VIENNA, AUSTRIA–I had the privilege this week to attend the 14th Larwood Symposium of the International Bryozoology Association (IBA) in this beautiful city. It was my first visit, and I was of course very impressed. Above is a view of the Austrian Parliament building (Parlamentsgebäude), and the beautiful blue sky we had for most of our meeting.
About 50 bryozoan experts from 15 countries attended the conference. I love these meetings because of their small size, diversity of disciplines (paleontologists and biologists freely mingle, being nearly indistinguishable until they give their presentations), and friendly fellowship. English was the common language, for which I am grateful to my international colleagues. Above Lee Hsiang Liow of the University of Oslo is giving her talk.
Here I am during my presentation. I had no idea I put my hands in my pockets. I look far more relaxed than I was!
We had an afternoon excursion starting with the small but treasure-filled Krahuletz Museum in Eggenburg, Austria. This is one of those local museums with a national reputation for particular collections. In this case it is fossils, minerals and rocks from the very complex region.
Outside the museum is an excellent rock garden with local varieties well labeled. The above, of course, is a conglomerate with mostly carbonate clasts.
This gneiss shows the useful form of the rock pillars. Four sides are polished and the top is left rough, just the way a geologist likes it.
Patrick Wyse Jackson, President of the IBA, professor at Trinity College Dublin, and a recent visitor in Wooster, manages here to find bryozoans in the museum’s building stone.
After the museum we visited a quarry of fossiliferous Miocene limestone. A nice place, but protected from collecting.
At the end of the day we visited “Fossilienwelt Weinviertel” outside Vienna. It is home to the world’s largest fossil pearl (which somehow I missed seeing) and an excavated Miocene oyster reef. The reef has at least 20,000 large oysters, which are the subject of this “geotainment park”. More than 200 volunteers excavated this reef for public display under a permanent canopy. The oysters seem to have been tossed together by a flood, so they are pushing the definition of “reef”. The lighting of the oysters was so dim that my photographs of them were worthless.
The Fossil World tower is shaped like a Turritella shell.
Here is one of the oysters and some Turritella shells on display at Fossil World. There are many more fossils here than snails and oysters. It is a fun exhibit, but the science has been so diluted for the public that some of the offered explanations are nonsense. (“Stromatolites are made of the poop of algae”.) I recommend a visit, but with a paleontologist as a guide!
Thank you to Thomas Schwaha for organizing this fun trip!
Our IBA group photo, courtesy of Thomas Schwaha.
