Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Pelican’s-foot snail (Pliocene of Cyprus)

Mark Wilson July 17, 2011 12:27 am

This week’s fossil was found on the same 1996 Keck Geology Expedition to Cyprus that produced the Thorny Oyster highlighted in January. Stephen Dornbos (’97) was there, but this fossil was not part of the Pliocene coral reef complex he and I described (Dornbos & Wilson, 1999), but it was in nearby shallow marine embayment muddy sediments.

The pelican’s-foot snail is Aporrhais pespelecani (Linnaeus, 1758). It got its common name before Linnaeus because of its resemblance to a pelican’s webbed foot. When the snail reached a mature size, it extended the outer lip of its aperture into spines as an anti-predatory defense (probably against crabs) and as possibly a way to spread its weight (“footprint”, if you like) on soft sediment.

A. pespelecani belongs to the Superfamily Stromboidea, a very large group that includes familiar snails like the true conch (Strombus). A recent morphological analysis suggests they are also related to the carrier shells (Xenophoridae), although genomic sequencing is needed for support (Simone, 2005).

The pelican’s-foot snail lives today in the eastern Atlantic as well as the Baltic, Black and Mediterranean seas. It is a carnivore on clams and has the ability to “flick” its muscular foot to escape predators.

These distinctive shells have been known in Europe for a very long time. I like this particular illustration by Niccolò Gualtieri (1688–1744) in which they appear to be dancing:

As is often the case with writing these little essays, I learned something about a brilliant scientist now almost forgotten. Niccolò Gualtieri was a Florentine polymath skilled in medicine, poetry, drawing, and the developing natural sciences. He had his own shell museum, so he can be said to be one of the first conchologists.

I’m sure we shared Gualtieri’s delight when we first saw these distinctive shells scattered across a dry Cypriot plain.

References:

Dornbos, S.Q. and Wilson, M.A. 1999. Paleoecology of a Pliocene coral reef in Cyprus: Recovery of a marine community from the Messinian Salinity Crisis. Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie, Abhandlungen 213: 103-118.

Gualtieri, N. 1742. Index Testarum Conchyliorum, quae adservantur in Museo Nicolai Gualtieri (“List of the shells of shellfish which are preserved in the museum of Niccolò Gualtieri”).

Manganelli, G. and Benocci, A. 2011. Niccolò Gualtieri (1688–1744): biographical sketch of a pioneer of conchology. Archives of Natural History 38: 174-177.

Simone, L.R.L. 2005. Comparative morphological study of representatives of the three families of Stromboidea and the Xenophoroidea (Mollusca, Caenogastropoda), with an assessment of their phylogeny. Arquivos de Zoologia 37: 141–267.

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2011 Keck Iceland is Official

mpollock July 15, 2011 5:35 pm

2011 Keck Iceland Group on columns.

ICELAND – As Lindsey and Travis were leaving Iceland, the Keck students were arriving. The Keck Geology Consortium consists of 18 schools whose geology departments are dedicated to providing undergraduates with high-quality research experiences. Funded through NSF and contributions from its members, the Keck Consortium supports several research projects each year. This year, I’m working with Dr. Brennan Jordan (University of South Dakota) on a 6-student Keck project in the West Fjords of Iceland. We’ll spend three weeks working in the field, then return to Wooster for another week in the lab.

After spending a day in Reykjavik recovering from jet lag and getting to know each other, we left for a four-day field trip to south central Iceland. The field trip serves several purposes: (1) build a sense of community, (2) get a sense for the provisions we’ll need in the field, and (3) observe geologic features that might be exposed in our study site.

We started by touring the Reykjanes Peninsula, visiting some sites that Travis and Lindsey had just seen. We observed marine pillow basalts, tuffs with embedded blocks, a dike feeding a lava flow, and lots of fissures. We ended the first day at Thingvellir and had our first taste of the dehydrated meals that will be our dinners for the time we’re in our field area. We all agreed that they tasted better and were more filling than we expected!

The second day began at an amazing exposure of subglacial pillow basalts. We almost didn’t get to visit this site because a film crew was shooting a car commercial at the exposure (complete with a thundering herd of Icelandic horses). Fortunately, they were kind enough to let us in for a short time, and it was worth it! Afterward, we visited Geysir (the original) and Gullfoss, where we saw glacial striations and a stunning waterfall.

Amazing pillow basalts near Thingvellir.

The second day ended (and the third day began) at Landmannalauger, a popular hot spring destination (I’ll let the Keck students tell you about their hot spring experience). Landmannalauger is surrounded by rhyolite slopes that form the walls of a giant caldera. Just behind the campground, a hiking trail winds its way over a blocky rhyolite flow, where we observed lots of flow banding, obsidian, and pumice altered to a beautiful green color. On the way out of Landmannalauger, we saw a few more rhyolite flows, a gorgeous cinder cone, and some Hekla tephra. You may recall that Hekla was recently reported in the news as “ready to erupt.” Rest assured that all was peaceful when we were there.

Before we returned to Reykjavik on the last day, we made a couple of quick stops in south-central Iceland near Dyrholaey to see spectacular columnar joints.

Dike intruding through tuff on the southern Reykjanes peninsula.

Back in Reykjavik, we caught our flight to Isafjordur in the West Fjords. We’re all eager and ready to go to our field site. Having seen a wide range of geologic features, we feel prepared for whatever our field site offers. Tomorrow, we’ll take a boat to the site, one of the most remote places in Iceland. Look for another post when we return from the field. Wish us luck!

*Sorry about the lack of pictures! If you know a way to post pictures to a blog from the iPad, please let me know! As an alternative, feel free to check out the pictures that I’ve posted on my twitter feed: twitter.com/meagenpollock

[Images added on July 18, 2011, from Meagen Pollock’s Twitter feed.]

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Exploring the Silurian at the Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet in Stockholm: Last day of work for the Wooster Geology Estonia Team

Mark Wilson July 12, 2011 11:34 am

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN–No paleontological expedition is complete until it includes time in the collections of a museum. No single sampling trip like ours can describe the full diversity of a fossil site, no matter how many days we spend scouring the rocks. A traditional museum will combine the finds of hundreds of scientists over two centuries or more. The very best natural history museums, such as the Natural History Museum in London, the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris, and, of course, the Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet in Stockholm (shown above), have international collections from around the world. They set global standards for the documentation of living and extinct biodiversity. They are cathedrals of science to which we make regular pilgrimages, with all the awe and obligation that word includes.

The Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet (Royal Museum of Natural History; NRM) has the best collection of Silurian fossils in northern Europe, so we were anxious to go through the drawers and learn what we could about our own Silurian observations in Estonia. Thanks to Jonas Hagström, Senior Assistant Palaeontologist, we were given full access to the Silurian paleontology section.

Rachel Matt investigating the contents of a drawer in the NRM Silurian collections. Note the proper way of pulling open a specimen drawer: always have the drawer beneath partly open in case you accidentally pull the top drawer out too far!

The specimen drawers typically contain fossils in little cardboard trays with paper labels and a variety of stickers and numbers. Half the fun in a museum is figuring out what the organizational system is, then reading labels written in 19th Century cursive. (And in this case, in Swedish!)

Rachel making a simple photographic record of those fossils she finds that are similar to ours or should otherwise be documented for our work. Note that she has her computer open so that she can compare our field images to the museum specimens.

Nick found an excellent collection of eurypterids from the Rootsiküla Formation (Wenlock) in Estonia. He worked with these rocks in the field, but did not find any recognizable eurypterid fossils. Now he has a nice photographic collection of those in the NRM Silurian section.

After we finished our work in the collections, we toured the public displays in the NRM main building. They are fantastic. One of the highlights was this Silurian diorama showing many of our favorite extinct animals. By now you should be able to identify most of them!

Our final portrait of the trip: Nick Fedorchuk and Rachel Matt with an appropriately menacing Tyrannosaurus rex in the background. Tomorrow we leave for home! It has been an exciting adventure of science and culture.

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Wooster Geologists in Sweden

Mark Wilson July 11, 2011 11:23 am

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN–I had not realized how much water is in the city of Stockholm. Almost a third of the city’s area is water because the center is built on 14 islands connected by bridges and ferries. “The Venice of the North” some call it.

Rachel, Nick and I are here for a very short visit. We’ll spend tomorrow in the Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet (Royal Museum of Natural History), so for now we just explored the neighborhood around our hotel. It is called Östermalm and is one of the older parts of Stockholm.

The Nordiska museet (Nordic Museum) has a glorious array of building stones, all from Sweden. The simple blocks are sandstones and fine-grained metamorphic rocks, and the carved pieces are limestones.

The local bedrock is 1750-1900 million years old, formed during the Svecofennian (Svecokarelian) orogeny. The outcrops I saw, like this example of “living stone” at the base of a building, are metavolcanics (metamorphosed volcanic rocks, usually basalt). Apparently the bedrock of Stockholm is an engineering geologist’s dream because of its stability, moisture repelling capabilities, and uniform strength — great for bridge abutments and subway tunnels.

I spent my Stockholm afternoon in the museums found in an easy walk around our hotel. I was impressed with the Viking runestones on display in the Historiska muséet (History Museum), and I was touched by this one. The runes are translated as: “Una/Unna had this stone raised in memory of her son Eysteinn who died in christening robes. May God help his soul.” They are carved in a glacial granite boulder, the kind of rock we saw scattered across the Estonian western islands. Note the dark xenoliths.

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A Day in Tallinn, Estonia

Mark Wilson July 10, 2011 1:27 pm

TALLINN, ESTONIA–Like our Wooster Geology colleagues in Iceland, we also have a nearly-final day in a city. Tallinn is the capital of Estonia, the medieval town square of which is shown above. We started here briefly at the airport, and will leave from the same place early  tomorrow morning. The only difference is that we have one more big city to go: Stockholm, Sweden.

Tallinn, or at least a significant settlement in this place, goes back to the 11th Century, and before that there are Bronze Age artifacts. After the Danes conquered it in the 13th Century, it became known as Reval until the Estonian War of Independence in 1918-1920 when the Estonians could finally give it their own name: Tallinn (or Tallinna). It was a member of the Hanseatic League, being an important trade link between northern Europe and Russia. (And so the merchants in the town square are dressed in the Medieval garb of “Old Hansa”.) This year it is a European Capital of Culture. Tallinn does not sit on a major river but takes advantage of Ordovician limestone heights to raise it above the coastal swamps and bogs.

We enjoyed a day off in the city under (as you might have predicted) sunny skies. Tomorrow is another travel day, and then back to work one more time in Stockholm!

The newly renovated Freedom Square in Tallinn. The memorial is for the Estonian War of Independence (1918-1920).

Rachel and Nick can be barely made out here on the other side of Freedom Square.

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: Ancient shrimp burrows (Middle Jurassic of Israel)

Mark Wilson July 10, 2011 1:01 am

This week we have a trace fossil, the burrow Thalassinoides. It is represented by one of my favorite images, reproduced above, showing a very large Thalassinoides suevicus in the Zohar Formation (Middle Jurassic, Callovian) of Makhtesh Qatan in the Negev of southern Israel. Holding the scale is Wooster geologist and Independent Study student Allison Mione (’05) during our 2004 Israel expedition. These burrows were originally described as giant desiccation cracks, but I.S. student Kevin Wolfe (’05), Israeli geologist Yoav Avni and I reinterpreted them as burrows in a rocky shore complex (see Wilson et al., 2005).

Thalassinoides is a complex trace fossil that is today made primarily by thalassinidean crustaceans (a type of shrimp; see below). We know a lot about how the burrows are made today by shrimp, and our knowledge is growing about how the ancient systems were excavated, at least in the Mesozoic and later. We have fossil shrimp preserved in Thalassinoides from the Jurassic (Sellwood, 1971) and the Cretaceous (Carvalho et al., 2007).

Pestarella tyrrhena, a modern thalassinidean shrimp. Image from Wikipedia.

Reconstruction of Mecochirus rapax in a Cretaceous Thalassinoides. A) In its burrowing life mode; B) Predominantly horizontal Thalassinoides suevicus burrow systems showing two successive event levels, with Mecochirus in life position. From Carvalho et al. (2007, fig. 3).

The burrow systems in the Zohar Formation of Israel were critical in working out the depositional environment of these carbonate sediments. We could see that first the water was comparatively deep (below wavebase) with worm burrows (Planolites). Then relative sea level dropped and the Thalassinoides burrows cut through the Planolites fabric, showing that the sediment was become stiffer. Finally bivalve borings (Gastrochaenolites) in the same rock indicated that the sediment had cemented into a shallow water hardground. This hardground showed tidal channels cut into its top surface (Wilson et al., 2005).

This work was done with virtually no “body fossils”, meaning evidence of the actual bodies of the organisms living in and on the sediment. Trace fossils, evidence of organism activity, were the only indications of this significant environmental change. This is why the study of trace fossils (ichnology) should be a part of the education of every paleontologist and sedimentologist.

References:

Carvalho, C.N., Viegas, P.A. and Cachao, M. 2007. Thalassinoides and its producer: Populations of Mecochirus buried within their burrow systems, Boca Do Chapim Formation (Lower Cretaceous), Portugal. Palaios 22: 104-109.

Sellwood, B.W. 1971. A Thalassinoides burrow containing the crustacean Glyphaea undressieri (Meyer) from the Bathonian of Oxfordshire. Palaeontology 14: 589-591.

Wilson, M.A., Wolfe, K.R., and Avni, Y. 2005. Development of a Jurassic rocky shore complex (Zohar Formation, Makhtesh Qatan, southern Israel). Isr. J. Earth Sci. 54: 171–178.

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A Day in Akureyri

mpollock July 9, 2011 1:37 pm

AKUREYRI, ICELAND – Since we finished Travis’ field work a day early, we were able to spend Friday in Akureyri, Iceland’s second-largest city. Akureyri has an idyllic location, nestled between a fjord and snow-capped mountains in north-central Iceland.

 

Snow-capped peaks make a scenic background for Akureyri.

Our first stop was at the Botanical Gardens, which hosted a surprising variety of plants, given Akureyri’s rugged climate. We saw some familiar flowers that reminded us of the field:

 

This yellow flower was common in our field areas (it's Icelandic name is Argentina egedii Skeljamura).

We saw this delicate purple flower often, too (Viola canina Tysfjola).

This sweet flower grew in the jagged spaces between rock piles (Silene uniflora Holurt).

There were other flowers that were more exotic:

 

The vivid blue petals of this Meconopsis grandis Fagurblasol were stunning.

And then there were flowers that were much too familiar:

 

A well-established specimen of our friend, the dandelion.

Next to the Botanical Gardens, we contemplated statues on the campus of Akureyri’s University.

 

Dr. Pollock interpreted this sculpture to mean that basalt is the foundation of the world.

Next, we admired the Akureyrarkirkja, a columnar basalt-themed church that was designed by the same architect who built Reykjavik’s famous Hallgrimskirkja.

 

The Akureyrarkirkja.

Finally, we visited the historic district for some food and shopping.

 

View of historic Akureyri. We highly recommend Cafe Paris, in the blue building on the right. The soup and bread is delicious!

 

 

 

Perhaps a little light reading for the trip home?

 

Lindsey and Dr. Pollock find hats for their next field experience.

A day in Akureyri was the perfect way to celebrate the successful end of two I.S. field projects. We happily headed back to our cabin in Blonduos, where we packed up for our journey back to Hafnarfjordur and started working on our GSA abstracts, which our Estonian colleagues have inspired.

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Return to Vatnsdalfjall

mpollock July 9, 2011 12:46 pm

BLONDUOS, ICELAND – Meagen and guest blogger, Travis

We returned to Vatnsdalfjall for the second day of field work on the Monocline. The weather was the best we’ve experienced in Iceland yet.

View of the steeply dipping Monocline as it dives under the Hjallin Lens.

After a long hike through fields of sadness (so named by a previous IS student), we finally made it to our first exposure. We found lots of interesting amygdules (filled vesicles):

Vesicles half-filled with chalcedony in horizontal layers suggests that the lavas were tilted before the chalcedony precipitated.

Zeolites come in a variety of habits, including these hair-like fibers that are about 1 cm long.

We sampled and made observations all of the way to the top of the Monocline. We were quite pleased with ourselves when we made it to the top, and slightly surprised to see that it was already 8 pm! In the land of the midnight sun, field work could last for 24 hours a day.

Lindsey and Travis getting ready to head down the mountain at 8 pm at night.

After such a hard day of work, we relaxed in the evening and made plans to visit Akureyri the next day.

Travis relaxes in the hot tub.

 

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Suur Strait (Moon Sound, Moonzund)

Mark Wilson July 9, 2011 12:38 pm

TALLINN, ESTONIA–The Wooster Geology team in Estonia successfully returned to the Estonian capital city of Tallinn today, which means we crossed by ferry the Suur Strait between the western Estonian islands (notably Muhu) and the Estonian mainland. This is an interesting strip of water with a complicated geological and human history.

There is an Estonian dream of building a bridge or digging a tunnel across the Suur Strait to eliminate the need for the ferry line and more efficiently connect Muhu and Saaremaa to the main part of Estonia. It will not be an easy task (and it is probably too expensive to ever be attempted), but it has led to considerable study of the strait and its oceanographic, biologic and geologic characteristics. The currents are complicated as they move between the Gulf of Riga to the south and the Baltic Sea proper in the north, and it freezes solid in the winter (when it is crossed by a 9 km long ice road). The strait hosts one of the most significant bird migration routes in northern Europe, and the marine fauna and flora here is still poorly surveyed.

The floor of the Suur Strait is highly variable from exposed Silurian limestone bedrock to thick mantles of glacial till. As you can deduce from the Google Earth image, some parts of the strait are very shallow, and the deepest regions are no more than 21 meters of water. Because of isostatic rebound, the region gets shallower about 2 mm per year as the land rises.

Suur Strait as viewed from northeastern Muhu (July 2007).

Historically, the Suur Strait has been the “backdoor” to the Gulf of Riga to the south. Any navy that controls the Baltic wants to keep that backdoor open for itself, but close it to enemies. This was especially the case during World War I when the Imperial German Navy sought to trap elements of the Imperial Russian Baltic Fleet in the Gulf on October 17, 1917, during Operation Albion. Most escaped north through the Suur Strait (known then in English as Moon Sound) following carefully dredged channels lined with mines. One Russian battleship, the Slava, was severely damaged and took on too much water to pass back through the shallow strait and was scuttled.

The Suur Strait was crossed by the Germans in 1941 as they invaded the western Estonian islands (Operation Beowulf), and again by the Russians when they re-invaded in 1944 (Moonzund Landing Operation).

We made it across on one of the car ferries which ply the Suur Strait between Kuivastu and Virtsu. Like the Russian warships of old, it also follows a dredged channel through the shallow and storied waters.

View from our ferry west across the Suur Strait towards Kuivastu on Muhu island. Last ferry ride of the trip!

Reference:

Saaremaa Fixed Link – Report of Preliminary Environmental Impact Assessment – Final Draft – 15.07.2005 (Google this and you can get a thorough report as a pdf.)

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A visit to Kaali Crater for our last day on Saaremaa

Mark Wilson July 8, 2011 9:59 am

KURESSAARE, ESTONIA–A dramatic geological site on our last Saaremaa day: the meteorite craters at Kaali. We hiked around the largest crater (shown above) and then visited one of the smaller subsidiary craters nearby (shown below). The main Kaali crater is 110 meters in diameter and about 22 meters deep. The meteorite was between 20 to 80 metric tonnes and was traveling 10-20 km/s. It broke up into pieces 5-10 km above the ground before the multiple impacts. The date of this event is disputed. We have seen ranges in the literature from 4000 to 2700 years ago. Some archaeologists have evidence that an ecological catastrophe followed the impacts with massive wildfires and a drop in crop production for a century. Others think there is a connection between the Kaali event and Baltic mythology. (I think it is a delightful coincidence that the Estonian place name “Kaali” used for this fiery event is coincidentally the same name as the fearsome Hindu goddess.)

To our surprise, the Kaali Museum had a thorough display on the geology of Saaremaa, including this polished cross-section through Nick’s critical Wenlock/Ludlow section.

Our last stop was a virtually abandoned little harbor at Turja on the southeastern coast of the island. It was a nice place for lunch as we contemplated how our fieldwork did not include bears and wolverines (as with our Wooster colleagues in Alaska) or gale-force winds and thick fogs (as experienced by our Iceland friends). We were quite fortunate to gather such excellent geological data with so few such adventures!

Tomorrow we drive to Tallinn to spend a day and a half, and then to Stockholm for a day in the Natural History Museum looking at comparative Silurian material. On Wednesday of next week we fly home.

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