Merry Fossil Christmas 2010

Merry Christmas to one and all!  May you get lots of geological goodies this holiday season.  Hope the new year brings good health and safe travels.

For the curious, this years image contains fossils from four time periods.  The star, red and blue ornaments are Ordovician crinoid stem pieces of Madison, Indiana.  The trunk is an unidentified crinoid stem from the Silurian Waldron Shale of Clark County, Indiana.  The tree body is an unidentified horn coral from the Devonian Jeffersonville Limestone of Clark County, Indiana.  Last, the yellow ornaments are unidentified crinoid/blastoid stem pieces from the Mississippian Period limestones of Crawford County, Indiana.  All the fossils have had their colors modified to match a real Christmas tree.

See this April 2010 blog post on the Ordovician crinoid pieces for their identifications.

Cupularostrum tethys Brachiopod

Identified using Henry Nettelroth's Kentucky Fossils Shells book (1889) found at this site.  In the book, it was identified as Rhynchonella tethys (Billings, 1860).  Its modern name is Cupularostrum tethys (Billings). 

This small fossil was found in the Jeffersonville Limestone of Clark County, Indiana USA.  This layer would date it to the Middle Devonian Period.  It is a rare find for me making two found so far.

How to Build a Dinosaur Lecture

The KY-AIPG is sponsoring a FREE lecture that is open to the public by Jack Horner.  It will take place on Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 7:30 PM.  Jack's lecture is entitled "How to Build a Dinosaur - Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever".  John R. "Jack" Horner is curator & teacher of paleontology at Museum of the Rockies (Montana State University at Bozeman).  He was a technical adviser for some of the Jurassic Park movies.

Event will be held at:

Singletary Center for the Arts

University of Kentucky

405 Rose St.

Lexington, KY 40506

Sponsored by the University of Kentucky -Kentucky Geological Survey and Morehead State University.

Learn more by reading their PDF flier found at this site: http://ky.aipg.org/PDF/HornerPoster.pdf