Prehistoric Road Trip Videos

I watched a great show recently on Kentucky Educational Television (KET) Passport Internet streaming site about paleontology in the western United States. The show was called Prehistoric Road Trip hosted by Emily Graslie and available by WTTW Chicago. Three episodes make up this show. Below are embedded Public Broadcasting System (PBS) viewers for each one. They were recorded on 3 separate visits to five western states over a 9 week period in the summer of 2019.

Emily Graslie is the Chief Curiosity Correspondent of The Field Museum in Chicago and has been with them since 2013. She hosts the YouTube channel The Brain Scoop which as of this writing has had 31,258,841 total views. The museum is fortunate to have such an energetic and happy presenter for their videos.

What I liked most about the Prehistoric Road Trip episodes was the field collecting where they are splitting shale to find fish or plants. The hands on aspect of fossil collecting and then the interpretation of what one finds. Clues to what it might be, how it lived and died. When Emily visited the reservation with the dinosaur fossils just eroding out of the ground reminds me around Louisville at some sites where coral fossils just litter the area. Hopefully a good way can be found to preserve and display them.

Visit the website to learn more about the show and how to visit the fossil sites shown in it.
https://interactive.wttw.com/prehistoric-road-trip

Pecopteris Fern Fossil

As of June 2020, on display at the  New Harmony Indiana USA Working Men's Institute Museum & Library was this Pecopteris fern fossil. The fossil dates to Pennsylvanian Period. Specimen accession number WMI 300.7 and is part of the James Sampson collection. Fossil found in the Bond Formation at the Rush Creek locality of Posey County, Indiana, USA.

New Harmony was named by Robert Owen in 1825 after purchasing it from the Harmony Society who founded Harmony there in 1814. A number of earlier American geologists lived in this town including William McClure, Gerard Troost, David Dale Owen, F. B. Meek, E. T. Cox, B.F. Shumard, and Richard Owen. Naturalists Thomas Say and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur also lived in New Harmony. Thomas Say is buried near the center of the town.

Ceratites nodosus Ammonite Fossil

This ammonite fossil was seen at the New Harmony Indiana USA Working Men's Institute Museum & Library in June 2020. It was identified as a Ceratites nodosus (Bruguière. 1789). The fossil dates to Cretaceous Period. Specimen accession number WMI 309.7. No locality for this fossil was listed.

The Working Men's Institute (WMI) was created by geologist William Maclure in 1838. Its goal is to provide useful knowledge to those who work with their hands. At one time there were 160 institutes in Indiana and Illinois, only the New Harmony branch remains. The library is longest continuous operating one in the state of Indiana.