Paleontological Research Institute

First of all, we are safely at Bill's house. Long day in the car. I'll use the blog time tonight to tell you more about the big event of yesterday with Elaine.

We had a private tour of the Paleontological Research Institute in Ithaca.

Here's the deal- one of Elaine's first jobs was as an assistant to the director of the institute. That woman was apparently their most influential director ever, and when the current director (Warren Allman) learned that Elaine knew Dr. Palmer well, he really wanted to talk with her.

This is in the research library- getting acquainted.

.

Dr. Allman was a wonderfully gracious host. He gave us a tour of all the behind the scenes parts. This is the type specimen collection. The PRI has the largest collection of fossils in the world, and they have over 16,000 type specimens (keyed out without ambiguities, as perfect as possible, organized and labeled, etc)

They have millions of fossils in their complete collections. They aren't even all in their database yet.

These are micro-specimens. They have been mounted for viewing under a microscope.

And we got a private tour of the public part of the musuem. I'm only going to show you a few things that were unusual to me. Remember, I grew up in this part of New York where we would fill our pockets with fossils every time we went outside.

These are crinoids with the heads attached. Very ususual to find the heads. The "stems" break up into little segmented tubes and they are some of the easiest fossils to find. But they are animals in the same family as starfish. The heads are rarely preserved as fossils.

These are impressions of sea urchins.

And this is a book printed in 1684. It is the oldest book in the PRI collections, and is devoted completely to mollusks and shells.

We spent two hours there, so obviously saw lots more than this. The private tour was great. They were really interested in hearing personal memories of Dr. Palmer, and we got to ask questions like you never would on a self-tour. Not to mention seeing the labs and collections.

There is one more thing from the PRI that I want to share, but it needs to have its own post. I'll catch that one another day.

IF you are ever in Ithaca, and this sort of thing interests you, it's definitely worth a stop.

Tomorrow, final stop for this trip... home.

See A Day with Elaine

A Day with Elaine

  Today, Marie and I spent the day with my friend Elaine. You can see why we used to be called Mutt and Jeff if you are old enough to remember that cartoon.

Our first activity was to go fossil hunting for a couple of hours. Around here, that is usually a sure thing to find a few fossils. We didn't find anything spectactular, and I forgot to take pictures because it was just run of the mill stuff. But we had fun. In this stone, there is the round end of a horn coral impression, and the impression of some worm. We also found crinoids and brachiopods, and some other small shell impressions.

"Look over there," Elaine instructed. It's like the grass on the other side of the fence... you always think the best ones will be just around the bend.

Then we went to a small public garden and musuem. It was really nice. Even though it's September, there were still quite a few flowers in bloom.

We spent about two hours there, but I would gladly go back again. We didn't really see it all. There is an extensive stamped brick collection.

There are a number of buildings filled with old tools. One building is a working mill. This is just a small bit of some of the farm tools on display.

The most amazing thing is a fossil he found on his property. It's been called one of the most significant fossil finds of New York State. You need to understand that each half of this rock is bigger than I am, and is filled with these fossils of Glass Sponges. A fossil colony had never been found before. They are Uphantaenia chemungensis

Finally, we made a visit to Ithaca Falls.

Dinner out and it was time to say goodbye. Nice day.

See Crystal Hills

Fossils on the Way

 
At a rest area in southern Indiana, there was a large rock with a bunch of fossils in it, and an interpretive sign about the Falls of the Ohio State Park where there is a 200-acre Devonian fossil bed visible when the water is low. Wow! How had I never even heard of this? Of course, now I want to go see more than just this one sample. Here are a few of the fossils.







Here is one more picture of a couple of old f....riends. Don't even think it.



(This is a reflection in a window. Worked out OK, I think, except we made the rookie mistake of looking at the screen instead of the window.)

	See Trail Work Day
if you like this blog, click the +1   or