go out by email this month. This is a cost savings measure for the club. Each newsletter currently costs 39 cents to mail. This is over $4.00 per person each year for postage alone. A sign-up list will be available at meetings, or email Tom Lee () to begin to receive the newsletter electronically- note new address!
Paleo-Shorts
CNN has recently featured several interesting finds. Check out www.cnn.com for further reading on:
A new species of Plesiosaur dubbed “the monster” at approximately 33 feet long was discovered by the University of Oslo. The bone-bed contained 28 plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs on an island near the North Pole. One of the skulls smelled of oil, grabbing the interests of geologists as well. Reuters Oct. 6th
Matt Forir’s (an EMSP associate) excavation and outreach program of Riverbluff cave near Springfield, MO was featured on 10.30.06. Matt gave a great presentation to EMSP on the team’s effort to preserve and excavate this “ice-age time capsule.” Check out the news article through the CNN’s search and the official website: www.riverbluffcave.com.
Leonardo the “mummified dino” of the Judith River institute is making headlines again. Karen Chin (University of Colorado at Boulder), known for coprolite studies, has completed and examination of Leo’s stomach. Chin found hundreds of worm burrows in the well persevered fossil which indicates that the parasites may have been present before the animal died. The stomach contents were also studied to reveal duckbill dino’s diets. Reuters Oct 24th
From the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Vol 85, Num 9 (brought to our attention by Clarence Zacher-thank you): Did a Global Winter Kill of the Dinosaurs? Simone Galeotti of the Univeristy of Urbino, found new evidence of “global winter” at the KT boundry. Galeotti’s team used organisms that lived passed the KT boundry. They found cold-ocean dwellers moved to warmer waters around the time of the extinction event. The cold spell continued for 2000 years in deeper ocean waters. Surface temperatures may have rebounded faster. According to the article, a combination of events including volcanic eruptions, fires, greenhouse warming, acid rain, and storms after the impact played a role in the mass extinction. However, this study is the best and most current evidence of a lasting global winter.
Radiometric Dating: from 14-carbon to zircons
Geochronology is the science of determining the absolute age of sediments, rocks and fossils, within the limits of the analytical method employed. The general public is familiar with carbon-14 dating. This is the method used most frequently for determining the age of archeological discoveries or of fossil remains from animals that lived recently – within the last 50,000 years or so. To look deeper into the past, other radiometric dating systems are use by geologists. Radiometric dating relies on the spontaneous decay of isotopes of a parent element into a different, daughter element. The identity of an element is based on the number of protons contained in the nucleus. However, isotopes of a given element arise when the nucleus contains a different number of neutrons. For example, carbon-12 has 6 protons and 6 neutrons, whereas carbon-14 has 6 protein and 8 neutrons. Carbon-12 is stable, but carbon-14 decays by very weak beta decay to nitrogen-14 with a half-life of approximately 5,730 years. After 10-half lives (50,000 years) only about 0.1% of the original carbon-14 remains. This is why things older than about 50,000 years can’t be dated accurately using the carbon-14 method - all the carbon-14 is gone after this amount of time. It should be noted that about 1 molecule in a trillion molecules of carbon is carbon-14. Carbon-14 is created constantly in the atmosphere from Nitrogen-14 as a secondary effect of cosmic-ray bombardment. The carbon-14 formed is rapidly converted to carbon dioxide. As photosynthesis take place in plants, atmospheric carbon dioxide is taken up and fixed into the organic constituents of the plant. This is the entry point of carbon into the food chain. Animals subsequently eat the plants and this action introduces carbon into their bodies.
After an animal such as a Mastodon dies and becomes a fossil, carbon-14 continues to decay without being replaced. The radiocarbon left in a fossil sample is converted in a special lab to carbon dioxide gas by heating or acid treatment in some cases. Radiation counters are used to detect the electrons given off by decaying carbon-14 as it turns into nitrogen. The ratio of the amount of carbon-14 to the amount of carbon-12 in the sample can be used to accurately determine the fossil age using fairly simple mathematical equations.
So, carbon-14 dating is only good for fossils less than 50,000 years old, so what isotopes are used to measure things older than this? Potassium-40 (decays to argon-40) is another radioactive element naturally found in living organisms and has a half-life of 1.3 billion years. Other useful radioisotopes for radioactive dating certain minerals, for example, include Uranium -235 (half-life = 704 million years), Uranium -238 (half-life = 4.5 billion years), Thorium-232 (half-life = 14 billion years) and Rubidium-87 (half-life = 49 billion years).
One of the leading methods currently for dating sediments (and therefore the fossils that were deposited in nearby layers) is the Uranium-Lead radioactive decay system applied to zircons. Uranium-238 and uranium-235 are among the elements that undergo radioactive decay through nuclear fission eventually decaying to lead-206 and lead-207, respectively. A critical issue for dating rocks is finding the right kind of rock to date. Volcanic ashes derived from silica rich magmas often contain the mineral zircon. When they form from molten materials, small amounts of uranium become trapped in the zircon crystals, but lead is excluded. Over time, the uranium in the zircon crystal decays to lead and the zircon crystal therefore represents a time capsule. If the amount of uranium and lead are precisely measured, then the date of when the zircon crystal was formed can be very accurately computed. An important trait of zircon is its extreme toughness as a mineral. It persists unchanged under conditions that would melt or contaminate other minerals. It takes a very sophisticated lab to date zircons. The lab must be lead free and have very expensive mass spectrometers available. Places like the geochronology facility at UC – Berkley are on the cutting edge of dating zircons. Accurate dates can be obtained from single zircon grains (0.1 mm in size). This methodology has been used to accurately date the extinction of the dinosaurs (K/T boundary, 65.5 MYA) and the end Permian Extinction (P/T boundary, 250.1 MYA).
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What is EMSP?
The Eastern Missouri Society for Paleontology (EMSP) is a not-for-profit organization Dedicated to promoting the enjoyment of fossil collecting. It is open to all individuals interested in learning about the history of life on earth. The club membership includes professional paleontologists as well as amateur hobbyists. The EMSP provides an open forum for the exchange of information and access to expertise on collecting, identifying, preparing and displaying fossils.
EMSP meetings are held on the second Friday of every month (except July, August and December) at 7:30pm in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Buildingon the campus of Washington University. Each meeting includes an informal exchange of information and speakers on a variety of fossil-related topics.
Weather permitting, field trips to fossil collection localities around the St. Louis area are held each month. Led by experienced collectors, these trips are a fun way to augment discussions at the monthly meetings. The club participates in joint field trips with other paleo clubs, visiting fossil sites throughout the United States. EMSP is also a proud to be involved in partnerships with the St. Louis Science Center and the Greater St. Louis Association of Earth Science Clubs, Inc.
Eastern Missouri Society For Paleontology
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(EMSP)
P.O. Box 220273
St. Louis, MO. 63122
FIRST CLASS MAIL
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