July/Aug. 2016 • Vol. 20, No. 10

Minera l s • D inosaurs • Foss i l s

Tate Geological MuseumGeological Times

casperco l l ege .edu/ t a t e -geo log i ca l -museum 307 -268 -2447

WHAT’S INSIDE

Conference ReportBy Patti Wood Finkle, Director of Museums

Conference Report Page 1, 4-5Director’s Note Page 2

Fossil of the Month Page 3Kids Dig Page 5

DVD Review Page 6? and Answers Page 7

Events Calendar Page 8

This year’s conference: “Rivers of Time: Ancient Freshwater Ecosystems” was a spectacular success. We had 13 fantastic speakers and a truly world class keynote presentation by Dr. Nizar Ibrahim, a National Geographic Explorer who spoke on his discovery of a second (and only surviving) Spinosaurus skeleton from Morocco.

We would like to thank the guys at Pisces Prehistoric fish quarry for accommodating

all 57 of us and allowing us to stay late. They took the time to show us what to do, checked up on us and, let us cut the large slabs of rocks down to a manageable size. These guys made the long drive out there worth it and everyone had a great time.

I would also like to thank our sponsors for helping us to make this conference a complete success. Each year we grow and reach a larger audience, and it wouldn’t

be possible without the support that our sponsors offer. Thank you Barb Bentzin, Gerry Forney and Irene Ludwig, Tom and Carol Kaye, Don and Cheryl Rhodes, Shawn Rivett, Joe Scott, Anton Wroblewski, and Dana Van Burgh. THANK YOU!

Conference Report

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VOTE FOR BEN!Wyoming’s Most

Significant Artifacts voting is open for 2016. This year we nominated Ben’s Big Turtle and made it into the top

25. Voting is now open and we need your help to make it into the top 10 again this year. (Ben was featured as our November/December “Fossil of the Month.”) Go to: https://survey.uwyo.edu/TakeSurvey.aspx?SurveyID=m8K256312# to vote today!

ANCIENT WYOMING:Sant Director of the National Museum

of Natural History Kirk Johnson and Will Clyde, professor of geology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of New Hampshire, have written a new book, “Ancient Wyoming: A Dozen Lost World’s Based on the Geology of the Bighorn Basin.” This book, which was released in May, covers the geology and paleontology of the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming. The authors also mention several places to see Wyoming fossils, including the Tate Geological Museum. Stop by the Tate gift shop to pick up your copy today!

FIRST MEMBERS’ ONLY DIG:We had our first members’ outing on

May 21 to Medicine Bow. While we only had a few people on the trip, the folks who did go had a great time hunting for ammonites in the Frontier formation. Everyone found something interesting to take home. Join us on July 30 when we will go hunting for White River fossils!

TATER TRAVELS:

JP and volunteers Judith Johnston, Beth Shively and Helen Hoff recently went to the Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. This annual prep conference covers current practices in fossil prep and other topics like photogrammetry.

Patti recently attended the American Alliance of Museum’s conference in Washington D.C. She learned about the best practices in museums and ran into some familiar faces including Sant Director, of the National Museum of Natural History Kirk Johnson and his wife, Chase.

VOLUNTEER OF THE YEAR: This year’s Tate Volunteer of the Year

has supported the museum for years. She has volunteered her time to help plan our last fundraiser, plan our 35th anniversary celebration, volunteer for our National Fossil Day celebration, the Holiday Open House, and to help Russell with summer camps and revamping our outreach trunks. She is also an active member of the Tate’s Advisory Board and is always willing to volunteer for any task that comes up. We would like to congratulate Anne Carlsen on being the Tate’s Volunteer of the Year for 2015-2016.

Director’s Note:By Patti Wood Finkle, Director of Museums

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A little while ago, a local rancher reported finding a string of fossil bones on his place west of Casper. Kent Sundell went out to check them out and found

that indeed there is a string of articulated ichthyosaur vertebrae, but that they are on state land, not the rancher’s private land. In June, a few of us went out to analyze the bones, and see what else we could find. (I will be applying to the state of Wyoming for permission to collect the ichthyosaur bones). The ichthyosaur vertebrae are not the featured fossils today. After gathering as many pieces of the ichthyosaur as we could find that had slid down the hill, we split up to see what else we could find out there.

There is the Morrison Formation, which likely has dinosaur bones, but it is very steep and there are no direct roads. We already have a similar project for this summer, (steep, road-less Morrison bones) so we avoided the Morrison Formation outcrops. Instead, we focused on the slightly older Sundance Formation, the same formation the ichthyosaur bones are in. The Sundance was deposited at the bottom and/or the edge of the sea about 150 million years ago. There is an exposed layer of platy sandstone that, depending on whom you ask, is either the top layer of the Sundance or the bottom layer of the Morrison and is called the Windy Hill Sandstone. In the area around Alcova, (southwest of Casper), the Windy Hill is known for its preservation of pterosaur footprints, so we kept an eye out for these things. And it worked … we found a new pterosaur footprint site. These prints

extend the geographic range of Pteraichnus north by about 30 miles.

We collected a few examples that were all found as fallen blocks below a small 6-8 foot high cliff of Windy Hill. The block shown above has four footprints and a few possible handprints. The footprints are long four-toed impressions with a somewhat pointed heel. Three of them are fairly obvious in this lighting. The handprints are very different and are not terribly obvious in this block. Handprints are what I call ‘double commas’ … imagine a comma morphed with a capital F. I think the marks on the bottom left edge of this block are maybe two handprints on top of each other. The prints here are also on some ripple-marks showing that this little pterosaur was walking on the edge of the beach or on a sandbar. Since the tracks are not very well lined up, it is hard to say if these three tracks are the trackway of a single animal, or if it is two animals traveling in different directions.

There are many more blocks of this same layer (the same ripple marks, the same thickness, etc.) at this site that were left until we had the landowner’s permission to collect them. Recently, Mr. Chris Asbury came in to visit and see the

fossils we found on his place. He happily donated these tracks to the Tate Geological Museum and allowed us to collect more. I hope we will find a bunch of the pieces of this layer and hopefully put them together to recreate a large piece of beachfront property that was perambulated on by ancient flying reptiles about the size of a modern gull. It would be great to find the pieces that connect with this one and see what else they can tell us. I send a great big thank you to Chris Asbury for allowing us to collect these.

The photo below shows another block collected, which shows a very well preserved four-toed pterosaur footprint.

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Fossil of the Month - Jurassic Pterosaur tracksBy J.P. Cavigelli, Tate Geological Museum Collections Specialist

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2016 Tate Conference Photos

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Kids Dig

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“Seasonal Seas” is part of the highly acclaimed BBC series “The Blue Planet.” The oceans cover nearly three quarters of the globe, and constitute by far the largest habitat on Earth. And yet we know surprisingly little about them. “The Blue Planet” was produced to rectify this oversight, and to showcase the marvels and beauties of the ocean world. The series not only serves as a great introduction to the basic principles of marine biology and oceanography, but also reveals many remarkable new discoveries that have been made in recent years.

In “Seasonal Seas,” we look at those ocean environments that are affected by the yearly cycle of changes in temperature and sunlight. We start at the very bottom

of the food chain, watching tiny microscopic algae growing and multiplying in early spring. Under the microscope, the world of the algae is one of surprising beauty; there are species that look like jewel boxes, vases, flowers, and chains of glass. These provide food for tiny crustaceans called copepods, a couple hundred of which can fit into a single teaspoon of seawater. At this scale, water is extremely viscous, and a copepod’s locomotion can almost be described as climbing through the water rather than swimming. The episode shows us film of copepods swimming under laser light, so that we can see the turbulence trails they leave behind them as they travel.

One of the biggest fish in the sea lives entirely off this marine

pasture of tiny creatures – the rarely filmed basking shark. This menacing looking – but harmless – giant is shown swimming with its mouth agape, filtering out the rich plankton soup with sieve-like structures called gill-rakers.

One really nice thing about “Seasonal Seas” is the fantastic variety of ocean creatures that we get to see. To watch a typical program on, say, Animal Planet, you might think the ocean is inhabited by nothing but seals and dolphins and great white sharks. These charismatic animals do indeed make their appearances in this program. But “Seasonal Seas” also gives us a look at the more humble and obscure beasts of the marine realm – the lowly

filter feeding bryozoa for example, or the sea slug Janulus which curls up into a ball to roll away from its arch predator Navanax, a much larger glossy black sea slug with electric blue stripes. Weirdest of all is the hooded sea slug Melibe which, with its paired, plate-like dorsal gills looks like a cross between a jellyfish and a Stegosaurus.

Predators and prey are observed, employing ingenious strategies and countermeasures in their never-ending battle for survival. But there are also scenes of unexpected maternal tenderness amid the carnage. A shrimp-like amphipod nurtures her brood of tiny offspring within the curl of a kelp leaf, and we follow the two-month struggle of female Maine lobsters to find and defend good nesting sites for their hatchlings – it was almost enough to make me feel guilty about eating them!

Watching “Seasonal Seas” is an immersive and, at times, almost hypnotic experience. Complex color patterns bloom and ripple across the skin of the Australian squid, pulsating jellyfish drift with the currents in great shoals, a school of thousands of glittering fish swirl in a massive bait ball, and majestic stands of kelp sway with the waves. On the big screen, it’s sometimes almost enough to have you reaching for the Dramamine.

“Seasonal Seas” is narrated by naturalist legend Sir David Attenborough, and features a soundtrack performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra. It’s sure to fascinate anyone who has ever been even remotely interested in the mysterious world of the sea.

By Russell J. Hawley, Tate Geological Museum Education Specialist

DVD Review: “Seasonal Seas”

Image courtesy of dvd.netflix.com

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? and AnswersBy Russell J. Hawley, Tate Geological Museum Education Specialist

I know that the flowering plants had arrived roughly in the late middle to late cretaceous, and grasses did not arrive until after the end of the Mesozoic, so what did the ground landscape look like, Russell?

– Bill Sparks, Green Bay, Wisconsin

The question of Mesozoic ground cover has long been a perplexing one. Many artists have avoided the issue altogether, simply depicting dinosaurs trundling across a “parking lot” of barren, hard-packed earth. Mesozoic

plains that are just crying out for a nice field of grass are left bare because of the inconvenient fact that grass had not yet evolved.

I imagine the predominant form of ground cover would have been ferns. Now, that may sound surprising, because today ferns are pretty much restricted to moist, shady environments. But I don’t think that’s because of any intrinsic shortcoming on the part of the fern. Instead I think it may be because of competition from grasses. When an area of forest is burned off by fire, the

first plants to come in and cover the ground are ferns. They have a heyday for a while, but then get edged out as the grasses come in and start taking over. Ferns have the advantage of starting out as little tiny spores that float through the air and drift into new and distant environments right away. Grass seeds are bigger and heavier and require a pretty stiff breeze to get to where they’re going. Once there, however, they have the advantage of being able to grow faster and reproduce more quickly than ferns, and they quickly take over.

Even today, there are parts of the world where ferns are able to hold their own in open environments. A type of fern called bracken covers acres of treeless moorland in England.

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JULY 18-22 Dinosaur Dig – Como Bluff18-22 Museum Consortium Camp 30 Members’ Only Field Trip –

all ages welcome!

AUGUST 13 All Ages Members’ Only Field Trip15-19 Dinosaur Dig – Lusk22-26 Dinosaur Dig – Como Bluff

SEPTEMBER 10 Members’ Only Kids’ Expedition12-16 Dinosaur Dig – Lusk17-18 Denver Gem and Mineral Show19-23 Dinosaur Dig – Lusk

OCTOBER 1 Saturday Club 15 National Fossil Day Open House

Casper CollegeTate Geological Museum125 College DriveCasper, WY 82601

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