An Iridescent Looking Limnoscelis

I have mentioned this animal before in a previous posting and about the computer game it is featured in. It is now at its maximum level and appears quite iridescent. It is from the mobile phone game Jurassic World.

This Permian Period reptile like amphibian is a Limnoscelis. It is thought to be a carnivore and grew to a length of about 1.5 meters.

The game is available for free for the Android phone in the Play Store.

Sources:

http://www.ludia.com/en/games/jurassic-worldtm-the-game

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limnoscelis

Virtual Fossil Hunting? Possible Tool for Advancing Paleotological Discoveries?

Earlier in the week, I saw a BBC News story entitled "Online fossil hunters to help comb Kenyan desert" by science reporter Jonathan Webb (8 September 2015). It talks about a British research web site fossilfinder.org to get the Internet's public to help find possible fossils in the Turkana Basin of northern Kenya. Fossils there date back about 6 million years.

I tried it out and did not make any great discoveries for them. You are first presented with an image with a field of view of 34 cm. You answer the question about the usability of the image. Next you are asked about its composition, percentage of rubble visible in image. If there are a lot of rocks/minerals you are asked to try to mark them with a crosshair and try to classify them. The last screen is the mark items of interest with different color crosshairs: fossil bone/tooth, fossil shell/snails, root-cast/Rhizolith, Stromatolite, stone tool, or may be something. There is a nice help section for each screen to help you by showing examples of the different classifications.

My time on the website consisted of looking at four images. In the image at the top of this blog post, I identified a white spiral gastropod near the top left side edge of the picture. In another image, I think it had at least 3 root casts present. I found using the magnifier tool built into Windows to be helpful when examining the images. One can also try using the Ctrl and plus keys to magnify the browser window. Use Ctrl and zero keys to restore it normal size. A user could also clip or screen print the image and paste it into Photoshop to enhance it better.

Below is the web site with the top part of the screen being used by the Microsoft Magnifier tool found in the Accessories section of Windows. I found this to be a great help when trying for find items in the ground pictures.

This project seems like a good idea. Hopefully, I will be able to spend some more time trying to help them out even though my brain is more keyed to finding invertebrate marine fossils in the 300-450 million year old range.

Learn more:

Fossil Finder Site: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/adrianevans/fossil-finder/

Fossil Finder Project Blog: http://blog.fossilfinder.org/

Zooniverse Internet Projects: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/

BBC News Story: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34179594

Digging the Past Event 2015

Today, I helped out with the Digging the Past event at the Falls of the Ohio State Park. The weather was nice. A lot of visitors showed up despite the main building being closed for renovations and there is so much construction in the area involving the new Ohio River bridge. The park employees estimated about 500 cars showed up with about 1,500 visitors. I did not see many fossils being found in the Silurian Period Waldron Shale pile (mostly brachiopods and one Trimerus trilobite pygidium). The Jeffersonville limestone pile was seeded so people were bringing me some Devonian brachiopods to ID and some corals. I did see some button corals from the Speed Limestone as well.

Mostly I stayed by the washing station of the mineral pile and identified fluorite, barite, calcite, and such mineral specimens. I saw a few nice cubed pieces of fluorite early on but no blue or green material. The biggest find I saw a piece of galena. Myself and the naturalist at the Falls have never seen a galena specimen in the pile so that was quite a rarity. Also someone found a nice purple fluorite piece on a orange matrix. I do not recall seeing the orange matrix before either.

I helped a fellow volunteer with some stability issues on flying his quadcopter but a park employee came over told me to stop flying as it was against the rules. So I learned something new today. As stated on the DNR web site, "Motor Driven Airborne Devices: Motor-driven airborne devices (RC airplanes) should be operated in designated areas only or with clearance from property management. Drones are not currently permitted on DNR properties."

All and all, it was a good day and hope the people attending had fun and learned something about fossils and minerals with their visit to the Falls of the Ohio State Park.

Colorful Creatures of Jurassic World Game

I continue to play a mobile phone game called Jurassic World. Once the creatures in the game reach level 40 they become quite colorful. Two shown in this posting are the Triceratops and the Majungasaurus.

The game is available for free for the Android phone in the Play Store.

Sources:
http://www.ludia.com/en/games/jurassic-worldtm-the-game

Dolatocrinus Crinoid Calyx Fossil

This is a picture of an eroded crinoid calyx fossil. It appears to be a Dolatocrinus. The fossil was found in the Jeffersonville Limestone of Clark County, Indiana, USA. It dates to the Eifelian, Middle Devonian Period.

Thanks to Kenny for the picture.

Eroded Devonian Blastoid Fossil

This is a picture of an eroded blastoid. These types of fossils are somewhat rare. It appears to be an Elaeacrinus verneuili (Römer [aka Roemer], 1851). The fossil was found in the Jeffersonville Limestone of Clark County, Indiana, USA. It dates to the Eifelian, Middle Devonian Period.

Thanks to Kenny for the picture.

Devonian Sponge Fossil

This is a picture of an unidentified sponge fossil. The fossil was found in the Jeffersonville Limestone of Clark County, Indiana, USA. It dates to the Eifelian, Middle Devonian Period.

Thanks to Kenny for the picture.