First GSA Event: The Paleontological Society Short Course — “Reconstructing Earth’s Deep-Time Climate”

November 3rd, 2012

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA–This iPhone snapshot of a dark lecture room may record the time and place, but it hardly does justice to the event, so let’s see an image of the colorful special volume printed for this year’s Paleontological Society Short Course:

Much better. The Paleontological Society has a short course every year at its annual meeting with the Geological Society of America. I’ve been to nearly every one since my graduate school days. They are designed to bring paleontologists up to speed on the latest innovations and ideas in the science. They are also — sometimes in contradiction — supposed to review basic concepts for non-experts in a particular subdiscipline. This year’s course, developed by Linda Ivany (Syracuse University) and Brian Huber (Smithsonian Institution), was even more ambitious than most: it brought together paleontologists and geochemists to address how we deduce ancient climates, and by implication Earth’s history of climate change. As an indication of its interdisciplinary nature, this short course was also sponsored by the Society for Sedimentary Geology (SEPM) and the Cushman Foundation for Foraminiferal Research. Linda and Brian succeeded in not only bringing us introductory level description of paleoclimatological theory and practice, they also showed us some of the most exciting new developments in the field. And unlike every other short course, this one even had food and drink!

I learned a great deal in this course, especially about some geochemical techniques for estimating ancient seawater temperatures such as clumped isotope and lipid paleothermometry, oxygen isotope analysis, and Mg/Ca ratio determination. Each has particular advantages in particular circumstances, and each has significant limitations in other settings. They all produce varieties of what Greg Wiles calls “wiggly lines” open to interpretation as to what they mean about ancient temperature histories. We also saw several examples of how climate analysis actually works with invertebrate, vertebrate and plant fossils. As always, one of the primary lessons was that biological systems are not easily modeled or predicted — that what geochemists call “vital effects” can make complicated natural processes even more convoluted.

Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Bivalve Borings (Upper Miocene of Spain)

October 28th, 2012

This beautiful object has a complex history. In the center is a gray limestone cobble that eroded from an underwater ridge and rolled free on a shallow coral reef in an area now near Abanilla, southeastern Spain. It was encrusted by a scleractinian coral, which grew thickly all around the cobble because it was turned continually by wave and current action. Larvae of the bivalve Lithophaga landed on the surface of the coral and quickly began to bore downwards, creating the trace fossil Gastrochaenolites torpedo Kelly and Bromley, 1984. They bored in some cases all the way into the cobble nucleus. The whole set was then buried in transgressive sediments of the Los Banós Formation during the Late Miocene. In the summer of 1989, my student Genga Thavi (“Devi”) Nadaraju (’90) found it as part of her Keck Geology Consortium fieldwork for her Independent Study project. It now resides proudly in the trace fossil collection at Wooster.

Closer view of the gray limestone cobble in the center. Note the remnants of Lithophaga shells still in the borings.

The bivalve boring Gastrochaenolites was named in 1842 by a French geologist with a magnificent name: Alexandre Félix Gustave Achille Leymerie (1801-1878). He was a prolific author with a long career spent primarily studying Cretaceous rocks and fossils in France and northern Spain.

References:

Kelly, S.R.A. and Bromley, R.G. 1984. Ichnological nomenclature of clavate borings. Palaeontology 27: 793-807.

Leymerie, M.A. 1842. Suite de mémoire sur le terrain Crétacé du département de l’Aube. Mémoire des Société Géologique de France 5: 1-34.

Mankiewicz, C. 1995. Response of reef growth to sea-level changes (late Miocene, Fortuna Basin, southeastern Spain). Palaios 10: 322-336.

Mankiewicz, C. 1996. The middle to upper Miocene carbonate complex of Níjar, Almería Province, southeastern Spain, in Franseen, E.K., Esteban, M., Ward, W.C., and Rouchy, J.-M., eds., Models for carbonate stratigraphy from Miocene reef complexes of the Mediterranean regions: Tulsa, SEPM (Society for Sedimentary Geology), p. 141-157.

Nadaraju, G.T. 1990. Borings associated with a Miocene coral reef complex, Fortuna basin, southeastern Spain. Third Keck Research Symposium in Geology (Smith College), p. 165-168.

Taylor, P.D. and Wilson, M.A. 2003. Palaeoecology and evolution of marine hard substrate communities. Earth-Science Reviews 62: 1-103.

Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Silicified sclerobionts (Middle Permian of southwestern Texas)

October 21st, 2012

During my work at the National Museum of Natural History last week, I had my research desk amongst the many cabinets housing the famous Permian brachiopod collection made by the eminent paleontologist Richard E. Grant (1927–1995). Most of these specimens are from the Middle Permian of southwestern Texas, and they are preserved in a fantastic way. I peaked into some of these drawers and was just amazed at the beauty and delicacy of these fossils.

Many years ago I received a block of limestone from the Road Canyon Formation (Middle Permian, Roadian, about 270 million years old) found in the Glass Mountains of southwestern Texas. This rock was from an ancient reef system and so nearly completely filled with fossils. The fossils are replaced with very fine-grained quartz (“silicified”), yet the rock matrix around them is limestone (composed of calcium carbonate). The trick, then, is to dissolve away the limestone in hydrochloric acid and watch the delicate replaced fossils emerge. I did this with the Road Canyon Formation rock and recovered hundreds of extraordinary specimens. One set is shown above. Previous Fossils of the Week have included an aberrant brachiopod and a set of reef-forming brachiopods.
While at the Smithsonian, Kathy Hollis showed me a polished block of original Road Canyon Formation limestone (above) and then next to it the results after dissolving a similar block in acid (below). The complex mass of bryozoans, corals and brachiopods is preserved in exquisite detail.
Now, back to the Wooster specimens at the very top of this entry and just above. The platform is the wavy outer layer of a bivalve shell. Attached to it are encrusting organisms (sclerobionts). The long, gorgeous tube is a rugose coral. At its base is a ribbed athyrid brachiopod. Also in this vignette are bryozoans, additional corals and some really tiny productid brachiopods. Beautiful.

References:

Cooper, G.A., and Grant, R.E., 1964, New Permian stratigraphic units in Glass Mountains, West Texas: American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin 48: 1581-1588.

Cooper, G.A., and Grant, R.E. 1966. Permian rock units in the Glass Mountains, West Texas, In: Contributions to stratigraphy, 1966: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1244-E: E1-E9.

Olszewski, T.D. and Erwin, D.H. 2009. Change and stability in Permian brachiopod communities from western Texas. Palaios 24: 27-40.

 

Wooster Geologists at the Smithsonian

October 15th, 2012

WASHINGTON, D.C. — It is Fall Break at the College of Wooster, so some of the geologists have taken the opportunity to get out of town. Dr. Meagen Pollock is under the bright blue skies of the gorgeous state of Arizona. I am now under a string of fluorescent lights between two rows of cabinets deep in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (above) in overcast and gray Washington, D.C. We are both having fun in some very different ways!

I am here on a project studying some enigmatic encrusting fossils from the Paleozoic. Paul Taylor and I want to sort out the mysterious systematic identities of Allonema, Ascodictyon and related forms commonly inhabiting hard substrates, especially in the Devonian. All we can say for certain now is that they are not bryozoans! The specimen above, for example, is USNM 43129 Allonema fusiforme (Nicholson & Etheridge, 1877) figured as Ascodictyon fusiforme in the Treatise of Invertebrate Paleontology, pt. G, p. G35, Fig. 9-3. It was collected from the Devonian of Michigan. It doesn’t look like much more than bubbles of calcite under a light microscope, but later Paul Taylor will show its glories through scanning electron microscopy. I am the advance member of the team, looking through specimens to find the best for Paul to borrow when he visits later this month. We’ll have much more to say about these fossils later.

Above are the specimen boxes for species of the genus Allonema. Note how much information is packed into the small space on the top of each box. Paul and I go through these boxes and examine the specimens they contain with light microscopes in the museum galleries.

There is some humor in the dry world of systematic paleontology.

This is my work station while at the museum. Note the nice photographic tube on the microscope, the comfortable chair, and the lack of any distractions!

I’ve saved the best part for last. Why the plural “Wooster Geologists” in the title? Because the Collections Manager of this world-class paleontological museum is one of my former students — Kathy Hollis (’03). Here is happy, efficient, uber-competent Kathy in her office, clearly in her element. We are very proud of her at Wooster. It is so cool to see her at work in one of the most paleontologically exciting places you could be. Makes up for the gray skies!

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A spiriferid brachiopod (Middle Devonian of northwestern Ohio)

October 14th, 2012

I begin my Invertebrate Paleontology course by giving each student a common fossil to identify “by any means necessary”. This year I gave everyone a gray little brachiopod, one of which is shown above. They did pretty well. Kevin Silver (’13) got it down to the genus quickly. Turns out a Google image search on “common fossil” is very effective!

This is Mucrospirifer mucronatus (Conrad, 1841), a beautiful spiriferid brachiopod from the Silica Shale Formation (Middle Devonian) of Paulding County, northwestern Ohio. I collected it and many others at a quarry on a crisp October day with my friend and amateur paleontological colleague Brian Bade.

The image at the head of this page is a view of the dorsal valve exterior of Mucrospirifer mucronatus; the image immediately above is the ventral valve exterior. Spiriferid brachiopods like this are characterized by extended “wings” and a long hingeline. Inside was their defining feature: a spiral brachidium that held a delicate tentacular feeding device known as the lophophore.

This is the anterior of our brachiopod. The fold in the middle helped keep incurrent and excurrent flows separate, enabling more efficient filter-feeding. (By the way, have you noted the quirky asymmetry of this specimen?)

A view of the quarry that yielded our Fossil of the Week. Note the happy amateurs picking through blast piles of the Silica Shale Formation (Middle Devonian).

A pond in the quarry. It has an unexpected beauty, muddy as it is.

Timothy Abbott Conrad (1803-1877) described Mucrospirifer mucronatus in 1841. We met him before when discussing a siliquariid gastropod. He was a paleontologist in New York and New Jersey, and a paleontological consultant to the Smithsonian Institution.

Reference:

Tillman, J.R. 1964. Variation in species of Mucrospirifer from Middle Devonian rocks of Michigan, Ontario, and Ohio. Journal of Paleontology 38: 952-964.

Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Giant ostracods (Silurian of Estonia)

October 7th, 2012

During our Estonian expedition this summer, Richa Ekka (’13) chose as her Independent Study project focus the Soeginina Beds (lowermost Ludlow, Upper Silurian) of the Paadla Formation exposed in southeastern Saaremaa Island. These carbonate sediments, mostly dolomitized, were deposited in very shallow conditions — so shallow that in some places we have syneresis cracks and halite crystal molds. I expected the fossils to be mostly stromatolites and rare traces. We were pleasantly surprised to also find, though, a bed with numerous valves of the giant ostracod Herrmannina Kegel 1933 (shown above). I should have guessed that the hardy and extraordinarily successful ostracods would have been present.

At first we thought that these slightly-recrystallized shells must be bivalves (clams) because of their relatively large size (up to 25 mm long). But we didn’t see the typical bivalve muscle scars or hinging teeth and sockets. They had to be ostracods — but so big? The typical ostracod valve, shown below, is two mm or less in length. These Silurian examples are over 10 times that size. It would be like me meeting my 60-foot equivalent. Turns out that Herrmannina is known for its gigantism in the ostracod world — and it is not even the largest.

Cyamocytheridea sp. from the Eocene of Nederokkerzeel, Belgium. (Public Domain, Wikimedia.) This is the typical small size for an ostracod.
Today the ostracods, members of the Phylum Arthropoda, have over 8000 living species in both fresh and marine waters. Most crawl or burrow into sediments (that is, most are vagrant benthic epifaunal and infaunal), and a few are suspended in the water column (planktic). They have a wide range of feeding habits, from filter-feeding and deposit-feeding to herbivory and carnivory. (This is a key to their survival from the Early Paleozoic to today.) The living ostracod above shows that they are essentially a large head with several pairs of appendages inside two hinged valves. (The image is public domain from Anna33 at Wikipedia.) Their sex life is astonishing: ostracods have the largest sperm of any animals in both relative and absolute measures. Ostracod sperm are often ten times the length of the male body. (No, I don’t know how that works!)

Herrmannina is in the Order Leperditicopida of the Class Ostracoda. This genus was named in 1933 by Wilhelm Kegel (1890-1971), a geologist in the Preussische Geologische Landesanstalt of Berlin, Germany, who specialized in the Devonian and Carboniferous systems. I couldn’t find out much more about Dr. Kegel, but did stumble across an uncredited, undated low-resolution photo of him above. A fuzzy face from our paleontological past!

References:

Abushik, A. 2000. Silurian-earliest Devonian ostracode biostratigraphy of the Timan-Northern Ural Region. Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, Geology 49: 112-125.

Belak, R. 1977. Ontogeny of the Devonian Leperditiid ostracode Herrmannina alta. Journal of Paleontology 51: 943-952.

Kegel, W. 1933. Zur Kenntnis palaozoischer Ostrakoden 3, Leperditiidae aus dem Mitteldevon des Rheinischen Schiefergebirges. Preussischen Geologischen Landesanstalt, Jahrbuch fur das Jahr 1932, Bd. 53, p. 907-935.

Kesling, R.V. 1958. A new and unusual species of the ostracod genus Herrmannina from the Middle Silurian Hendricks Dolomite of Michigan. Contributions, Museum of Paleontology, The University of Michigan 14, No. 9: 143-148.

Putzer, H. 1971. Wilhelm Kegel. Geologisches Jahrbuch 89: xiii-xxii.

Vannier,J., Wang, S.Q., and Coen, M. 2001. Leperditicopid arthropods (Ordovician – Late Devonian): Functional morphology and ecological range. Journal of Paleontology 75: 75-95.

Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: Beautiful molds on a concretion (Lower Carboniferous of Ohio)

September 30th, 2012

Kit Price (’13) was exploring a local creek on a Geomorphology course field trip north of Wooster led by Dr. Greg Wiles. Like the excellent paleontologist Kit is, her eyes continually searched the pebbles, cobbles, slabs and outcrops for that distinctive outline of something fossilian. This particular place has been in the blog before, so we know the stratigraphic and geological context of the rocks. Kit saw the curious golden brown, rounded rock above and immediately noted the presence of several fossils on its exterior. She collected it, cleaned it up, and the two of us examined the treasures.

Here is the key to what we found: A = trilobite pygidium external mold (more on this below); B = productid brachiopod dorsal valve internal mold; C = replaced bivalve shell fragment; D = productid brachiopod ventral valve external mold; E = nautiloid external mold. There are also external molds of twiggy bryozoans on the surface, but they are too small to distinguish in this view.

This rock is an ironstone concretion formed within the Meadville Member of the Cuyahoga Formation (Kinderhookian; Lower Carboniferous). It weathered out of the softer shale matrix and lay free on the creek bed. The original shells of the various fossils were dissolved away after burial, either being replaced with iron oxides (like the bivalve) or just remaining as open cavities (the molds). They represent a little survey of some of the animals that lived in this shallow, muddy seaway. Most of these fossils would have been lost to the dissolution, but the hard concretion preserved them.

The most interesting fossil here is the external mold of the trilobite pygidium (or tail piece). We don’t see these very often in Carboniferous and later rocks. The group is dwindling in advance of their final extinction at the end of the Permian period. I suspect this is the pygidium of Brachymetopus nodosus Wilson, 1979. I can only guess this, though, because only the cephalon (or head) of B. nodosus was described originally from the Meadville Member. This may be the long-missing pygidium of that species. It certainly has the little bumps that we would expect. (By the way, if you stare at the above image long enough, it appears in positive relief rather than the actual negative relief (or hole) that it is. It “pops out”, giving a view of what it may have looked like in life.)

Thanks, Kit, for such a nice view of a local Carboniferous community! It also brought back fond memories of my own local explorations as a Wooster student long, long ago.

References:

Corbett, R.G. and Manner, B.G. 1988. Geology and habitats of the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area, Ohio. Ohio Journal of Science 88: 40-47.

Wilson, M.A. 1979. A new species of the trilobite Brachymetopus from the Cuyahoga Formation (Lower Mississippian) of northeastern Ohio. Journal of Paleontology 53: 221-223.

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: a deformed brachiopod (Upper Ordovician of Indiana)

September 23rd, 2012

Kevin Silver (’13), a sharp-eyed paleontology student, found this odd brachiopod on our field trip earlier this month in southeastern Indiana. It comes from the Upper Ordovician (Katian) Whitewater Formation. Kevin correctly identified it as Vinlandostrophia acutilirata (Conrad, 1842), an orthid brachiopod formerly in the genus Platystrophia (see Zuykov and Harper, 2007). The above view is looking at the anterior of the brachiopod with the dorsal valve above and the ventral valve below.

What we see right away is that this brachiopod specimen is asymmetric: the right side is much shorter than the left. This is a feature of this individual, not the species. Is it a teratology — a deformity of growth? Probably. It is unlikely to be from post-depositional squeezing because the shell is otherwise in excellent shape. The oddity did not seem to hinder this individual from growing to a full adult size.

The same specimen looking at the dorsal valve with the hinge at the top of the image. The fold in the center is coming up towards us.

The posterior of our specimen, with the dorsal valve at the top. This is the hinge of the brachiopod.

A view of the ventral valve with the sulcus in the center.

(The above images are to help my paleontology students with their brachiopod morphology!)

References:

Alberstadt, L.P. 1979. The brachiopod genus Platystrophia. United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 1066-B: 1-20.

Boucot A.J. and Sun, Y.L. 1998. Teratology, possible pathologic conditions in fossil articulate brachiopods: p. 506-513, Collected works of the international symposium on Geological Sciences, Peking.

Conrad, T.A. 1842. Observations on the Silurian and Devonian Systems of the United States, with descriptions of new organic remains. Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 8: 228-280.

Zuykov, M.A. and Harper, D.A.T. 2007. Platystrophia (Orthida) and new related Ordovician and Early Silurian brachiopod genera. Estonian Journal of Earth Sciences 56: 11-34.

Wooster’s Fossils of the Week: a little sclerobiont community (Upper Ordovician of Indiana)

September 16th, 2012

Last week the students of my Invertebrate Paleontology class found many excellent fossils in the Whitewater and Liberty Formations of southeastern Indiana. We will be featuring some of them in this space. I want to start with one of my own finds: an orthid brachiopod from the Whitewater known as Vinlandostrophia acutilirata (Conrad, 1842), the inside of which is encrusted by old friends Cuffeyella arachnoidea (Hall, 1847) and Cornulites flexuosus (Hall 1847).

A sclerobiont is an organism living in or on a hard substrate. The branching form in the image is Cuffeyella arachnoidea, an encrusting cyclostome bryozoan well represented in the Cincinnatian Group (Taylor and Wilson, 1996). The conical encrusters are the lophophorate Cornulites flexuosus, a species we covered earlier in detail.

These sclerobionts were well protected from weathering on the outcrop by the concavity of the brachiopod’s interior, giving us a beautiful vignette of an ancient ecosystem.

References:

Conrad, T.A. 1842. Observations on the Silurian and Devonian Systems of the United States, with descriptions of new organic remains. Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 8: 228-280.

Hall, J. 1847. Paleontology of New York, v. 1: Albany, State of New York, 338 p.

Taylor, P.D. and Wilson, M.A. 1996. Cuffeyella, a new bryozoan genus from the Late Ordovician of North America, and its bearing on the origin of the post-Paleozoic cyclostomates, p. 351-360. In: Gordon, D.P., A.M. Smith and J.A. Grant-Mackie (eds.), Bryozoans in Space and Time. Proceedings of the 10th International Bryozoology Conference, Wellington, New Zealand, 1995. National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research Ltd, Wellington, 442 pages.

Paleontology field trip in southeastern Indiana

September 9th, 2012

RICHMOND, INDIANA–Geology students in the Cincinnati area are a bit spoiled when it comes to finding fossils in the field. The Upper Ordovician rocks here are world-famous for the extraordinary abundance, variety and preservation of invertebrate fossils.like those shown above and below.

Today Wooster’s Invertebrate Paleontology class had its annual field trip to collect specimens for lab projects and analyses. We traveled to roadcut outcrops south of Richmond, Indiana — places Wooster Geologists have been visiting for about 30 years. Most recently Kit Price (’13) and her team was here collecting specimens for her Independent Study project. She was on this trip as well, and the class found lots of goodies for her work.

Our fleet of vehicles at our first outcrop (the Whitewater Formation).

Matt Peppers (’13) and Will Cary (’13) striking a Team Utah pose with the Whitewater Formation. Note that this rock unit is mostly resistant limestone beds.

The outcrop of the Liberty Formation at our second stop. (The Liberty is known as the Dillsboro Formation in Indiana, but we tend to use the Ohio names just across the border.) Note the prominence of less resistant shale.

It was a great day — sunny, warm and full of fossils. This class was especially adept at finding unusual specimens, several of which will show up us Fossils of the Week!

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