next meeting: wednesday, may 9 earth … · whiteside museum origami display ... travis nolan,...

Dallas

Paleontological

Society

May 2018

Volume 34, Issue 5

Next Meeting: Wednesday, MAY 9

EARTH EXTINCTION EVENTS DPS will meet at 7:30 PM on Wednesday, May 9, at the Brookhaven College Geotechnology Institute (Building H), 3939 Val-ley View Ln, Farmers Branch.

Our guest speaker will be Theoretical Astrophysicist John Moffitt from Houston who has volunteered at the Houston Museum of Natu-ral Science since the 1970s. In 1995, he assisted curating the “Ancient Creatures, Ancient Seas” special exhibit. Moffitt is also a geologist and a paleontologist, and his careers have included geo-physicist, petrophysicist, and exploration manager with over 50 years in the oil business. Lately, he has been working with children taking them on paleontological field trips and exploring Earth Science edu-cation.

In his presentation, “Earth Extinction Events,” he will examine paleogeography and astrophysics showing us how life has been significantly affected by the geometry and violence in our very crowded solar neighborhood. We will learn how fluid and fragile conditions are. Many are familiar with the theories of a very few recent extinction events, but less are aware that Earth’s past is filled with a far more complex pattern of extinction events and probabilities.

Lucia will have an amazing dish for us, but members should bring items to add to the main dish such as veggie trays, chips, desserts, sides, cheese and crackers, and fruits to be enjoyed by all. Members and guests are welcome to bring fossils for identification (if needed) or bragging (it’s okay to admit it). DPS meetings are always free and open to the public, so invite your friends and co-workers. We hope to see you there!

www.dallaspaleo.org Hotline 817-355-4693

Inside this edition:

Notes from T rex Under

the Microscope, a

summary of the April

meeting, PIT Crew Field

Notes, adventures at

EarthX, and much

more!

http://www.dallaspaleo.org

Dallas Paleontological Society MAY 2018

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MAY-JUNE 2018 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

Apr 29 30 May 1 2 3 4 5 Whiskey Bridge Field Trip

6 7 8 9 DPS

Monthly

Meeting

10 11 12

PIT Crew Field Trip

Denton Creek Canoe Trip

13 14 15 16 Executive

Meeting

17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 Fort Worth Gem and

Mineral Show

27 Ft Worth Gem

and Mineral Show

28 29 30 31 Jun 1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 DPS

Monthly

14 15 16

17 18 19 20 Executive

Meeting

21 22 23 Martin Marietta Field Trip

24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Visit www.DallasPaleo.org for most up to

date information and further details.

Whiteside Museum Origami Display

by Travis Nolan

Travis Nolan, member of DPS and president of ADROIT Origami, will be displaying several prehistoric origami models at the Whiteside Museum of Natural History in Seymour, Texas, this June. There will be more than a dozen origami models of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures, including Giganotosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Dimetro-don, Brachiosaurus, and many others. All models are folded from a single square sheet of paper without cuts, glue,

or paint (with the exception of the Ty-rannosaurus skeleton shown on left designed by Issei Yoshino, which is assembled from 21 origami “bones,” each folded from a single sheet). View-ers will also get to see time-lapse video of the work that goes into creating these models. If you get the chance to tour the White-side Museum, it is definitely worth the visit, and soon, you will be able to see some prehistoric origami, as well!

http://www.dallaspaleo.org/


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FEEDBACK ON THE LECTURE SERIES

by Estée Easley

Dr. Mary Schweitzer, our Charles Finsley Lecture Series guest speaker in April, was introduced by Dr Louis Jacobs who mentioned her “courageous study of biology in fossils.” Dr. Schweitzer’s presentation, T rex Under the Micro-scope: A New Look at an Old Dinosaur, was fantastic, and I’m not the only one who thought so! Checking in at the registration table was a breeze. The reception after her presentation was lovely, as well, and Samuel Altstatt's lit-

eral and hilarious T rex under a microscope donation box was a hit!

I interviewed several DPS members to get their thoughts, take-aways, and comments about the lecture, and here’s

what they had to say:

“She stretched my biology knowledge quite a bit.” -TD “I was totally amazed at the new technology being ap-plied to all sciences.” -RF “I loved that she found her calling later in life. After want-ing to be a police officer, teaching Deaf Education, and raising a family, she rediscovered her childhood passion for dinosaurs and dove in head first.” -EE “The process for deciphering the genus trails was fasci-nating.” -KF “I liked her experiment with a chicken bone (one baked at a long time at 100 degrees, one left out to dry, and one soaked in vinegar) to test the brittleness.” -LF “The oldest [specimen on which she’s done the proce-dure] is 120 myo.” -TN “It was as entertaining as it was educational.” -SN

“She got me really excited, and I want to replicate what she did. She was inspirational and passionate. She has such a strong drive!” -MP “The fact that there was soft tissue was incredible! Mind-blowing!” -DS “It opens a whole new road to research and fortifies the theory that birds are descendants of dinosaurs.” -ES “I laughed out loud when she answered an audience question with ‘T rex probably tastes like gamey chicken. Other dinosaurs taste like really good alligator.’ That was a well-thought out response!” -AH “Great program. I enjoyed her background. She made it more personal.” -CS “She was professional and down to a level that every-one can understand.” -JF Continued next page


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FEEDBACK on Dr. Schweitzer continued

“Not all molecular information is lost in fossils, so we really have no idea on the molecular level how fossils are formed.” -MU “Very impressive speaker. It was good to get the latest research.” -RM “I think the most impressive thing she showed was the video of flexible soft tissue taken from the T rex bones.” -RG “The fossil record always surprises you.” -LJ “I was impressed with her whole story - she raised kids and went back to school. I was amazed with all she ac-complished.” -LP

“It’s amazing how iron in the bones preserved the soft tissue source.” -MH “She was able to recognize through the cells that it was a female dinosaur, so all different fields come into play.” -BB “The best take-away was the possibility of red blood cells.” -DS [Note, she never specified RBCs throughout her presentation; however, the audience is hopeful that her ‘round, red’ discoveries are RBCs. When asked if she found blood, she replied she found ‘hem’ but not from the ‘round, red things.’ -Editor] “I was blown away. I didn’t know soft tissue could be preserved that way.” -JL


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Previous meeting SUMMARY

There were wonderful show-and-tell fossils at the April meeting, including a stunning fish (osmeroides) from Fink, Texas. As usual, the food was great (thanks, Lucia and Ming!). Speaker Myria Perez provided details about the up-coming Smithsonian exhibit, Sea Monsters Unearthed: Life in Angola’s Ancient Seas. One of her many tasks on this project is helping design the exciting, in-teractive exhibit that opens Nov. 9, 2018, just before Angola Independence Day on Nov. 11. With her mom and friends in the audience, Myria gave a fan-tastic presentation. Now we’re all hoping for a field trip to Washington, DC!


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EarthX by Estée Easley

Thanks to all the volunteers at EarthX this year! From a membership standpoint, we may have a few interested potential DPS members and almost certainly two new PIT Crew families. The rain didn’t scare anyone off, but Fair Park closed a little early on Saturday. The favorite spot of the event was the hands-on fossil hunt. Mineral Wells Fossil Park brought buckets of dirt to put in a plastic kid pool, and it was placed in front of the DPS outside booth. Everyone loved finding crinoids! From an educational outreach aspect, hundreds of children and adults learned a little or a lot, depending on their interest levels, about Texas fossils.


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MORE EarthX PICTURES


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Special GUEST Andy Gale

by Bob Williams In March DPS had two great speakers at Brookhaven College. One at the regular meeting and a special treat at the annual Finsley Lecture. It just happened again. Andy Gale, the second speaker in the month of April entertained and informed two dozen or so people who were lucky or wise or both enough to attend the event on Wednesday night. Even folks who were not interested in micro fossils before came away with a new appreciation for the wee creatures. Many of us didn't even know you could find crinoids in the local Creta-ceous formations outside of a single species from Central Texas. They are easy to miss if you don't look close enough since they are often smaller than a millimeter in size. If the quality of preservation weren't enough to get you excited, then the unexpected diversity should get your attention. Andy Gale has obviously put a lot of effort into trying to under-stand these enigmatic little crinoids. It must have taken a lot of patience just to assemble all of the pieces that make up the arms of these plank-tonic crinoids with nothing to go by but the differences in the attachment points. Both Drs. Nestell from UT Arlington were there with a few of their stu-dents. They have done a lot of work on local Pennsylvanian microfossils, so they were interested to see what Dr. Gale had to say about some of the Cretaceous forms. We also had at least one enthusiastic couple new to our group who brought along their recent finds. Lucia and Lee brought snacks and drinks to keeps us going, and the questions and discussions after the talk were as good as any regular meeting. Of course the lesson here is to always check your email and Facebook pages so you don't miss out on one of these special events when it happens again.


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PIT CREW FIELD JOURNAL

May 2018 by Joseph O’Neil

It was a fun month for the PIT Crew. We had a classroom meeting and two op-portunities to collect fossils. After a nice discussion of geology and other related topics at UNT, we headed into the field in Denton to once more collect those cretaceous marine fossils. I was sure that no one would want to go collect in the drizzle and gloomy grey clad skies. I was wrong. An enthusiastic group donned ponchos and other rain gear and tramped off into the muddy chasm of a run off ditch in the field. We found some nice bivalves and a Mariella ammonite or two. We spent about an hour hunting, and everyone had a good time despite the rain. This was a differ-ent area of our Denton location, and it proved a good one. The big find of the day was a very nice Mariella worthensis, a heteromorph am-monite in the Turrilitidae family, found by Victoria Chastain.

Taylor and Nixie enjoyed an extra adventure at EarthX at Fair Park!

Continued next page


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PIT CREW FIELD JOURNAL CONTINUED

Our friends at Martin Marietta cement quarry in Midlothian had us out for a four hour hunt in the ATCO formation of the Eagle-Ford shale on April 28. The quarry is not the easiest location to hunt. They have strict safety regula-tions and treacherous terrain (the muddy bottom of the pit tried to swallow my shoe!). The fossils typically found are shark’s teeth and inoceramus clam shell shards. Geologically there are nice authigenic (formed in its present location) iron pyrite nodules and calcite to be found. Finding the sharks’ teeth can be tricky, but the wonderful folks at the quarry moved a good amount of just the right matrix to a safe location for the PIT Crew kids to prac-tice hunting in before getting to the main quarry. With their parents and Jordan Lee helping, the PIT Crew mem-bers learned what to look for and got in about an hour of practice before attempting the real thing. The weather was nice, and everyone was up for hunting the full time. We all went home with some nice additions to our col-lections, and I’ve heard that some of the Crew are already to go again. Thanks go out to Jose, our guide, and the great folks at Martin Marietta for having us out for the day. We can’t wait to do it again.

PIT Crew at the practice area

Hunting the main quarry

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.

http://www.dallaspaleo.org/PIT_Crew


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COLLECT IT YOURSELF UPDATE

by Rocky Manning The third installment in the Collect It Yourself exhibit at the Heard Museum has opened. Ed and Cathy Swiatovy are displaying a portion of their shark tooth collection. Past installments have been on the North Sulphur River and the Nebraska Oligocene. Ed and Cathy have been collecting shark teeth for many years and are running out of room to store them in their house. This is your chance to see the best of their col-lection. Ed recently had a special showing for his granddaughter’s elementary school class.

The exhibit will be on display through October 2018. The Heard Natural Science Museum and Wildlife Sanctuary is located at 1 Nature Place in McKinney, TX 75069 (www.heardmuseum.org). Collect It Yourself is an ongoing exhibit in cooperation between the DPS and the Heard Museum. If you have a collection you are interested in displaying or an idea to gather material from several members for an exhib-it, please contact an officer. Photo at right: Ed Swiatovy (the tall one) with grand-daughter Zoe Gures (blue Eagle Run shirt) and mem-bers of her Kerr Elementary School class from Allen, TX, were on hand to see the new exhibit.

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! Contact the DPS officer of your choice,

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

FOSSILMANIA needs volunteers to help with the tables. It’s easier than you think! Please consider

offering a little of your time.

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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Yes, Folks...there is amber in Texas!

by Virginia Friedman This time, it is not, “Yes, Virginia”...it is me, Virginia, reporting: “Yes, folks...There is amber in Texas!”

This is a short report from our publication Late Cretaceous Amber in Texas: Chemical characterization and paleoenvironment (Friedman et al, 2018). In it, we report for the first time on the occurrence of amber in Texas.

Ambers are ancient cross-linked polymerized resins whose botanical origin was a member of the gymnosperms or more recently in geological time, angiosperms. Chemically, resins are made from complex arrangements of five-carbon molecules called isoprenes (2-methyl-1,3 butadiene) (C5 H8). These, in turn, form (di-, tri-) terpenes. Basically, the resins become ambers by the pri-mary mechanism of cross-linking and polymerization of the isoprene units. The process takes place under elevated temperature and pressure over long geological time (Santiago-Blay and Lambert, 2007). This process is non-linear and is still not well understood. It is part of a continu-um, depending on the degree of polymerization of the resins, from little polymerized to more pol-ymerized: Resin--- Copal--- Amber. Examination of the solid-state 13C NMR and solution 1H NMR spectra of fossilized resins (ambers) has generated five groupings of materials based on spectral characteristics: The worldwide Group A is associated primarily with the botanical order Conifer-aceae. The worldwide Group B is associated with the angiosperm family Dipterocarpaceae. Baltic amber or succinate (Group C) is related to Group A but with a disputed conifer source. Group D, amber from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa is associated with the Fabaceae, the genus Hymenaea in particular. The minor Group E contains the rare fossil polystyrene (Lambert et al, 2008).

The amber clasts in Texas were found (by first author) in thin carbonaceous horizons in the lower Woodbine Group. The amber exhibits a variety of colors from pale yellow, yellow orange, red, brown, and opaque white. No bioinclusions have been found yet, but many clasts present plant debris and inorganic inclusions: spherical and elongated bubbles, bubbles inside bubbles, and acicular crystals. It is a basic task in amber research to characterize it chemically and so having collected enough fossilized resin chemical analysis were carried out as follows: 13C NMR, 1H NMR, (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy), FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared spectrosco-py), and Gas Chromatography/ Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS). These studies assign the newly found Texas amber to Group A or Class 1b and, as such, the botanical origin is considered to have been a conifer. In addition to the chemical characterization, I decided that we needed paly-nological studies (pollen and spores count basically) on the sediments where the amber clasts were found in order to gather data to better understand the likely paleoenvironment of deposition of this fossilized resin. The results of this showed a low diversity palynomorph assemblage of the sediments (composed mainly of conifer and fern spores) suggestive of a nearby source. The pale-oenvironment is interpreted as non-marine, fluvial deltaic (Zippi, 2016).

The observation of abundant charred wood and fusain present at the horizon where the amber was found seem to indicate the direct effect of fire at or immediately prior to the time when the deposit was laid down. This scenario appears to be the case in other amber localities in other geographical areas. Conifer wood charcoal is common also in those sediments. The Cretaceous has been described as a high fire world (Scott, 2010). Based on stratigraphic and palynologic data gathered at the locality, the age of the amber is assigned to the Early Cenomanian (ca. 97 Ma). This research represents the first study of amber in Texas.

References cited: Friedman, V. Nguyen, T. and J.B. Lambert, 2017. Late Cretaceous amber in Texas: A preliminary study. Botanical Society of America, Paleobota-ny Section Fort Worth, TX. Friedman, V. Lambert, J.B., Contreras, T., Stout, E., Kaur, S., and H. Mitamura. Late Cretaceous Amber in Texas: Chemical Characterization and Paleonvironment, 2018. https://blaypublishers.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/friedman-leb_53.pdf Friedman, V., Lambert, J.B., Bugarin, A., Kaur, S., and E. Stout. Amber in Texas, 2018. International Symposium: Amber, Science and Art. Gdansk, Poland, March 2018. Lambert , J. B., J. A. Santiago-Blay and K.B. Anderson, 2008. Chemical Signatures of Fossilized Resins and Recent Plant Exudates. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 47, 9608-9616 Santiago-Blay, J. and Joseph B. Lambert, 2007. Amber’s Botanical Origins Revealed. American Scientist, Vol. 95 pp. 150-157. Scott, A.C. 2010. Charcoal recognition , taphonomy and uses in paleoenvironmental analysis. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaecoecol-ogy 291, 11-39. Zippi, P.A. 2016. Palynology of one Woodbine Formation outcrop sample from north central Texas. Biostratigraphy. com, LLC.


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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 Lucia Smith [email protected]

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

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Dallas Paleontological Society

PO Box 223846

Dallas, TX 75222-3846

next meeting: wednesday, may 9 earth … · whiteside museum origami display ... travis nolan,...

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