New York Paleontological Society Meeting Announcement

MEMBERS’ REPORTS ON PALEONTOLOGY

Sunday, September 17, 2017 2:00 P.M. Room 319

American Museum of Natural History New York City

Well, Summer is practically over, and a new year begins for our Society’s meeting schedule. We don’t meet during the Summer (and rarely run field trips) because many members are away for vacation or traveling and the temperatures at fossil sites can become dangerously hot, and past experience has shown that few members participate in both meetings and trips during Summer’s sultry times.

But, that doesn’t mean that our members are not involved in things paleontological during the Summer months, and many have had interesting experiences visiting collections, collecting fossils or just traveling through interesting geologic landscapes.

Therefore, we set aside our September meeting for our members to report on their experiences of a paleontological nature. Usually, they report on topics in paleontology, including any collecting they have done, research they have participated in, fossil preparation that they have undertaken, any paleontological exhibits that they have visited, etc. These reports are mostly very brief - 10 to 15 minutes or so - and usually are particularly useful to those interested in fossil collecting, especially in the Northeast, but also collecting in the Western U.S. and even around the world. This is a good time to pick up information about fossil sites. We also include summaries (with images) of the Society’s most recent field trips.

We will begin with reports on our Spring field trips: collecting the fossils of Peace River, Florida (April); a trip to Cretaceous times at Ramanessin Brook, New Jersey (also April); a three day trip for a behind-the-scenes tour of the fossil collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and two days of collecting Miocene marine fossils along the Calvert Cliffs area beaches of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland (early June); a two day trip to collect Ordovician fossils in Ontario, Canada (late June); and finally a two day collecting trip to Helderberg Group Quarries and a geological park in the Albany, N.Y. area (late July). The reports of the collecting trips will include geology, stratigraphy and the fossils found or observed.

There will be an opportunity to have any fossils that you found on these trips identified, as well as any that you've found elsewhere around the country. So bring them in. We can frequently guarantee identification to the genus level - especially those from our own field trips.

We will also have reports by our members on their paleontological experiences , especially over the summer just past. The reports can cover anything that they have been involved with. For example, in the past, members have reported on their fossil collecting experiences in the area, or even around the world. Many have described their visits to or work at classic fossil localities. Some have described visits to museum collections around the country and the world, and others have brought in fossil specimens for illustration or discussion.

For example, last September, member reports included a talk on the difference in formation of two interesting geologic features - the arch and the natural bridge - although similar in looks they have very different origins. There were also reports of experiences and finds on our Madison County trip in the Fall of 2016, our Peace River Florida trip in April and a visit to the North Carolina Museum of Natural History in Raleigh, N.C. A tour and visit to Arizona Utah’s canyon country included the beautiful Antelope Canyon, Monument Valley, Horseshoe Canyon and the San Rafael Swell, as well as collecting fossils at wire pass near Big Water, Utah and Mounds Reef. A member reported on finding an exquisite specimen of a eurypterid ventral section including the mouth and the plates that crush food, and another member discussed a visit to the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, British Columbia, including Luba, the best preserved baby Wooly Mammoth. Next, a member discussed his research comparing the large vertebrate fauna, including dinosaurs, of the Cretaceous deposits of the ancient continents of Laramida versus those of ancient Appalachia and how this was related to differences in ecological and evolutionary trends. Another discussed his experiences on the Wyoming Dinosaur Project in search of dinosaur and other fossils in the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming. And finally, a member took us on a tour of the fossil collection at the Field Museum in Chicago, including the collection’s most famous star, the tyrannosaur named “Sue”.

If you're a member and interested in presenting something involving other types of projectors or equipment, please contact the president at president@nyps.org .