Showing posts with label fossil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fossil. Show all posts

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Pregnant Fossilized Turtle




Paleontologists from Alberta Canada have discovered a 75 million year old fossil turtle that's pregnant. Apparently the female was found in association with another female's nest, but the eggs were found inside the skeleton and are unusually hard-shelled.

Check out the full article here: Pregnant Fossil Turtle

I've got another office pet: a lovely little female black widow I've nicknamed Angel. Her photo, along with a nifty little orb-weaving spider I discovered in the window of my office are above. :)

Photo of the pregnant turtle fossil is courtesy of scientificblogging.com.

-Erin

Monday, June 2, 2008

Little Bit of Music and a Whole Lot of Diggin'






So it was a great Thaw weekend! Amazingly enough, Wyoming is even greener than Colorado. This year alone, while conserving water by putting buckets and empty bins and trash cans underneath the drains, my dad and step-mom have collected almost 400 gallons of water. Pretty neat. We had the usual thunderstorms (pic above of some lightning I managed to snap during the Sunday night thunder boomer), but other than that the weather was nice.

I found some nice native tool chips, not quite what I was looking for, but the guy that lives down the way from my dad's place came up and told me about a place he'd scoped out with bones lying in the ground. He'd gotten permission to have them, but didn't really want them since they didn't have an arrowhead in them and weren't mammoth, so he said he'd help me dig them out if I gave them a home. I got out about 20 nice verts in a row after taking pics and measuring them.

At first I wasn't going to excavate since I couldn't get them all out at once, but I took as many as I could when he said he'd over heard that the man that owned the land was going to use this particular spot to store extra rock he would be using for patching holes in the road up to his house. So...unfortunately, some got left behind. Maybe I'll be able to get the rest out later this year or next.

Above are some photos of the trip!

Pic 1: One of the many verts that I discovered at the site.
Pic 2: Koko, my step-mom's dog. The sweetest dog ever that loves to play fetch - but we used all of her sticks to build the fire so she just looked longingly into the flames.
Pic 3: Lightning over the barn where we played music for the locals.
Pic 4: Fire pit in the front yard
Pic 5: My dad (guitar) and uncle (stand up bass) playing away during the gig we played.

Anywho, it was a hoot! Lovely this time of year. If you EVER visit northeastern Wyoming (Devil's Tower is visible from her doorstep if you need a reference), please do it in May or early June. Before everything browns and catches on fire. And if you're ever up there the weekend after Memorial weekend, come to Gilette or Moorcroft and look for posters and information on The Thaw (our spring concert).

:)

More later!

-Erin

Saturday, May 24, 2008

"It's pining for the fijords!"

This is a nifty article on a newly discovered parrot fossil from Scandinavia, probably the oldest fossil of a parrot (possibly, from only one bone they say it could have been an ibis).

Anywho, check out the article.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/05/080523-oldest-parrot.html


-Erin

Thursday, May 22, 2008

A Frogamander!

Howdy! For those that are interested, check out this National Geographic post on a new, 290 million year old amphibian they think may be the missing link in that particular family tree.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/05/080521-frog-fossil.html

So, nifty stuff! I know NatGeo doesn't always publish the "newest" of materials, but I hadn't read this on before.

-Erin