next meeting: wednesday, mar 7 - dallas paleo society...glauconite bed (mgb) study guide, stone city...

Dallas

Paleontological

Society

MARCH 2018

Volume 34, Issue 3

Next Meeting: Wednesday, MAR 7

Eocene Green Scene DPS will meet at 7:30 PM on Wednesday, March 7 (ONE WEEK EARLIER THAN NORMAL), at the Brookhaven College Geotechnology Institute - Building H, 3939 Valley View Ln, Farmers Branch. Geologist Jim Flis will present “Main Glauconite Bed (MGB) Study Guide, Stone City Member, Middle Eocene, Claiborne Group, Stone City Bluff (Whisky Bridge), Burleson Co, Texas.”

The Stone City Bluff is a special place on the Texas Gulf Coastal Plain. It is the best of the few places where marine rocks of Eocene age are exposed and available for public access. It provides a window into Middle Eocene time and the animals that lived in the Gulf of Mexico then, approximately 41.8 million years ago. The Main Glauconite Bed at Stone City Bluff contains very diverse and well-preserved gastropods, clams, and other marine fossils that have at-tracted researchers and collectors since the mid-1800s.

Above: Levifusus mortoniopsis, Distorsio (Personella) septemdentata, and Gegania antiquate

Jim holds a BS in Geology from SUNY Fredonia and an MS in Geology from Michigan State University. He is a member of many professional geological so-cieties. After retiring from Chevron after 38 years in oil and gas exploration, he moved to north Texas. He performs outreach to museums and schools, and he is a member of the Whiteside Museum of Natural History (where his son, Chris, is the curator) and the Wise County Fossil, Rock, and Mineral Society.

Our meetings are potluck, so members should bring something to add to a main dish provided by DPS. Salads, chips, veggie trays, desserts, sides, casseroles, fruits, cheese and crackers, will all be welcome and enjoyed by all. Members and guests are welcome to bring fossils for bragging, identification help (if need-ed), and group enjoyment. DPS meetings are always free and open to the pub-lic, so invite your friends and co-workers. We hope to see you there! Remem-ber, the meeting is ONE WEEK EARLIER THAN NORMAL, on March 7.

www.dallaspaleo.org Hotline 817-355-4693

Upcoming Events

Mar 7 Monthly Meeting

Mar 29 Chuck Finsley Lecture Series

presents Dr. Mary Schweitzer

Mar 31 Waco Pit Field Trip

What’s InsIde:

In Memory of Ann Molineux

PIT Crew Field Agents and Paleo Pups

DPS Mentioned in a Texas Magazine

http://www.dallaspaleo.org

Dallas Paleontological Society MARCH 2018

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FEBRUARY-MARCH 2018

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

Mar 4 5 6 7 DPS

Monthly

Meeting

8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Back to Nature

in Trophy Club

18 19 20 21 Executive

Meeting

22 23 24 PIT Crew at UNT

in Denton

25 26 27 28 29 Charles

Finsley Lecture

Series

30 31 Waco Pit and

Mammoths on the

March

Apr 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11 DPS

Monthly

Meeting

12 13 14

WACO PIT FIELD TRIP

March 31

Waco Pit, a former quarry below Lake Waco Dam, is administered by the Army Corps of Engineers. Finds can in-clude shark vertebra, pyritized ammonites, and possible jellyfish fossils. All small stuff! Please note: It’s a long walk to the hunting area over semi-rough terrain. You can examine gullies in the Grayson Formation along the shore. Only 25 members can hunt! From the Corps of Engineers: ONLY 2 fossils per person. It’s written in the permit. Keep your eyes on the sky, also. American Bald Eagles are nesting in the area as well as sightings of Mute Swans on the lake. DPS will meet at: McDonald’s 4503 N I-35 Lacy-Lakeview, TX 76705 Meeting time: 8:00am Caravan: 8:30am prompt! Leaving Waco Pit: 12:00pm There will be a sign up on the website.

Susan Thielker found a great fossil at the Waco Pit in 2016!

http://www.dallaspaleo.org/


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ANN MOLINEUX Written by Linda McCall

Ann Molineux, Director of Museum Operations for the Non-Vertebrate Paleo Lab, passed away February 12, 2018. A memorial service will be held on March 24 so that family and colleagues can travel to Austin to attend. Lee asked me to write something about Ann. I thought it would be easy. It has been anything but. I first met Ann about two decades ago, when after a divorce, I went back to UT to see about finishing my long stalled degree and took Geology 101 again – which Ann was teaching. I was enchanted by her British accent and loved her many colloquialisms – my favorite one being where she relat-ed how when she was first teaching in the US, she had asked a male student to “…knock her up in the morning,” CLEARLY not what she thought she was asking him to do, but we all got a good groan and laugh out of it. I was the Hermione Granger of the class – so excited that my brain still worked at my advanced age (I could have practically been the mother of everyone else in class), that my hand would shoot up at every question because I was so proud that I knew the answer. Eventually Ann had to say to me, “Yes, Linda – we know you know the answer, but perhaps someone else might be able to tell me?” We met again some 5 years later when the Paleontological Society of Austin, of which I was a member, went to the Non-Vertebrate Paleo Lab for a field trip in the summer. Ann was always very keen on partnering with the amateur community and often did outreach like this. It took me a bit to remember where I knew her from – but then it clicked, and I asked her if she remembered me, and thanks to the above – she did… which was all very fortuitous, because I had a collection of fossils from Pilot Knob that I thought should be written up but didn’t have the first clue about how to go about doing it. I planned to nurture this reconnection and learn from it. So here is another thing about Ann – she was a fantastic mentor, and she would mentor anyone who would let her. She was passionate about paleontology and sharing what she knew. In 2008, she and Jim Sprinkle helped me publish and present my first paper – on the fossils of the Edwards Formation of Georgetown, TX. They gave me an outline and then let me write the whole paper (in layman language), then helped me upscale it into something scientific – teaching me the terminology, etc. as we went. We’ve gone on to do 3 more technical papers together since (including the one on Pilot Knob), and I am who I am today because of the time and effort she shared with a nerdy neophyte who happened to share her passion for paleontology. I spent many, many hours at the lab, and we became quite close. It’s been rather like losing your mother, big sister, role model, and mentor all at the same time. Ann never liked to show weakness, always putting on a good front and a brave face. Not many in her circle knew the cancer she had been fighting for years. She had an even harder time telling people “No.” She kept pushing herself to do things, per-haps harder than she should have – but that was Ann. She loved the collections at UT and worked tirelessly to promote and preserve them. Her goal was to help make the collections more accessible to everyone – for research, education and bring them to the world digitally. I hope this work will continue. Her husband, Ian, has asked that rather than sending flowers, any donations be made to help establish an Ann Molineux Excellence Fund for the nonvertebrate collections or to MD Anderson Cancer Center. The official title of the fellowship is: The Ann Molineux Excellence Fund for Student Research and Cura-tion at the NPL collections, UT Austin. The fund is for undergrad through postdoc positions. All donations, whatever size, are deeply appreciated. Please send donations to: Sharon Mosher, Dean Jackson School of Geosciences 2305 Speedway Stop C1160 Austin, TX 78712-1692 RIP Ann – I’ll see you in the field my friend.


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DANGERS OF FLASH FLOODING

A reminder from Lee Higginbotham

By Estée Easley

Please remember to check the weather before going to the North Sulfur River. The river floods quickly, and getting up the steep banks with bags of fossils takes time.

Lee took this picture of the dry NSR looking west from the 34 bridge.

Dawn Willis took this picture of the full NSR looking west from the 34 bridge.

The graph from of data from the USGS was a post by Tom Newman showing a rise from 2 to 28 feet in one day. Be safe out there!


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NEBRASKA FIELD TRIP 4 days and 5 nights hunting the Badlands of Northwest Nebraska

$675 includes accommodations and hunting fees Check in May 4 - Check out May 9, 2018

We will be hunting the Eocene and Oligocene era in the 30-35 mya Brule formation. This formation has a large as-semblage of fossil mammals including the skeletal remains of oreodonts, the most common, rhinoceros, horse, camel, deer, and carnivores, such as saber tooth cats and hyaenodon. Non-mammal species include turtle and the only gastropod the area offers, liedyi.

The hunting will include walking over rough terrain and some climbing. Tools needed will be rock hammers, chisels, heavy weight tin foil, white glue, and butvar or super glue. (If you are flying in, I have tools you can use.) This trip is limited to 10 people with a minimum of 6 people.

For more information and reservations, please contact Polly Mullinnex by phone 903-916-0083 (no text) or by email [email protected].

Publication: White River Badlands, South Dakota School of Mines Bulletin No. 13 by Cleophas C OHarra Nearby Attractions: Agate beds for our rock hounds (2 miles), Fort Robertson Historic Outpost and Museum (15 miles), and Agate Fossil Beds National Monument (1 hour).

FRANK CRANE 2018 SCHOLARSHIP by Roland Gooch

Several candidates have been nominated by their respective schools for the 2018 Frank Crane Scholarship. The DPS Executive Committee will make the final selection, and the awardee(s) will be announced at the March 7 meeting. All awardees will receive their award at a mutually convenient DPS meeting and will give a short talk on their project. They will also present a formal DPS program upon completion of their degree.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Saturday, March 17, 11am-2pm Back to Nature at Trophy Club Park 2885 Trophy Park Dr, Trophy Club, TX 76262 FREE We need a couple of people to show fossils, talk with people, sell DPS t-shirts and books, and give away fossils to the kids. Contact [email protected] to volunteer. Saturday, March 31, 9am-5pm Mammoths on the March at Waco Mammoth National Monument 6220 Steinbeck Bend Rd, Waco, TX 76708 FREE with $5 optional wristband for tour of the dig shelter, petting zoo, and train rides Tom Vance will coordinate DPS presence at this event, but he could use a couple of DPS volunteers. Contact him at [email protected] to volunteer. April 20-22 EARTHx Earth Day at Fair Park April 28-29 Waco Gem and Mineral Show


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LOGAN WEIST February Guest Speaker

Thank yous go out to our guest speaker in February. Logan Weist, PhD Candidate of Baylor University, spoke on “The Lilliput Effect in the Aftermath of the End-Cretaceous Mass Extinction Event.” Photos cour-tesy of Lee Higginbotham.

FIELD TRIPS by Linda and Nathan Van Vranken

DPS field trip leaders have been working on trips. One question that has been surfacing is the number of folks allowed on a trip. DPS nor field trip leaders set the number of folks on a trip. The facility such as the quarry, property owner, or Corps of Engineers do. The number of folks per trip can vary. Generally 25 to 30 folks. Open trips can have any number of folks such as the NSR, Justin, or Post Oak. We will fill the trip and start a waiting list. We are asking that if you signed up for a trip and a situation hap-pens, please let us know as others are waiting to go. Field trips have become automated via the DPS website. So easy to use! Once you sign up, you will know if you are on the trip. If it is a Members Only trip, you must have a paid membership in order to register for a trip. The system will let you know if you are paid. If it is not a Members Only trip, anyone can register.


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PIT CREW FIELD JOURNAL

March 2018 by Joseph O’Neil

The first meeting of 2018 was also our first classroom adventure. Attendance was good, and the room was filled with eager young minds. The Field Agents (7 to 15 years of age) began their paleontology lesson with A Brief History of Paleontology. We learned about early attempts to explain fossils. We discussed some of the folklore that likely originated in early attempts to explain

the fossil skeletons that were discovered. We learned how Chinese naturalist Shen Kuo used petrified bamboo found in a region of China that had long been in such a drought that plant life was nonexistent to artue for gradu-al climate change in 1095 AD. Moving on, we explored a timeline of paleontology, touching on important events up to the end of the 19th century. The Paleo Pups (4 to 6 years of age) worked with Estée Easley on a lesson designed especially for them. They heard the story of Mary Anning, who discovered many important fossils in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis in the county of Dorset in Southwest England. Her contributions to paleontology were important in developing the young scientific discipline. She got little recognition for her contributions in her lifetime as she lived in the first half of the 19th century, a time when women were not allowed to attend college or make contribu-tions to science. She taught herself about geology and paleontology, and she was the first to recognize the fossil remains found in the stomach area of fos-sil animals was, in fact, solid waste (coprolite). After the story, the Paleo Pups learned how Mary Anning made detailed sketches of the fossils she found, in situ (as they were when she found them). Using coloring sheets of the plesiosaur and ichthyosaur, two of An-ning’s most notable finds, as reference, the Pups drew their own depiction of the bones in matrix. At the March meeting: The Field Agents will spend a little time on the late 19th century Bone Wars of Cope and Marsh, then continue the Timeline of Paleontology, learning about the notable events of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Paleo Pups will have a story time with a book about the Bone Wars and some activities to go along with the story. This will be a longer meeting, as the Paleo Pups will join the Field Agents for a video about the Bone Wars after the les-son. There will be an opportunity to collect fossils after the meeting for all who wish to join us. We will hunt a nearby location. All of the recent rains have washed out more fossils, providing the opportunity to find something may not have been there in February.

The PIT Crew (Paleontologists In Training) is the educational outreach program of the Dallas Paleontological Society (DPS). The PIT Crew is a benefit of a Family Level Membership in DPS for ages 4 through 15. For more information, visit the website for upcoming events, announcements, and membership information.

Ichthyosaur in matrix by Shasta, age 5

http://www.dallaspaleo.org/PIT_Crew


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Did You See What Lee Read?

Lee found an article on sci-news.com called Corythoraptor jacobsi: New Species of Bird-Like Dinosaur Discovered in China by Sergio Prostak. As the wonderful paleoart by Zhao Chuang shows, this newly discovered dino-saur is most likely related to the cassowary. The online report also provides a link to the journal article. Amazing discovery!

Did You See What Judi Read?

Judi noticed DPS was mentioned in the March 2018 Texas Parks and Wildlife

magazine! It was a great spread about where to collect fossils in Texas. Under

a great list of additional fossil sites, it says, “Get Involved: Paleontology fans of

every age can join local groups to find fellow fossil enthusiasts. The Dallas

Paleontological Society welcomes ‘serious amateurs’ to its monthly meetings,

outreach events and volunteer efforts (like preparing hundreds of egg carton

‘fossil kits’ for students at Texas schools).” Pick up your copy today!

DPS Needs You! Do you find yourself wishing you could give more to the DPS but just don’t know how? Wish no longer!

The DPS needs volunteers for ALL committees. Don’t wait! Call the DPS officer of your choice, and

sign up today. Don’t let this exciting opportunity pass you by!

Pot Luck Meetings Please bring a treat, a snack or your favorite crowd-pleasing dish to share at DPS meetings. Bring

your own drinks (no alcohol, please).


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EVENTS OF INTEREST November 2018

Myria Perez is an undergraduate at SMU who ill graduate this May. For her undergraduate project, under the direc-

tion of Dr. Louis Jacobs, she interned with the Smithsonian for the design of an exhibition of fossils recovered by

the PaleoAngola project. Several DPS members, including Bill Johnson, Rocky Manning, Wayne Furstenwerthm,

and Dan Eley, have been helping to prepare these fossils. This

exhibit will open at the National Museum of Natural History of

the Smithsonian in Washington DC in November 2018 and re-

main for about a year, after which the fossils will be returned to

Angola. Myria will receive a DPS scholarship to help .her com-

plete her studies at SMU and talk at the April 11 DPS meeting

about the PaleoAngola project, the fossils, the design process

of this major museum exhibit, and her intern experience.

Photo of Myria Perez from smithsonianofi.com


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Dallas Paleontological Society Officers, Committee Chairs, and Advisors

Elected Offices:

President Tom Dill [email protected]

Vice President Judi Altstatt [email protected]

Secretary Ming and Jordan Lee [email protected]

Treasurer Pam Lowers [email protected]

Editor Estée Easley [email protected]

Chairs:

Education Chair Joseph O’Neil [email protected]

Field Trips Chair Linda and Nathan Van Vranken [email protected]

Historian Chair Virginia Friedman [email protected]

Hospitality Chair [Group Effort]

Membership Chair Kathryn Zornig [email protected]

Programs Chair Tom Dill [email protected]

Promotions Chair [Vacant] [email protected]

Publications Chair [Group Effort] [email protected]

Scholarships Chair Roland Gooch [email protected]

Webmaster Rodney Wise [email protected]

DPS Advisors:

Roger Farish, Lee Higginbotham, Rocky Manning

Professional Advisors:

Dr. Tony Fiorillo, Perot Museum of Nature and Science

Dr. Louis Jacobs, SMU Shuler Museum

Dr. Merlynd Nestell, University of Texas at Arlington

The Dallas Paleontological Society was founded in 1984 for the purpose of promoting interest in and

knowledge of the science of paleontology. It was intended by the founding members that the Society

would be a network for the exchange of data between professionals and serious amateurs in this field.

www.dallaspaleo.org

The Dallas Paleontological Society normally meets the second Wednesday of every month at 7:30pm at Brookhaven Col-lege, unless we have something special happening that month. Please check our Calendar for exact dates. Come meet with us, hear a speaker, learn about paleontology, and bring your unidentified fossils and unique finds to share with the group. You will be welcome, and we will enjoy meeting you. For a map of our meeting location visit www.dallaspaleo.org/Contact. No portion of these materials may be reproduced in any form or stored in any system without the written permission of the Dallas Paleontological Society. © 2018

mailto:[email protected]














http://www.dallaspaleo.org

http://www.dallaspaleo.org/events

http://www.dallaspaleo.org/Contact

http://www.dallaspaleo.org/Contact


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Dallas Paleontological Society

PO Box 223846

Dallas, TX 75222-3846

next meeting: wednesday, mar 7 - dallas paleo society...glauconite bed (mgb) study guide, stone city...

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