Visit to the White River

At the end of the year, I visited Indianapolis to see relatives. They live near the White River. When visiting, I try to walk there to see the shells of fresh water creatures.

I have not seen fossils before there but this time I found 3 on the river bank. The first is a small pebble with part of a brachiopod fossil embedded in it.

The second was a nice plate of Fenestella like bryozoan fossils. I dropped it later and broke in half revealing layers of bryozoans.

The last was a section of a small horn coral fossil that reminded me of a Heliophyllum. Interesting the horn coral and bryozoan did not show signs of being in the water that long. Usually river rock with get very rounded from tumbling in the river bed and just having water running over it. So these must have been buried or dropped in off a bank somewhere upstream.

I also pick up trash to throw away but sometimes find items like this that can be re-used.

Creatures Frozen in Stone

Decided to try and create some promotional images for the blog. Here is one attempt based on the skull of a Dracorex hogwartsia. The pictures were taken by me and shown in this older posting: http://louisvillefossils.blogspot.com/2009/11/dracorex-hogwartsia.html

The real fossil plus professional artwork featuring it can be found in Indianapolis at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.

Adobe Illustrator was used to create image. Did not seem to work, so pursuing other designs now.

Moment of Science Podcast

While listening to the local public radio station WFPL recently, I heard a short audio segment called A Moment of Science. The show is a production of Indiana public media which is a producer and distributor of created content by Indiana University's WFIU public radio and WTIU public television. An archive of shows going back to 2003 are available for listening and reading on their web site.

Picture is of a Dracorex hogwartsia on display at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis. This dinosaur is discussed in the podcast (see link further down) about naming new dinosaur species. It is now thought to be a juvenile Pachycephalosaurus.

Here are links to the audio episodes of paleontological interest:

How Do Scientists Figure Out If A Dinosaur Is A New Species? (November 22, 2011)

Why Did The Stegoceras Dinosaur Have A Domed Head? (October 24, 2011)

Using X-Rays To Find The Color Of Fossilized Skin And Feathers (October 18, 2011)

Was Dinosaur "Sue" A Boy? (August 12, 2011)

Uncovering An Even Taller T.Rex (And Others!) (October 4, 2010)

A World Full of Dinosaurs (December 19, 2006)

Dinosaur Cancer (December 16, 2009)

Prehistoric Runways (November 30, 2009)

Isty-bitsy Dinosaurs? (February 25, 2009)

A Whale of Evolution (April 29, 2008)

Pregnant Teenage Dinosaurs (March 4, 2008)

Extinction by Volcano? (February 12, 2008)

Cloning T-Rex: The Difficulty With Cloning Dinosaurs (June 12, 2007)

The First Flowers (October 31, 2006)

Dinosaur Turkey! (October 18, 2006)

Plesiosaurs (September 5, 2006)

Dinosaur photo by Michael Popp.

Cipangopaludina japonica River Snail

 This is not a fossil but it could be one day.  Snail shells found in the White River of  Indianapolis, Indiana.  Some how this Asian snail has gotten loose in the river and is multiplying.  I found 6 shells on a 5 meter stretch of river bank.  A naturalist at the Indiana State Museum identified it as maybe a Cipangopaludina japonica.

Two specimens are shown in these images.  The largest is 5.2 cm long, 4.0 cm wide, and 3.8 cm tall.  I wonder if these creatures are edible?

In addition, I found two types of river bivalves and two other types of smaller snails.

The Children's Museum of Indianapolis

Over the weekend I visited The Children's Museum of Indianapolis which as some impressive technology for their exhibits. Since I was watching my 3 and 4 year old nephews, my study of the exhibits was cursory. It was crowded and a rainy weekend day. I was impressed with all the people after volunteering in the Louisville Science Center. The facility is very modern and spacious.

The dinosaurs appeared to all be casts and computer screens were plentiful. My nephews especially liked the build the dinosaur program. We created several dinosaurs that passed the plausibility test and they walked across the screen into a simulated paleo-environment.  There was an interactive dig for uncovering fossils but it was too crowded and my nephews too young to participate.

Pictures show the outside of the building with the large dinosaur models either breaking out of or into the museum.

Here is a special dinosaur (Dracorex hogwartsia) that I have written about before.  Our local geology club had a cast of it at the last mineral, fossil, gem, and rock show.

Blurred picture of a T. rex cast part of the main Dinosphere exhibit of the Cretaceous period (65 million years ago).  This exhibit includes the Mann Properties Gallery of Dinosaur Imagery (John Lanzendorf Collection, the Paleo Prep Lab, and a Dino Dig area).

I briefly saw the train exhibit, the large gift shop, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars exhibit.  They also had something to do with Barbie which is interesting since the Indiana State Museum was on to that theme as well.

When I get a chance, I will visit there again with more time and attention to study their museum.  Great place to take young children!

Indiana State Museum

The Indiana State Museum was my holiday visit and will be my opening post for the new year of 2010.  Happy new year everyone, I hope it brings you good health and new found knowledge.

I enjoyed my visit to the museum located at 650 West Washington Street, Indianapolis, Indiana.  My visit was mostly to see the geology and palentology exhibits but the museum is so much more.  It is segmented into 11 core galleries, changing exhibits gallery, two art galleries, two food venues, a two story gift shop, a theater, auditorium, and IMAX theater.  Most of my time was spent on the first level in the two galleries called "Birth of the Earth" and "Ancient Seas" along with the R.B. Annis Naturalist's Lab.

The "Birth of the Earth" gallery features three meteorites (Barringer Crater, Arizona; Campo del Cielo meteorite, Argentina) on display along with a rock brought back from the moon.  It has a number of plaques describing the different geological periods.  A Gneiss metamorphic rock that is over 3 billion years old found in Slave Province, Canada is on display. A seismograph demo is available where you can jump on the floor and generate waves it will detect and display on a real time display.  Core samples from the 1.1-1.5 billion year old Indiana basement rock are shown.  Various examples rocks (e.g. granite, siltstone, dolomite, sandstone, limestone, shale) found in the state are placed for visitors to study.

They have a nice stromatolite examples showing some polished rocks of these oxygen producing creatures from billions of years ago.  I am not sure the location of where the displayed fossils were found, there was a picture of modern day creatures found in Australia.  The display text explained that originally the rock showed bands of mud and calcium carbonate produced by cyanobacteria.  The stromatolites produced oxygen as a by-product of photosynthesis banded iron layers appeared as the oxygen oxidized the metal to produce rust.

Large transparent tubes in the area that transitioned to the Indiana fossils.  The tubes contained minerals found in Indiana (calcite, quartz, dolomite, marcasite, galena, pyrite, fluorite,sphalerite, limonite, selenite, goethite, aragonite).

Interesting, the museum began in 1862 with a collection of minerals of State Librarian R. Deloss Brown. The building I was in was not started till 2002 and now they only display 2-3 percent of the entire collection.

More in another post about the fossil sections.  One last observation, they must have a Barbie doll collection because the dolls in various attire show up in the exhibits from time to time.  I did not see a note in the guide paper/map about it.

Dracorex hogwartsia

The curator at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis took the glass case of the plastic mold of this Dracorex hogwartsia so it could be boxed for travel back to the museum. He let me take some pictures while he got its packing crate. It was on display at the local rock show.

One neat side effect from studying fossils is you begin to learn some of the Latin that goes into naming these creatures. Even though I read the Harry Potter books, I did not realize that Draco was Latin for dragon. So when combined with Latin rex (meaning king), this dinosaur was the "dragon king". All the spikes on it make it quite the prickly beast though it apparently ate plants. This type of pachycephalosaur was found in South Dakota and from the Cretaceous Period.








UPDATE: Here is a picture of a casting of the entire fossil and its display at the museum taken 03/13/2010.