Bearded Geology

Just recently, I found out that The Royal Mint of the United Kingdom is releasing three versions of a newly designed 50 pence coin. These coins celebrate the grandmother of paleontology, Mary Anning. Coincidentally, Anning is the focus of a new film, "Ammonite" also (full disclosure: I've yet to see the film, but it seems to be loosely based on Anning's life, much of which is unknown to us today, particularly her romantic life). These coins bear the illustrations of an two marine reptiles, a Plesiosaurus and an icthyosaur called Temnodontosaurus, and a flying reptile called Dimorphodon. All three lived during the Jurassic Period and were discovered by Anning in the early 1800s. The Royal Mint even offers color imbued and gold versions of these coins for a higher price. After finding out about the Mary Anning coins, I immediately found out that The Royal Mint had also produced three versions of the 50 pence coin featuring dinosaurs in 2019! I immediately opened my wall...

While I've been doing some reading and writing for my PhD comps exam, I've tangentially discovered that the term thagomizer  is not in the 783-page Glossary of Geology  (5th edition, revised 2011). I was under the assumption that the term, coined in Gary Larsen's The Far Side comic strip for the spiky bits of a Stegosaurus' tail, has entered mainstream usage. However, it appears that it hasn't quite attained formality in scientific literature, much to my dismay. (image credit: ©Gary Larsen/ Wikimedia ) The Glossary of Geology includes several anatomical names used in paleontology (e.g. orbit, tibia, glabella, and gizzard), but the thagomizer didn't make the cut. Although it has recently become used in the scientific literature ( Costa and Mateus, 2019 ). This got me wondering if there are any terms used for the bony plates that protrude from the Stegosaurus' back. Unfortunately, I have not found any such endearing name for these like the t...

I'm a huge Star Wars nerd. I'm going to say that right now and get it out of the way. I'll undoubtedly be subscribing to the Disney+ streaming service just to watch the new Star Wars live-action TV show, The Mandalorian , which just dropped a new trailer . In the trailer there is are a couple of shots of a new creature on an unspecified world from a galaxy far, far away: I will love him and squeeze him and call him George (© Lucasfilm/Disney) As soon as I saw this angry, furry unicorn pop up on the screen, I got a sudden, strong feeling as if I've seen this creature before. Then, the name Elasmotherium formed in my head. Elasmotherium is an extinct genus and cousin to the modern rhinoceroses that lived during the Pleistocene epoch (appx. 2.6 million years ago to appx. 39,000 years ago). One particular species, Elasmotherium sibericum , is now thought to have been one of the last of the genus that lived until about 39,000 years ago in Eurasia, when mode...

On occasion, my home Internet router will reboot itself for reasons unknown to myself, and during one such instance recently, I was left realizing how much that I rely on the Internet these days and was unable to do much without it. However, since I use the Google Chrome browser, I was able to play the jumping T. rex game while waiting for my router to finish rebooting (press arrow keys on the "No Internet" screen to activate). While trying to beat my high score, I noticed that the dinosaur, some kind of tyrannosaurid (the T. rex family), was jumping over saguaro cacti. This got me wondering about the evolution of cactus plants and when they evolved. Cactus are flowering plants (aka angiosperms) and angiosperms evolved in the late Jurassic Period, and rapidly diversified during the Cretaceous Period. But, did the cactus (particularly saguaro) live at the same time as the dinosaurs? First, when did cacti evolve? Interestingly,“[t]here are no relevant fossil records...

I very recently found what I believe to be two starfish fossils from the Wann Formation (Late Pennsylvanian age) in Oklahoma. At the locality I found these, the Wann is a bioturbated sandstone and shale formation, preserving several flute casts and burrows, and some plant debris. Interestingly, these starfish are preserved in sandstone and the paleocurrent is also preserved (lower left to upper right, following the striations in the upper specimen, and is also indicated by the orientation and slight splay of the starfish arms in the upper specimen). Below the Wann are the Iola and Chanute Formations, both of which are fossiliferous carbonate formations containing several mollusks and bryozoa. The third starfish in the above photo is a modern starfish included for reference. I can't help but think that these starfish must have been buried very rapidly, very near the shoreline, and were subject to wave action. As each wave receded, sediment was dragged from the shoreline into de...