New Jersey Paleontological Society

The New Jersey Paleontological Society was formed in 1991 for the educational and scientific pursuit of Paleontology and related Earth Sciences. Welcome to our website.

Monthly Meetings include guest speakers or workshops covering various topics in Paleontology, Geology and topics of related scientific and historical significance. Learn how to identify, restore, preserve and catalog your own finds and collections.

Field Trips held throughout the year are open to all members. Gain access to both public and privately owned properties both near and far, for responsible collection and preservation.

The club’s monthly newsletter, the NJPS PALEONTOGRAPH, is sent to all members. It features upcoming events, shows, meetings, field trips, collecting sites as well as informative and original articles on various subjects. Members are encouraged to submit contributions for the publication.

Club tee-shirts and occasional limited edition shirts, tools, books, and other items are available at meetings to support the work of the club.

Meetings

Meetings are currently held monthly from September to June beginning at 7:30 p.m., at the Bergen County Social Services Building, corner of Ridgewood and Farview Avenues, in Paramus, NJ.
Click for directions

Changes in the time, date, and/or place of the meeting are noted in the newsletter. No meetings are held during July and August. Guests are invited to attend one of our meetings prior to membership.
Contact us to propose a speaker.

2026-2027 Meeting Schedule and Programs

2026

Jan. 12
All Members
Favorite Fossil Presentations

Feb. 9
All Members
Fossil Chat Room

Mar. 22
Frank Haase
Marvels of Messel Germany

Apr. 26
George Klein
Collecting Dinosaurs in Wyoming
with Bob Bakker

May. 24
James O. Brown PhD
Rare and Unusual Microfossils from the Devonian of PA

Jun. 28
Trip Members
Trip West 2026 Presentation

Sept. 27
Summer Show and Tell

Oct. 25
Derek Yoost
Meteorites

Nov. 22
All Members
Field Trip Planning Session

Dec. 13
Annual Christmas meeting

2027

Jan. 3
Arlene Castleman
Lee Creek Fossils

Feb. 7
Tom Caggiano
Green River Trip

Mar. 14
Joseph Hatcher
Dinosaur Ecology of Hell Hollow

April 12
Fred Cassel
Destination: Utah

May 23
Info to Come

Jun. 27
Info to Come

Sept. 12
Summer Show and Tell

Oct. 24
Info to Come

Nov. 14
Info to Come

Dec. 12
Annual Christmas Meeting

Field Trips

Field Trips are conducted monthly, weather permitting, and will be announced at the meetings, via email, or in our newsletter. Field trips are open to members only.

2026-2027 Field Trip Schedule, Leader or Hosts

2026

Jan. 10
Super Science Weekend,
New Jersey State Museum
Howie Cohn

Jan. 17
Siberian Fossils
The Matsonov’s

Jan. 31
Rutgers Open House
Geology Museum

Feb.
No Trip This Month
BRRR!!

Mar.
20 - 21
Clifton Gem and Mineral Show
The North Jersey Mineralogical Society

Apr. 3
Red Hill PA
Bill and Mary Ellen Cole

Apr. 25
Ramenessen NJ
Debra Sansone

May 1
Aurora NC
PCS Phosphate Mine

May 15
Ramenessen NJ
Debra Sansone

May 30
Ramenessen NJ
Debra Sansone

June
10 - 19
Trip West 2026
Green River Formation
Tom Caggiano

June 26
Ramenessen NJ
Debra Sansone

July 11
Moravia NY
Bill and Mary Ellen Cole

Sept.
No Trips Scheduled

Oct. 17
Aurora NC - Call In
Tom Caggiano

Oct. 17
Paleontology Event
Wayne NJ
Northern New Jersey Mensa Society

Nov.
To be announced

Dec.
To be announced

2027

Jan. 29
Geology Museum Open House
Rutgers
Call 732-932-7243 for more information

Feb. To be announced

Mar. 12 The Academy of Natural Sciences, PA - Call In Debra Sansone

Apr. 16 Aurora NC - Call In Tom Caggiano

Apr. 23-30 Florida
Tom Caggiano,
George Klein

May To be announced

June To be announced

Membership

The NJPS welcomes new membership from all backgrounds, adults as well as children. Our members range from those who have no formal training and may not have collected before, to those who have extensively pursued and studied the science. All one needs is an interest in paleontology and a desire to learn.

WHY SHOULD YOUR FAMILY JOIN THE NEW JERSEY PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY?

NJPS Membership Benefits :

Annual Membership : $18.00 individual
$24.00 couple / family

Club Officers

President
Debra Sansone
973-625-2269

Vice-President
Bob Sheridan

Treasurer
George Klein
914-366-6601

Secretary
Howie Cohn
201-265-2236

Trustee
Rolf Schudel

Trustee
Andy Abdul
973-728-7714

Editor
Tom Caggiano
631-499-7504

Newsletter

The NJPS Paleontolograph is published monthly, except in July and August. Our members have regularly received awards for their articles published in our newsletter. All items may be quoted (unless the author has stated otherwise), provided credit is given. Members are strongly encouraged to contribute to our publication. Contributions need not be original. Articles appearing in other publications (properly identified please) are also welcome. Exchange bulletins are always welcome. Please address them to the Editor.

Sample Articles and Reviews:

Article 1

Valley of the T. rex - A Review

Last week the Discovery Channel broadcast a one hour show “Valley of the
T. rex.” It deals with the Tyrannosaurs skeletons excavated from the Hell Creek Formation by Jack Horner and colleagues. Back in 1988 Kathy Wankel discovered a T. rex skeleton near Jordan, Montana and brought it to the attention of Horner. At the time, the Wankel T. rex was the only fairly complete specimen–about 90% complete. An excellent book by Horner and Don Lessem, “The Complete T. rex,” tells about that discovery in some detail. (Two years later Sue was discovered in South Dakota; Sue is 95% complete.) In the past few years, Horner and crew have discovered 8 more Tyrannosaurus specimens.

The major thrust of “Valley” is Horner’s ideas about T. rex as a 100% scavenger as opposed to a predator, or even an occasional predator. Some years ago, I thought Horner was just playing devil’s advocate, and in “The Complete T. rex” he struck a good balance, but in “Valley” he seems to have hardened his opinion completely.

The predator/scavenger question has been around since 1907, but it was revived by Horner about ten years. (There was a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon from the early 90’s where Calvin comes down on the predator side “Because they’re so much cooler that way.”) It’s actually an empty question, because most modern carnivores are both predators and scavengers depending on the circumstances, and there are very few pure scavengers (e.g. vultures). Dinosaurs were presumably the same.

Normally, I would not write about an old fruitless debate, but I was somewhat disturbed by “Valley.” There are two reasons. Bob Bakker has been accused (not without justification) of repeating “hot-bloooded” arguments that have been discredited over a decade ago. It dismayed me that Horner has fallen into a similar pattern. He apparently feels that the burden of proof should lie with those inclined toward “predator,” and calls holding that opinion “bad science.” To me such an extreme view is not justified given the ambiguity of the evidence and the lameness of his arguments. Second, “Valley” did not even mention the work of others, almost all of whom disagree with the pure scavenger idea.

Horner’s arguments for T. rex as a pure scavenger:

  1. The ratio of the length of the tibia to the femur (T/F) is under 1. This means T. rex was not a fleet-footed animal and could not run after prey.
  2. T. rex had very short arms and could not grapple with prey. Also, it could not break its fall with its arms, another reason it could not run.
  3. T. rex had very large olfactory bulbs. This was for sniffing out carcasses by analogy to the large olfactory bulbs of vultures.
  4. T. rex had spike-like teeth (unlike the knife-like teeth of other theropods). This is for crushing bones, which are left when the real predators are finished. This is presumably similar to what hyenas do.
  5. T. rex was very large and ugly to scare the predators away from carcasses.
  6. The predator idea is a prejudice from Barnum Brown who discovered the
    first T. rex specimen in 1905. (“They’re so much cooler that way.”)

Let me take these points one at a time:

The impression one gets from “Valley” is that having a T/F ratio less than 1 means that T. rex was uniquely clunky for a theropod. I did not believe this was the case, so I did some checking. I don’t have access to real specimens; the best I could do was to measure skeletal drawings. Fortunately “The Scientific American Book of Dinosaurs” has many drawings by Greg Paul; these are generally regarded as accurate. The “Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs” also has some good skeletal drawings. Generally, T/F ratios from the two sources agree.

The sixteen or so theropods I looked at had a T/F ratio of 0.8 to 1.3. The large theropods (e.g. Allosaurus, Giganotosaurus, Dilophosaurus, Gallimimus) are all 0.8 to 1.1. The theropods Horner holds out as examples of true predators (T/F 1.1-1.3) are all small (e.g. Coelophysis, Oviraptor, Deinonychus). This sort of pattern is true of bipedal ornithopods as well. Large ornithopods such as hadrosaurs come in at 0.8-0.9, while smaller ornithopods (Heterodontosaurus, Dryosaurus) come in at 1.1-1.3. So the T/F ratio probably reflects size and has nothing to do with being able to run. T. rex is at 0.9-1.0, depending on which specimen one looks at–absolutely typical for a large theropod! No one thinks all those other large theropods are pure scavengers.

As an aside, birds all have very high T/F ratios: 1.7 to 2.3. Quadrupedal
dinosaurs tend to have low T/F ratios: sauropods 0.7-0.8; ankylosaurs and
stegosaurs 0.6-0.7; ceratopsians 0.7-0.8 --except for Protoceratops at 1.6!
A modern elephant is very low at 0.6.

Now for arms. T. rex certainly did have pitifully small arms, but is not unique. Carnotaurus also seems to have had tiny arms. Generally, most later theropods tended to have small arms, with Tyrannosaurs and Carnotaurus being the extremes. It is only the smaller theropods, and the “maniraptoran” subclass of theropods, e.g. dromaeosaurs, that had relatively long arms. Phil Currie has a hypothesis that, since theropods are balanced at the hip, they had to reduce their arms as the price for having heavier heads. Is having long arms a necessary condition for being a land-based predator, as Horner suggests? Hardly. Predatory birds seem to do fine with only their beaks and feet. Certainly, the arms of most large theropods would just be too small to protect them from a fall. Ostriches have no arms capable of cushioning a fall and they run just fine.

T. rex certainly had extremely large olfactory bulbs. This was first found by CT-scanning the Wankel T. rex and was confirmed with Sue in the past year. The comparison with the olfactory bulb of vultures implies a pure scavenger only if all of the following are true:

  1. T. rex has much bigger olfactory bulbs than other theropods.
  2. Vultures have much bigger olfactory bulbs than birds that are not scavengers.
  3. The only use for a good sense of smell is to seek carcasses.
    So far, only point 2 has been established. I don’t think point 3 is true, as demonstrated by my dog. I hope we will learn more about point 1 as more theropod skulls are CT-scanned.

T. rex certainly has unusual teeth for a theropod. It also has one of the strongest mandibles among the dinosaurs. From that one famous coprolite found a few years ago we are fairly sure T. rex crunched a lot of bone as it ate. I have to admit that the ability to crunch bone may imply a different eating style (“puncture and pull?”) than most theropods, but does this imply a pure scavenger? Not really. Hyenas, also famous bone crunchers, are occasional predators as well.

I think we can forgive Barnum Brown for assuming a giant carnivore like T. rex was a predator, because today all the large carnivores (lions, wolves, etc.) are predominantly predators. It’s true that lions use their large size to chase hyenas away from carcasses, but that doesn’t mean lions are pure scavengers. We now know at least two other dinosaurs that are as big or bigger than T. rex, Giganotosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus. These theropods have typical theropod teeth, and nobody suggests they were obligate scavengers because of their size.

The evidence for predation, admittedly just as weak, was not mentioned in Valley. I will mention just two points. T. rex is unusual for a large theropod in having limited binocular vision, consistent with the condition in modern mammalian predators. Also, at least one specimen of Edmontosaurus has been found with a bite taken out of its dorsal vertebrae, with the bit off part partly healed. The only thing big enough to do the biting we know about is T. rex, and obviously the Edmontosaurus was alive at the time.

I realize popular science films tend to be pay attention to polarized opinions, but I think “Valley of the T.rex” was way too one-sided.

Sources:
Horner, J.R. & Lessem, D. “The Complete T. rex” Simon and Schuster, New York, 1993, 238 pages.

Norman, D. “The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs.” Crescent Books, New York, 1985, 208 pages.

Paul, G. S. editor “The Scientific American Book of Dinosaurs,” St.
Martin’s Press, New York, 2000, 424 pages.

Article 2

Walking with Prehistoric Beasts - The Companion Book

Pretty much everything I said in Paleontograph Volume 10, Issue 6 about the
companion book to “Walking with Dinosaurs” applies to the companion book for “Walking with Prehistoric Beasts.” The author in both cases is Tim Haines,
the producer of both specials. The format of the two books is the same. The
text closely follows the television production. As in a book by David Attenborough, we follow the lives of individual prehistoric animals. Every third page or so there is a “box” that discusses the paleontological evidence behind the narration.

The copious color illustrations are frames taken directly from the TV special. As with the WWD book, the pictures are not quite as crisp as you might expect for a book of this size. Again, this is because television does not require high-resolution renderings and there is some “motion blur” added to computer animation to better simulate a film. To be fair, the resolution in the WWPB book seems a little bit better.

As with WWD, this is not a bad companion book. It’s just that the scientific content is necessarily limited in a book meant for a general audience. An alternative, readable, but much more scientifically interesting book on prehistoric mammals is “The Rise of the Mammals” by Dr. Michael Benton.

Sources:
Benton, M. “The Rise of the Mammals.” Quantum Books Ltd., London, 1998, 144 pages.

Haines, T. “Walking with Prehistoric Beasts.” DK Publishing Inc., New York, 2001, 264 pages. $30

Article 3

Walking with Prehistoric Beasts - The TV Show

By now we have seen three excellent paleo-specials from the BBC on the
Discovery Channel: “Walking with Dinosaurs” (WWD), “Neanderthal”, and
“Allosaurus”. (Reviews in the Paleontograph: Volume 10, Issue 6; Volume 11, Issue 5; Volume 11, Issue 6.) They are all pseudo-documentaries following the lives of individual prehistoric animals (or people). WWD and Allosaurus depict dinosaurs, pterosaurs, sea reptiles, etc. with computer graphics images pasted onto live backgrounds, or animatronic puppets for the closeups. The motion of the CGI animals is very realistic and the interaction with the environment (casting shadows, splashing in water, kicking up dust) is nearly perfect. The main characters in “Neanderthal” are heavily made-up human actors, although some of the peripheral characters, such as mammoths, are computer-animated. These shows follow the same formula where the story is interspersed with brief sidebars where scientists talk about the evidence behind the speculation.

“Walking with Prehistoric Beasts” (WWPB) continues the series. It is a three-hour documentary (narrated by Stockard Channing) following the lives of mammals in a set of six segments:

  1. Early Eocene (49 Mya) Europe: a family of Leptictidium, Propalaeotherium
    (an early horse), Godinotia (an early primate), menaced by Gastornis (an enormous carnivorous bird–also known as Diatryma) and Ambulocetus (a whale ancestor).
  2. Late Eocene (36 Mya) Asia : Basilosaurus (an early whale), brontotheres (rhino-like), Andrewsarchus (a mesonychian–largest land predator), Apidium
    (a primate), and Moeritherium.
  3. Oligocene (24 Mya) Asia: a mother indricothere and her baby (giant giraffe-like rhinos–the largest land mammals), Hyaenodon, bear-dogs, entelodonts, and chalicotheres.
  4. Pliocene (3.2 Mya) Africa: a tribe of Australopithecus, Deinotherium (an early mastodon), and Dinofelis (a large cat).
  5. Early Pleistocene (1 Mya) South America: a pride of Smilodon, Phorusrhacos (“terror bird”), glyptodonts, Megatherium, and Macrauchenia (a camel-like artiodactyl with a tapir’s nose).
  6. Late Pleistocene (30 kya) Europe: mammoths and Megaloceros menaced by two species of humans, humans menaced by woolly rhinos.

In some ways WWPB was more difficult to produce than WWD. Mammals just don’t have the current box-office appeal of dinosaurs, and prior knowledge on the part of the audience is not there. Any six-year-old will recognize the names Allosaurus, Plateosaurus, and Stegosaurus. In contrast, not many people will recognize Propalaeotherium, Macrauchenia, and Phorusrhacos. (Including your humble author–which is why I put little descriptions in the paragraph above.) Then there are the technical issues with computer imagery. Fur is very expensive to animate. Also, unlike dinosaurs, mammals have muscles in their faces, making it necessary to animate snarling, nose-twitching, ear-swiveling, etc.

On the other hand, we know much more about how how big cats walk and whales swim than about how theropods walk and pliosaurs swim, so the animation in WWPB was easier in that sense. Also, one of the biggest complaints about WWD was that the behaviors were “speculative.” (My opinion has always been that that is a vacuous complaint; speculation is unavoidable in a show
depicting any type of behavior for fossil animals.) I would think there would be much less complaining on those grounds with WWPB. After all, it is much more reliable to extrapolate the behavior of Smilodon from that of modern big cats than to extrapolate the behavior of Tyrannosaurus from the same animals. However, there are still scientists grumbling about that same issue (Watson, 2001).

I had only two complaints about WWD. First, the computer graphics is so good, it makes some of the puppet work look bad. Also, I didn’t like the look of the Tyrannosaurus. In WWPB, the puppets are much improved; it is harder to tell the difference from the computer graphics. However, one set of animals, the Australopithecines, look unrealistic in both animated and puppet versions.

I read some complaints on the Dinosaur Mailing List about some of the tricks that imply “camera work” before the existence of cameras. In WWD the trick was done once: the mother T. rex roars at the viewer and “spit” drips down the “lens.” In WWPB, a baby indricothere charges the viewer and the “camera” is knocked over, so that subsequent action is seen sideways from ground level. Also, Australopithecines throw rocks at Dinofelis and one of the rocks cracks the “lens.” I think these tricks are cute and not overdone, certainly nothing to complain about.

WWPB comes with two other hour-long documentaries “Triumph of the Beasts” deals with the origin and evolution of mammals in general, with special emphasis on mammals of the Messel Shale and the origin of whales. “The Beasts Within” deals with human descent from the earliest primate to CroMagnon. These are very good documentaries in their own right, wherein much paleontological evidence is presented. Also, there is some behind-the-scenes info about the production work in WWPB.

The producers enhance the “talking heads” in these two documentaries with realistic computer animation. Three scenes that stand out: A scientist talks about how entelodonts (think half-ton warthogs with an attitude) would survive well today because they would be dietary generalists. Cut to a back alley where we see an entelodont knock over a dumpster then get scared away by a car alarm. Another scientist in the Great Hall of the British Museum of Natural History talks about indricotheres, whereupon an adult indricothere appears within touching distance. The indricothere is 20 ft. tall, dwarfing the Diplodocus skeleton in the same hall. It looks down at the scientist in a bemused way. Finally, a third scientist, standing in the foreground of a snowy field, expounds about mammoths while a herd of mammoths walks behind him.

The only difficulties I had scientifically with any of these films are the following: In WWPB it is suggested that Megatherium occasionally chased predators away from carcasses to scavenge the meat. This seems unlikely to me given that sloths, even giant ones, have little or no teeth in the front of their mouths. In “Triumph” a narrator discounted the “overkill” hypothesis for the extinction of large mammals in North America 12,000 years ago. Overkill is looking more plausible nowadays.

All three documentaries are on my must-see list. Since the Discovery Channel
repeats specials every few months, I am sure you will get a chance. The official Web site is:
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/beasts/beasts.html

Sources:
Watson, A. “TV dinosaur team treads tricky mammalian terrain.” Science 2001, 294, p.1815.

Article 4

Supercroc - A Review

I recently wrote related the report in Science (Sereno et al. 2001) about Sarcosuchus, an immense crocodyliform from the Cretaceous of the Niger. On December 9 NBC broadcast a 2 hr. National Geographic Special “Supercroc” on the same subject. (Concurrent with “Walking with Prehistoric Beasts”–more
on that elsewhere.)

I was controlling my expectations. One reason is because the previews seemed
to imply that the contents were going to be “Paul Sereno plays Crocodile Hunter.” Paul Sereno (University of Chicago) certainly deserves the utmost respect for his work on African dinosaurs, but this special looked like it might be too much of a personal profile without much scientific substance. Also, in my experience, 2 hr. specials on scientific topics tend to be padded.

I was wrong on both counts. It turns out Sereno was out in the swamp for a
good reason. He and several guides were capturing crocodiles of various sizes in various parts of the world and measuring their heads and total body length. This was in order to be able to extrapolate the size of Sarcosuchus, given only its skull (which is six feet long). For the extrapolation to be more accurate, they needed data on the largest living crocs, which top out at about 20 ft. This was not an easy job. It takes four men sitting on a 12-ft croc to subdue it. Also, the crocs are usually not very happy about being handled, and can easily bite off your leg or knock you flat with a tiny flick of the tail. It helps to cover their eyes
so they don’t know where to aim their attack. Anyway, the data, which is in
the Science article, implies that Sarcosuchus was approximately 40 ft. long.

Another interesting segment was where another group of scientists measured
the bite force of a variety of crocodilians. For example, a 600 lb alligator has a bite force of 2100 lbs. The bite force seems well-predicted by the weight of the animal, so Sarcosuchus should have had a bite force of 18,000 lbs!

There was some material about the anatomy and hunting behavior of various
types of modern crocodilians, including the Indian ghariyal, which anatomically most closely resembles Sarcosuchus in the shape of its bulbous snout. It certainly is impressive to see a croc leap up and drag an adult wildebeest into the river in the blink of an eye. (The implication is that Sarcosuchus could do this with dinosaurs as large as hadrosaurs.) On the physiology side, it seems that crocs have a natural antibiotic in their blood. Otherwise, the wounds they get fighting among themselves would certainly get infected, being continuously immersed in scummy water. The scene with the highest “gross factor” had an Australian scientist reaching into a croc’s stomach (with the jaws secured of course) to retrieve a pocket-watch sized instrument to measure the force exerted by gastroliths.

The most impressive segment was about the skeletal reconstruction and the
restoration of Sarcosuchus. Very little of Sarcosuchus’ skeleton is preserved, so sculptor Stephen Godfrey created a complete skeleton from plastic foam, starting from a cast of the real bones. Even more awesome is the life-sized restoration created by sculptor Gary Staab, which has lots of authentic skin texture and plausible coloration. It is in a very dynamic pose–as if coming around to snap up a human like a small snack. A crocodile as long as a Greyhound bus almost strains credibility, but it did exist.

The only thing negative I can say about this special is that the computer
animations of Sarcosuchus dragging dinosaurs look crude in the extreme.

See this if you can. The official web site is: www.supercroc.org

Sources:
Sereno, P.C.; Larsson, H.C.E.; Sidor, C.A.; Gado, B. “The giant crocodyliform Sarcosuchus from the Cretaceous of Africa.” Science 2001, 294, 1516-1519.

Article 5

Drawing Out Leviathan - A Review

There has been a movement since the 1970’s among some professors of philosophy, feminists, and other academics to debunk the idea that Science progresses in getting closer to the truth. Instead, they say, Science lurches from one fashionable “paradigm” to another, the fashion being dictated by those with the most prestige and power. Thus Science has no more claim to “objective knowledge” than any other belief system.

There are two reasons for this “Constructivist” movement. One is simply a
left-wing trend wherein anything “Western,” “rational,” “linear,” “imperialistic,” etc. is regarded as noninclusive, and therefore bad. The other reason, in my opinion, is simply “sour grapes” on the part of philosophers. They are resentful that scientists are regarded in popular opinion as producing useful results, whereas philosophers are regarded as impractical at best. Thus they would love to cut Science down to size. Of course, science professors are not taking this lying down. Thus there is a sort of “Science War” in academia.

To me the constructivists obviously don’t have a clue, and their arguments strike me as so ludicrous I would not waste my time trying to debunk them. Then again, I feel the same way about debunking Creationist ideas, but many people have written books doing so. Keith Parsons, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston has written “Drawing Out Leviathan,” wherein constructivist ideas are thoroughly deflated using examples from the history of dinosaur science. Why dinosaurs? I suppose primarily because they have a lot of popular appeal, and this is the kind of Science (other than Medicine) most people are likely to pay attention to. Also, the history of dinosaur science has seen a number of nasty feuds and sudden paradigm shifts. Generally, this kind of turmoil is somewhat more common in paleontology than in, for instance, physics, because paleontologists make interpretations from evidence that is 1) scrappy and 2) cannot be generated on demand. The influence of personalities and social forces is therefore less constrained.

Parsons covers the following examples:

  1. The assignment of the proper head to Apatosaurus.
  2. The ideas of Bob Bakker and their reception among dinosaurologists.
  3. The “conversion” of David Raup in accepting asteroid impact as a mechanism of extinction.
  4. The ideas of W.J.T. Mitchell (“The Last Dinosaur Book”) that dinosaurs are such “cultural icons” that we cannot distinguish the real dinosaurs from symbolic ones.
  5. The feud between Richard Owen and Thomas Henry Huxley over the proper
    interpretation of Archaeopteryx.

Parsons finds from these examples that, while scientists have personal axes to grind and are subject to social forces like everyone else, they ultimately follow the evidence. There is real progress in paleontology, and by extension, in other branches of science. This is such a non-surprise to me that I’m not sure that I got anything new from this book as a debunking tool, but then this book probably was not written for people like me. On the other hand, the detailing of certain events, especially regarding Apatosaurus, Bakker, and Huxley, is certainly of historical interest.

This is an well-written book, worth reading if you come across it. On the other hand, since much of it is “preaching to the choir” (as well as pricey for its length), I cannot say it is worth buying, unless you are teaching a course in the philosophy of science.

By the way, the title is from a Biblical verse Job 41: 1-4 “Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook?” a metaphor, I suppose, of finding the real creature independent of social constructs.

Sources:
Parsons, K.M. “Drawing Out Leviathan. Dinosaurs and the Science Wars”
Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2001, 210 pages $30

Article 6

Not Deep Enough - Review of “In Search of Deep Time”

Bob Sheridan January 2, 2000.

In cladistic analysis, animals are grouped by shared characteristics. The groupings are displayed as a tree-like diagram called a cladogram. Cladistics is now the accepted method of analyzing the evolutionary relationships of living animals and fossils. Nearly every description of a new fossil that appears in the scientific literature is accompanied by a cladogram showing how the new fossil relates to other fossils. On the other hand, the general public is not very familiar with cladistics. First, there is the very user-unfriendly vocabulary. Second, generating cladograms is very compute-intensive, so amateurs cannot do it without specialized software (although such is available for PC or Mac). The proper use of cladistics remains contro- versial even among professionals. Some feel that cladistics is the only scientific method for addressing evolutionary relationships. Others feel that it is a powerful method, but not necessarily the best one to use in many circumstances. I subscribe to the Dinosaur News Group on the internet, and have observed that the easiest way to start a flame war is to extol or denigrate cladistics.

As a serious paleo-amateur I hope to find a book that can explain cladistics to a general audience, but with enough detail to give me an idea of the method in practice. Unfortunately, “In Search of Deep Time” is not it. What is here is a good exposition of the underlying philosophy of cladistics:

  1. Since the fossil record is skimpy and fossils don’t come with labels, there is no way to tell whether certain fossils are ancestral to others. One can only say whether animals (living or fossils) are related by shared characters. For example, we can say that Velociraptor and Archeopteryx are “sister groups”, but cannot tell if dromaeosaurs are the ancestors of birds, their descendants, or both share a common ancestor.
  2. One is not allowed to infer “purpose” in an anatomical feature in a fossil because, since we cannot observe the behavior of extinct animal, the inference is untestable. For instance, just because birds now use feathers to fly, one cannot assume that feathers first evolved for flight.
  3. Only shared derived characters count. Overall similarity does not. For instance, you could count the fact that cats and dogs have carnassial teeth to consider them more closely related than two arbitrarily chosen mammals, but you couldn’t count the fact that they both have hair since all mammals have hair.
  4. One chooses between cladograms on the basis of “parsimony”. That is, one chooses the cladogram(s) with the fewest evolutionary steps or reversals.

These principles can be applied to the anatomical features of living or fossil animals or to molecules (so far, only from living animals).

Practitioners of cladistics like to point out this approach as the most scientific. The principles above contain very few assumptions. One has to produce an explicit list of creatures and characters to start, so the input is presumably then available to other scientists to examine. Cladistics produces testable hypotheses in the form of cladograms. However, the only test mentioned in this book that can be applied to a cladogram is comparison to another cladogram! In some cases, for instance the comparison of a cladogram from anatomical data to a cladogram from molecular data, this is probably a real test. On the other hand, when comparing cladograms from two sets of anatomical data, all one has is a
test of self-consistency.

This book also contains some discussion of the two “triumphs” of cladistics, the organization of fossil fish, and the idea that birds are a type of theropod dinosaur. Neither is a mean achievement.

But how about how cladistics works in practice? By reading other books and
articles, I know that a scientist must set up a matrix of creatures and characters. How does the choice of characters affect the outcome? I know there are statistical techniques to test how robust cladograms are to small changes in the data. How do these work? I also know that there are certain circumstances where cladistics cannot generate sensible results. What are they? “In Search of Deep Time” does not address any of these questions.

My advice is: look for a more complete book.

Sources:
“In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of
Life.” The Free Press, New York, 1999, 267 pages.

Article 7

Last of the Titans: Big Game Trilobite Hunting

Exclusive to The Paleontograph
By special correspondent Geoffrey Notkin

Well-to-do society types and those wealthy enough to afford luxurious and expensive furnishings will, by now, know all about the recent surge in popularity of mounted trilobite cephalons. These imposing, and somewhat unsettling, spiked and armored shells can be found hanging — stuffed, varnished, and polished — high up on some of New York City’s most fashionable parlor walls. Each oversized trophy head — the largest measuring nearly four feet from one crystal-lensed compound eye to the other — was once attached to the thorax of a giant arthropod named Phacops imperator which, earlier this century, ravaged parts of upstate New York. This dangerous predator has now largely been displaced, its natural environment steadily disappearing as a result of new housing developments and urban creep. Hence the recent price rise on these increasingly scarce trophy heads! A few packs of resilient and aggressive trilobites appear to have survived in largely inaccessible sections of the Catskill mountains, where they occasionally wreak havoc upon groups of hikers, and the odd poacher.

Each fall, oblivious to the danger, a few hardened big game hunters converge on the small town of Sharon Springs, New York. It has long been the prime staging area for those daring enough, and wily enough, to stalk the deadly and elusive wild trilobite Phacops imperator. The number of hunters — much like their prey — has dwindled sharply in recent years, but the most determined still continue to arrive in their Hummers and army surplus armored cars. “It’s just not the same without ole ‘Big’ Bill Vandercamp,” reflects veteran bushwacker and retired boho revolutionary, Ed Pole Jr., of Mohawk, New York. “Big Bill and the boys’d comes up here every year in their Chevys with big guns . . . an’ I mean big guns . . . them 44 Magnums and elephant rifles with armor piercing and dum-dums. None o’ them pansy lightweight German dilly-dally sniper rifles that them yuppies bring up from New Jersey, no sir. You bump into a angry trilo with one o’ them fancypants toy rifles, and yer bullets’ll just bounce right off his head, “Kerpingg!” And that makes ’em real mad [laughs].”

“Big” Bill Vandercamp remains a legend among trilobite hunters, and rightly so. In 1984 he bagged the largest Phacops ever recorded in North America. It’s monstrous cephalon is today prominently displayed above the entranceway to the Hall of Invertebrates in the Ilion Museum of Paleontology, where it has frightened many a small child into a quiet and respectful life of monastic servitude. Mr. Vandercamp made a comfortable living as a tracker and field guide for hunters seeking the ultimate big game thrill: a close encounter with Phacops imperator. Experienced hunters from as far away as Auckland, New Zealand, and Krasnojarsk in Siberia have traveled to upstate New York in order to work with the expert gamesman.

In 2001, Mr. Vandercamp and a team of heavily-armed telemarketers disappeared into the steep, wooded hills above the rural hamlet of Blenheim, New York. Several mangled balls of clothing were later found under a covered bridge — the only remains ever recovered of the party of eight men and their petite mule, Tipsy. The locals — suspicious and wary of visitors at the best of times — are today largely unwilling to act as guides for trilobite-hunting expeditions, even though they can earn as much as $2,000 per trip. “It’s just nart worth it, innit? Nart worth it at all,” says Missy Sherman, longtime owner of Dalmanite’s Ammo, Bait ’n’ Tackle, which has been a popular hangout for visiting hunters since the 1940s. “We ’ad plenty o’ guides back in the day, yessir. Fightin’ even for a chance to git up in them woods with them shooters, they were. But since Mr. Bill gone missin’ ain’t nobody goin’ to git nowhere.”

How many giant trilobites are really slithering about in the limestone caves 1,200 feet above town? That’s anybody’s guess, and the estimates we received varied both according to the time of day and the type of bars that we canvassed. Informed opinions ranged from “Probably none” (Mr. Charlie Kanute, enjoying a civilized lunch at the Paradoxides Inn, 2:15 pm), to “At least thousands” (Mr. Jim Bob Huxley, working on his third zombie cocktail at Whinney’s MegaPub Rana, 11:52 pm). What is certain is that nobody has seen a live Phacops imperator for close on two years, and it is possible that the last of the titans has finally died, or perhaps just moved on to more remote locales.

Things were very different back in the 1880s, when a captive trilobite was one of Herkimer County’s biggest attractions. Captured as a mere pup, the trilobite — affectionately known to townsfolk as “Little Petey” — grew to almost seventeen feet in length, and on Federal holidays was paraded around the county seat strapped to the top of a Mohawk and Schenectady Railroad box car. An editorial in The Mohawk Valley Gazette from February 29, 1883 described Little Petey as “ . . . that Devilish insect monstre (sic) of Brobdingnagian proportions. A Beaste so stupefying and horride as to make one instantly reach for one’s pocket Bible and hurry with no delaye to do God’s good worke.” Local lore has it that Little Petey lived to be well over a hundred. In later years, the venerable arthropod was cared for by a blind seamstress who taught it to repeat the names of all the Governors of the State of New York, in order; a trick the creature is reported to have performed annually on the mayor’s birthday.

Little Petey’s remains are said to have been interred in a quiet churchyard in Herkimer, New York. An exhumation of the supposed grave, conducted in 1967 by the State University, produced only the heads of two Victorian dolls and a scribbled note which read, “Gone back to the Silurian. Thanks for the fourteen pairs of mittens. Love, Pete.”

Article 8

Hot Plants!

For more than 200 years, it has been known that some plants can generate a
substantial amount of heat in their flowers. As in the case with mammals, heat is generated in the plant cell’s mitochondria. The eastern skunk cabbage sprout for instance, can generate warmth up to 50 degrees hotter than the surrounding air on a very cold day. The sprout can often melt snow that covers it, giving it an early start at spring growth.

The Corsican dead horse arum produces heat, and the odor of dead flesh. This flower attracts flies that are trapped over night as the blossom closes. The flies are released the next day, hopefully to visit another like flower and pollinate it.

Most of the plants whose flowers generate heat, come from ancient lineages. Examples Include the MagnoIias, Water Lilies, and Dutchman’s Pipes. It has been proposed that flowers that are able to generate heat, do so in order to more effectively spread scent to attract pollinators. The idea has shown merit over time. It has been found that some of the heat generating flowers attract beetles, that cluster in and about the flowers soaking up heat over the evening hours. The beetles later leave the flower only to gather about another flower the next evening, staying warm and sometimes pollinating it at the same time. Some botanists are now suggesting that, much of the early evolution of flowers was driven by this sort of mechanism. By the Eocene period, “true bees” have appeared. Flowers by this time are more prodigious producers of
nectar. Most later appearing flowers have less reliance on heat generation, and
are able to rely on more efficient pollinators, like bees and butterflies.

Sources:
Susan Milius
“Warm Blooded Plants?”
Science News 2003, vol. 164,#24, p379-381

Editors Note;
This article and another on page 9, were submitted by NJPS member Ron
Pridgen who lives in Missouri. Both were previously published and used
with permission of KAMPS, Kansas and Missourri Paleontological Society.

Article 9

The Fossils of Solnhofen

Several years ago, I was fortunate enough to be in Germany for an extended business trip. I was in both Munich and Nuremberg. Since both these cities are close to the Solnhofen area, I was able to visit the museums exhibiting the spectacular fossils of the region. Solnhofen is a small town located approximately midway between Munich and Nuremberg.

The formations in the area are of “latest” Jurassic in age. The rock, quarried and removed similar to flat slate, has fossils with exquisite detail intact. Fossils of the first bird, Archaeopteryx lithographica have been found in the Solnhofen region. We know that Archaeopteryxis a bird because feather impressions were preserved along with its bones. Other unusual finds from Solnhofen include jellyfish fossils showing internal soft features and insects with delicate wing details perfectly preserved.

How is it that conditions occurred to fossilize living things in such detail? One of the leading theories is that the fossilization occurred in shallow backwater lagoons. The lagoons surrounded an island that would later become part of Germany. Beyond the lagoons were coral reefs and beyond the reefs was the open ocean.

Because these lagoons were shallow, they were heated strongly by the sun and therefore had a higher salinity content and contained less dissolved oxygen than the surrounding oceanic seawater.

Since the lagoons were close to shore, land derived clay was continuously but slowly deposited in them. However, during storms, lime mud was stirred up from the surrounding coral reefs and then re-deposited in the lagoons. The storms also carried in animals and plant material, both terrestrial and marine.

As the storm brought in plants and animals, they died quickly and were buried in the lime mud. The particles of lime mud were very fine- in the range of 1 to 55 microns, equal to 0.00004 to 0.0002 inches! Therefore, exceptional details of the buried organism could be preserved. After the storm passed, high salinity and anoxic conditions resumed in the lagoons. Because these conditions are not conducive to life, it was unlikely that the buried organism would be disturbed by scavengers.

Fossils of over 600 species of plants and animals have been found in the Solnhofen region. Of course, the most famous is Archaeopteryx. Other, less famous residents include various shrimp and lobsters, sharks and a ratfish of the same genus found at Big Brook (Ischyodus). Ichthyosaurs, various crocodilians, pterosaurs and the dinosaur Compsognathus have also been found.

While in the region, I visited three of the four museums dedicated to the region’s fossils: the Jura Museum in Eichstatt, the Maxberg Museum and the Burgermeister -Muller Museum in Solnhofen itself. Both the Eichstatt and Solnhofen museums have Archaeopteryx specimens on display. The Eichstatt specimen is the smallest of all discovered; the Solnhofen specimen the largest.
The preservation of the Solnhofen specimen is the poorest of all Archaeopteryx fossils. In fact, it was initially thought to be a Compsognathus fossil, until
examined by Gunter Viohl, then the curator of the Solnhofen museum. He noticed that the forelimbs were too long in relation to its body size to be a Compsognathus.

If you are ever in the region, and can see only one of the museums, see the Jura Museum in Eichstatt. It has the most fossils, as well as a “life” restoration of Archaeopteryx and both the underlying and the overlying slabs of its Archaeopteryx specimen.

George F. Klein

Sources:
Solnhofen- A Study in Mesozoic Palaeontology
by K. Barthel, N. Swinburne and S. C. Morris
Cambridge University Press Cambridge, United Kingdom 1994

Article 10

Sea Level Fluctuations

While at the Rutgers University Geology Museum Open House in January, I attended one of the lectures. The lecture was given by Dr. Kenneth Miller and was entitled “The Rise and Fall of Sea Level-Lessons from the Past 100 Million Years”. It was accompanied by an informative slide show. The opening slide was a view of New York Harbor showing the Statue of Liberty inelegantly immersed in sea water up to her armpits.

The slide, obviously computer generated, shows the rise in ocean levels that would occur assuming melting of all of the earth’s ice sheets. As you know, the North Pole, Greenland and Antarctica are covered by massive icesheets. Sea levels would rise by 73 meters (240 feet), covering most of the approximately 300 foot tall Lady Liberty. It was a very good lecture and Dr. Miller spent a great deal of time on the current rise in ocean levels due to global warming.

Sea level in this area is rising at a rate of about 3 to 4 millimeters a year and he expects a 40 centimeter (15.7 inch) increase in ocean levels over the next century. In addition the melting of ice sheets, thermal expansion of ocean water as a result of the global temperature rise explains some of our current increase in sea levels.

Current thinking is that the earth was ice-free from at least 100 million years before present (MYBP), during the Cretaceous Epoch, until about 35 MYBP.
Our most recent cooling period began about 42 MYBP and massive ice sheets started to accumulate on Antarctica around 35 MYBP.

“Not so fast” says Dr. Miller. According to his research, conducted mostly in New Jersey, as well as ocean drilling off of the Jersey coast, relatively rapid increases and decreases in ocean levels occurred during the Cretaceous. (Note: “relatively rapid” means changes that occurred over a few thousand years.)

Studies of sea level changes over the past 35 million years indicates when the level changes relatively rapidly, the only explanation was the build up or melting of massive, continental ice sheets. Dr. Miller’s research shows that such rapid changes in ocean levels also occurred during the Cretaceous. He believes that the only mechanism that can explain this is the build up or melting of massive ice sheets. So the Cretaceous world may not have been ice-free. It is possible that large ice sheets may formed and then melted, most likely on the Australia-Antarctica joined continent that was located near the south pole at the time.

This is certainly a revolutionary idea that would have significant impact on how the earth’s life forms lived and evolved, including the dinosaurs.

George F. Klein

Article 11

The Devil’s Tooth

The following story is fictitious. Or is it…

Young George was a precocious, energetic boy. He loved to ride and help oversee his fathers estate on the banks of Little Hunting Creek and join the older men surveying new tracts of land that were becoming available in the Virginian wilderness but he especially enjoyed his time alone on the shores of the nearby Potomac River. Here he would skim rocks along the top of the
velvety green water or hunt for shells which he would present to his mother with much ritual.

One afternoon George discovered something under one of the eroded bluffs
bordering the river which both delighted and frightened him. It was a giant tooth
which practically covered the entire length of his hand! It had a wide, yoked root, a thick shiny blade and serrations running down both sides. It was certainly an amazing object- but what was it? Following the force that would shape the rest of his life George jammed the tooth into the depths of his vest pocket and bolted off for home, determined to find out

Arriving at his house a short while later he was able to 1 his father, Augustine, hunched over some dreary ledger in the study. Augusti and its properties from his grandfather, John, who sailed to e New World from England in the l650’s. He did so in haste since he had the misfortune of backing the losers of the Reformation would supported King Charles I. After Oliver Cromwell had
overthrown Charles, John and all of his kin had little choice but to leave their homeland forever. They sought a place where tolerance was the rule.

“Father behold this most curious tooth I found while on my stroll down river,” George burst in, displaying all the usual exuberance of a 12 year old boy. George’s father studied the strange object in silence for some time then turned to his son and said: " If I had found such a fang upon the shores of the ocean an explanation would be much easier for it resembles the tooth of a great sea monster which are so often the subject of mariners tales. But the river could never hold a creature of such width and length. There is simply not enough depth of water." Examining it one last time he handed the artifact back. Tom stated that it must have worked its way from the nearby Atlantic to the Potomac and then, without looking back up, returned to his paperwork. George carefully wrapped his hand around the huge tooth and bolted down the houses long, front hallway. He would bring his trophy to Mr. Swanson whose business office was located about 3 miles south on The Kings Highway. Mr. Swanson, a family friend, was the county lawyer ,but in George’s mind he was much more for he was a man of letters who understood Greek, Latin, mathematics and the latest
advances in the natural sciences. Before he made it out the front door, however, he was intercepted by his mother, Mary, who was a beautiful and loving woman but extremely formal and woefully religious Mary was an Episcopalian of the first order. As her husbands line had sought political asylum from the ideologies of their enemies so had her ancestors immigrated for freedom of beliefs. With a
cutting bite to her inquiry see asked: “Son, what is that you hold within your right hand?” George knew that he had made a big mistake by not slipping out the back through the servants entrance but now he was caught. So with more boldness than he really felt he worked up a large grin and said: “Look mother, it is a great tooth from the shores of our own Potomac!”

Mary took one look and recoiled backward in horror. "That is the tooth of the
devil! She gasped out the words then dramatically raised both hands up to her mouth. “You bring that hideous thing back to the river immediately and cast it away. And be sure to throw it into the water exactly where you found it or it may very well cast an evil spell over our entire household and all those who dwell within!”

George’s mother could not be petitioned with compromise while in such a stupor so the young man assured her of his proper intentions as he opened the front door, said good-bye, and hastily made his way out toward the stables. The tooth was going somewhere but not back to the river! George mounted his
favorite horse and sped in the direction of Mr. Swanson’s office. The young lawyer would surely know what to make of this gigantic mystery"

He arrived a short while later and was warmly greeted by the man that he had known since he was a baby. Mr. .Swanson led George into his office and gestured for him to sit down. After asking the lad what prompted the welcome but sudden visit George dug the large tooth out of his frock coat pocket and presented it to the lawyer. “Well, well, Swanson responded, I’ve heard tell of such strange teeth coming from our Potomac but this is the first I’ve actually seen. And it is most fascinating. Notice the color, almost a yellow-green, unlike the color of a tooth from any living fish. And the hardness…”

He brought the tooth close to his ear and tapped it loudly with his fingernail. "George, you must understand this: The tooth I now hold before you is very old indeed. "

Mr. Swanson walked around the table and stood directly before the youth. “These past few years I’ve been reading many new science books coming from the Continent. Some of the material within these texts have made me understand
that the earth is extremely ancient, not in Biblical terms, as you have been
taught for many years, but in geologic terms. And that creatures have come and
gone through thousands upon untold thousands of years. It would appear as if
nature has finally developed to the point where man reigns over all lesser animals but as powerful become Mother Nature may not be finished yet. I believe that what you’ve found, George, is an early tooth of some huge but, alas,
hapless fish that life eventually dropped from its plan book on its way to making a more perfect being. Your relic holds within its structure part of the secret of
our own existence. Cherish it always George.”

George Washington went on to become a great military leader, a statesman,
the first president of the United States of America and in every sense of the phrase: The father of our country .Throughout his life he was influenced by modem science and other advances furthered by the Age of Enlightenment as were most of our founding fathers.

As I fossil collect along the shores of the Potomac, sometimes a mere rifle shot from Washington’s ancestral home, I often wonder if that most vital of American Revolutionaries ever found a Megalodon tooth. And if he did, how it effected his life?

Glenn Harbour

Article 12

A Case of the Crabs

While fossiling at a favorite Monmouth County brook last year, I spied a hint of black in the gravel of the streambed. Knowing that black could mean a fossil, I picked it up. It was a chunk of matrix, the hard, gray clay, with something black sticking out. I thought it might be a crab fossil, so I stuck it in a plastic bag.

When I got home, I set to work on freeing whatever was in the matrix. I used a dental pick to carefully remove the matrix and eventually freed up a beautiful little crab carapace, about 1.25 inches long and 0.75 inches wide. In the course of my “prep” work, I had dislodged some pieces of the crab shell that I carefully glued back in place with cyanoacrylate (“Crazy Glue”).

Since I don’t know much about fossil crabs, I brought my find to our November
meeting. I thought some of members might be able to identify the crab. After
showing it around and then a lot of detective-like discussion, two suspects emerged for the identity of my fossil: or Xanthosia elegans. But-- which one? It certainly was “a case of the crabs.”

Xanthosia, this crab’s genus, lived from about the mid-Cretaceous, through the K/T Boundary into the Paleocene Epoch. They survived the extinction of the dinosaurs. They were a group of actively swimming crabs that had a wide distribution. Their fossils have been found in South Dakota, Colorado, Delaware, New Jersey, England, France, Mexico and Madagascar.

But to keep me from itching and scratching myself to death, the case had to be solved. One of our members borrowed the crab and showed it to Ralph Johnson at the New Jersey State Museum’s Super Science Weekend in January. Ralph is a local authority on the Cretaceous of New Jersey and Delaware. He positively identified my find as X. elegans, to my great relief.

The case was finally solved.

With my permission, the crab fossil has been photographed and put on the website www.cretaceousfossils.com. So check it out at:
www.cretaceousfossils.com/invertebrate/crustaceans/xanthosia_elegans.htm

And don’t worry, it’s not infectious.

Thanks to Keith Minor and Ralph Johnson for helping to identify the crab. Thanks to Keith for some background information on Xanthosia.

George F. Klein

Article 13

Oligocene Reborn

In every year except one the Oligocene of Nebraska has been one of the stops
on the NJPS Trip West. As far as collecting goes, we’ve had good year’s and
bad.

In the beginning, we had Arne’rs Ranch, a site introduced to us by Jim Bourdon who started the western trips. Arner’s turned into our main location. We always looked for better sites but we always came back to Arner’s, the old standby. It was always the site we could count on. Then it was gone. Frank Garcia, a collector and entrepreneur from Florida, had leased it in order to use it for his guided fossil trips. He fills a van with collectors from Florida takes them collecting for a week for a fee.

We started going to other sites but it was never the same. Our luck was never
good. Jim proposed that the sites were over collected and could not produce
enough for the collecting pressure that was being put on them.* Remember, we
were not the only people collecting there.

So when we planned Nebraska as part of this years trip, for me, it was the last shot. Either we did well this year or we would not return.

This year, Steve Balliet took over as trip leader. He had asked at the end of
last year’s trip if I would not mind stepping aside and giving him a chance as leader. As part of his planning he stumbled onto a new site. One, it turns out that has been only lightly collected for years. So we went with renewed excitement, as we had each time we tried a new site. However each time the renewed excitement turned into another disappointment. This time it would be
different.

We entered the new site after meeting the landowner early in the morning. We drove across some fields and had to leave one vehicle part way out because of a gully that we had to cross. So we doubled up and a few minutes later we pulled up to a large exposure. It ran for a mile, although it was not very deep. We got out our gear, did a radio check ( we use personal radios for safety) and hit the dirt running.

We were not in ten minutes before Brian Sansone, our youngest member, yelled “Skull” over the radio. Of course, I got jealous. A little competition gets your blood flowing, I too, wanted a skull. If only I had known that I would have no chance against Brian “The Skull Boy”. He must have some special skull mojo. Before the day was out he collected four. Steve also did pretty well with four. The rest of us did not do so well. We had some new people along and it takes time for some to get used to the “look” of the fossils.

Our second and last day turned out pretty good also. Steve picked up another skull making him the winner of the skull contest. I got a nine inch turtle and Ellie found a nice little four inch turtle.

We left the site feeling good. Considering we had a crew that was mostly first timers, we did extremely well. We actually did better than we ever had, even at Arner’s. I know that won’t be our last trip to Nebraska.

Tom Caggiano

See “The Winds of Change” Jim Bourdon, NJPS Paleotograph Vol 7 June
1997.

Article 14

Radiocarbon Dating

I’m sure most of our readers are familiar with radiocarbon dating that is used to date the ages of relatively recent fossils and human artifacts. The technique was developed in the 1940s by Prof. Willard Libby of the University of Chicago. Prof. Libby also worked on the Manhattan Project, the Allied effort that developed the atomic bomb during World War II. At the time his ideas was considered so crackpot that he was forced to work in secret. Nevertheless he published his work in 1949.

The element Carbon is composed of three forms or isotopes: Carbon-12, Carbon-13 and Carbon-14. Carbon-12 is “ordinary” Carbon and composes approximately 99% of all Carbon present on earth. Carbon-13 makes up most of the remainder of the earth’s Carbon, with only a trace amount of Carbon-14 present. Of the three isotopes, only Carbon-14 is radioactive. Libby found that Carbon-14 is created in the upper atmosphere by bombardment of Nitrogen with cosmic rays. It also begins to decay at a predictable rate. But Libby believed because of the continued bombardment of the earth by cosmic rays, the amount of Carbon-14 present in the atmosphere over time should remain constant.

Therefore when an organism is alive it will have a constant amount of Carbon-14 in its body. After it dies, it will stop absorbing Carbon-14 and the Carbon-14 will begin to decay to the non-radioactive Carbon-13. By measuring the relative amounts of these two isotopes, scientists can determine how old the object is. Scientists speak of “half-life” when dealing with radioactive isotopes. The half life of Carbon-14 is 5,730 years. That means after 5,730 years half of the Carbon-14 from a dead organism will be gone. After 11,460 only one-quarter of the Carbon-14 will remain etc, etc.

Radiocarbon dating has accuracy limits. It can only be used to date objects younger than approximately 40,000 years before the present (YBP). This is because so little Carbon-14 remains after this time that it is very hard to detect.

Libby won a worthy Nobel Prize for his work in 1960. However he made two errors in the development of radiocarbon dating. The first was that he miscalculated the constant for the decay of Carbon-14 by about 3%. He estimated the half life of Carbon-14 as 5,570 years, when it is actually, as noted above, 5,730 years. The error was not uncovered until the late 1960s and so many radiocarbon dates had been published by then that scientists decided to continue using Libby’s original and incorrect decay constant.

The second error can be more significant. As I mentioned above, Libby believed that Carbon-14 was created in our atmosphere at a constant rate. This is not true. The earth’s magnetic field regulates how much cosmic radiation reaches the upper atmosphere. The strength and polarity of the magnetic field has varied over time, allowing different amounts of cosmic rays to reach the atmosphere. Therefore the amount of Carbon-14 in the atmosphere has not remained constant with time.

Unfortunately this error is not as “consistent” as the first. The correction factor can vary significantly. For radiocarbon dates of about 11,000 YBP, one needs to add about 2,000 years to obtain the true age. Therefore, something that is radiocarbon dated to 11,000 years old is actually 13,000 “calendar” years old. For dates of a few thousand years as well as dates older than 30,000 YBP, the correction factor is much smaller. It becomes insignificant for radiocarbon dates abound 40,000 YBP.

There are other sources of error that can creep in that are not related to Libby’s original assumptions. Contamination is always possible. This can come from Carbon leached out of younger sediments above the fossil, from ground water or other sources. These are hard to deal with and scientists involved in radiocarbon dating must maintain vigilance to avoid contamination.

George F. Klein

Sources:
The Eternal Frontier
Tim Flannery
Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, NY, 2001

After the Ice Age
E. C. Pielou
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL 1991

Article 15

Nostrils

Nostrils are not something we think about a lot, but they are one of the key differences between fish and tetrapods. In fish, nostrils are devoted to the sense of smell. In jawed fish there are two pairs of nostrils (anterior and posterior) on the outside of the skull. The olfactory sensors are in a cylindrical pouch and the two nostrils allow water to flow through the pouch in one direction. In tetrapods there is an external nostril on the front of the face and an internal nostril (the choana) in the palate that connects the outside to the mouth cavity. This allows us tetrapods to breath through our nose as well as smell. In early tetrapods, the internal nostrils are on the front part of the palate. In mammals the internal nostrils are very far back and separated from the rest of the mouth by a hard palate. It is not clear why the internal/external arrangement developed in tetrapods, but breathing air was not the driving force; internal nostrils developed much earlier than fins became limbs.

How one goes from two external nostrils to one external and one internal has not been clear. The traditional though is that somehow the posterior nostril somehow migrated from the outside of the skull to the palate. One would have to imagine an intermediate stage where a nostril appeared in the upper tooth row. Another possibility is that the posterior external nostril was lost and an internal nostril appeared as a totally new structure. Modern lungfish have an internal and external nostrils, but some fossil lungfish have two external nostrils, so it is not clear what the ancestral condition was, or if the lungfish internal nostril is homologous with the tetrapod version, or a convergent condition.

A recent paper by Zhu and Ahlberg (2004) introduces a new specimen that may help settle matters. The specimens named Kenichthys cambelli are is from Yunnan, China and dated at ~395 Myr. There are multiple skull bones of various types. Unfortunately, none are articulated, and it is not possible to assemble a single entire skull. However, it is possible to make a plausible reconstruction. Kenichthys is a very basal tetrapod. There is clearly an anterior external nostril between the lateral rostral and tectal bones. If there were a posterior external nostril, it would be expected between the lateral rostral and the premaxillary bone. If there were a proper internal nostril, it would be formed by processes extended from the maxillary.

There are no such processes in Kenichthys. Instead the premaxillary is short and does not seem to form the usual suture with the maxillary. Thus the authors claim that the apparent notch between the premaxillary and maxillary is the location of the posterior nostril. This is the expected intermediate form with the nostril in the upper tooth row.

Bob Sheridan, November 11, 2004

Sources:
Janvier, P.
“Wandering nostrils.”
Nature 2004, 432, 23-24.

Zhu, M.; Ahlberg, P.E.
“The origin of the internal nostril of tetrapods.”
Nature 2004, 432, 94-96.

Article 16

A Really Big Fish Story

An article by John Fagan in the December Paleontogragh (1) really caught my interest. The article was a review of a BBC series on “Sea Monsters” and mentioned an extinct fish, Leedsichthys problematicus. The series claimed that this bony fish, that lived in the Jurassic 155 million years ago, was up to 27 meters (88.9 feet!!) long. A fish almost 100 feet long certainly demanded an investigation on my part.

Renewed interest in the fish began last year when a new specimen was discovered in the Oxford Clay formation, near the town of Peterborough in England. The specimen was discovered in 2001 and excavated in 2002 and is the most complete fossil of this creature that has been found. Prior to this find, only pieces of Leedsichthys have been found, a tail, a fin etc.

Fossils of Leedsichthys was discovered by Alfred Leeds in the late 19th century. He found some gill rakers in the Oxford Clay that were several centimeters long and showed them to the British paleontologist, Sir Arthur Smith Woodward. Woodward knew that the gill rakers in most fish are much smaller (sometimes microscopic) so this fish must have been exceptionally large. The genus he named in honor of Alfred Leeds but assigned a species name of “problematicus” because its remains were tantalizingly enigmatic.

Woodward also correctly recognized that Leedsichthys was a member of an extinct group fishes called pachycormids, a fact that would later lead to over-estimates of its size. The first published size of Leedsichthys was by Woodward himself, who estimated it at 30 feet by comparing it to the pachyormid fish, Hypsocormus. Since then, its size estimates have become larger and larger.

In 1986, a scientists named Martill published stupendous size estimates by comparing dimensions of previously found remains to that of a whole pachycormid fish, believed to be a species of Asthenocormus. For instance for Asthenocormus, the ratio of the length of one of the lobes of its tail fin to its overall body length is about 1/7. Martill assumed that the same ratio would hold for Leedsichthys. As an example, a tail fin lobe of Leedsichthys was found that is about 2 meters (6.6 feet) long, therefore its overall length would be estimated at 2 x 7 = 14 meters (45.9 feet).

Martill compared the sizes of the gill basket, 1.2 meters (3.9 feet) in Leedsichthys to that of Asthenocormus which is 1/23 of its overall length. Martill came up with

a size of 1.2 x 23 = 27.6 meters. A length of 27 meters entered into the popular press and has become ingrained ever since. The 27 meter number was the largest size estimate that Martill came up with. He obtained smaller estimates based on other Leedsichthys body parts. Based on the length of the pectoral fin, he came up with 21 meters (68.9 feet), the length of the hyomandibula (a skull bone near the jaw), 13.5 meters (44.3 feet) and as noted above, a lobe of the tail fin, 14 meters. Apparently, these smaller and as we will see probably more accurate length estimates were forgotten in favor of the larger and more spectacular size.

Jeff Lister, a paleontologist at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, who excavated the 2001 Leedsichthys find, re-examined Martill’s work (2). The first thing he noted was that the presumed Asthenocormus has a unique gill basket arrangement and therefore comparing the gills of these two fishes isn’t the best thing to do. Secondly, he realized is that the gill basket itself is not the best part of a fish’s anatomy to scale by. This is because the gills are basically a three dimensional structure and if you double the size of the fish, the gill’s surface area increases by a factor of eight (two cubed). As an individual fish increases in size or fish evolve into larger sizes, their gills do not need to increase in linearly with its length.

Lister did further research on the subject. He discovered that the length of the Leedsichthys’ tail fin lobe noted above was not 2 meters, but actually 1.8 meters (5.9 feet). He re-worked the 1986 estimates and came up with lengths for Leedsichthys in a narrower range of 12.6 to 14.3 meters (41.3 to 46.9 feet).

And what about the specimen excavated in 2002? The length of its pectoral fin is 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) and its hyomandibula is 87 cm (2.9 feet). Therefore lengthestimates are 16.1 and 16.9 meters (52.8 and 55.4 feet).

Leedsichthys, even if it was “only” 55 feet long was still a spectacular fish. I think there are two “morals” to this really big fish story. The first is be careful of sizes of extinct animals quoted in the press or television. The media is probably more interested in selling newspapers or television advertising then they are in scientific truth. The second is always take a look at the supporting data for such size estimates, even if they come from reputable paleontologists.

George F. Klein

Sources:
Fagan, John
“Sea Monsters- Another Series from the BBC”
NJPS Paleontograph Vol. 13, Dec. 2003 p. 10

www.big-dead-fish.com

Latest News

MOVE THE MASTODONS - Help Needed

On Saturday, February 26, we will start to arrange for the redisplay of the two mastodons at The Bergen Museum. NJPS helped arrange for the fossil’s safe storage and now we need volunteers to help move and place the pallets containing the bones. It is part of the mission of our group to kindle and maintain an interest in paleontology. One way is by exposing the public to fossils. The Bergen Museum needs and wants our help. The more help we have, the lighter the burden.

We will meet at the museum at 10:30 a.m. The museum is in The Bergen Maill at Rt4 and Forest Avenue. It is the same mall where Macys is located. Park on the south side of the mall, near #26 in the lot. When you enter the mall, take the escalator down to the museum on the lower level. Call Howie Cohn with any questions at (201) 265-2236. Wear old clothes. Hope to see a crowd.

NEW Limited Edition Shirts

NJPS member Frank Haase has created a great picture of an Allosaurus skull which will go on the front of these shirts.They will be available by our February or March meeting. We will only produce a limited quantity so email Tom at tomcagg@aol.com to reserve/pre-order one. They will be available as t-shirt or sweatshirt in sizes small to extra large.The special pre-production pre-order price is only $12 for the tee, and $20 for the sweatshirt. Please note that XXL and XXXL are $2 additional. (Prices will be higher after pre-order special) Please see preview of shirt graphics below.

Book Raffle

Over the next few months, we’ll be raffling an autographed soft-cover copy of Jack Horner’s book, “Digging Dinosaurs”. While in Montana last year, George Klein met Jack Horner and had him autograph a copy of his book. Please see George at any upcoming meeting for a raffle ticket. Tickets will be $2 apiece, 3 for $5. Drawing will take place at the May meeting.

Congratulations to the 2026 EMFMLS winners!

Once again, our writers have won several awards in the EMFMLS Newsletter Contest.

Bob Sheridan
Four Wing Dinosaurs Further Strengthen Bird-Dino Line

Bob Sheridan
Splitters Triumphant: Are There Too Many Named Hominid Species

Glenn Harbour
The Orasco File

Geoffrey Notkin
Last of the Titans: Big Game Trilobite Hunting
Bob Sheridan
Chased by Dinosaurs - A Review

George R. Klein
The Potomac - Time’s River

Paleo links

Click on a few websites that we find very useful and informative,
Many contain valuable additional links. Please Contact Us to recommend websites or to report any dead links.

More Links:

Contact

Tom Caggiano : tomcagg@aol.com
Editor, membership

Debra Sansone : debranj@optonline.net
President

Bob Sheridan : eagseags@hotmail.com
Vice President

Howie Cohn : fossilh@aol.com
Secretary

vulcania

Vulcania Société Paléontologique

Les réunions mensuelles comprennent des conférenciers ou des ateliers sur divers sujets liés à la paléontologie, à la géologie et à des sujets d’importance scientifique et historique. Apprenez à identifier, restaurer, conserver et cataloguer vos propres découvertes et collections.

Les sorties organisées au Parc Vulcania tout au long de l'année sont ouvertes à tous les membres. Accédez aux propriétés publiques et privées, proches et lointaines, pour une collecte et une conservation responsables, voir Vulcania tarif.

Le bulletin mensuel du club, le NJPS PALEONTOGRAPH, est envoyé à tous les membres. Il présente des événements à venir, des spectacles, des réunions, des sorties sur le terrain, des sites de collecte ainsi que des articles informatifs et originaux sur divers sujets. Les membres sont encouragés à soumettre des contributions pour la publication.

parc vulcania montgolfiere
Parc Vulcania

Tarifs Vulcania

Les billets d'entrée pour le parc Vulcania, centré autour du volcanisme ont un prix qui varie selon l'âge du visiteur du parc d'attraction. De plus, des tarifs spéciaux existent pour les handicapés et les jeunes enfants.
Visitez en famille le parc d'attraction Vulcania implanté au cœur des volcans d'Auvergne : le parc de loisirs Vulcania qui vous fait vivre des expériences ludiques.

Vivez le réveil des volcans d’Auvergne, plongez à la découverte des volcans sous-marins, affrontez les éléments déchaînés et des créatures légendaires.

Découvrez les paysages d’auvergne et de la chaîne des Puys, la fascinante histoire des volcans et leurs légendes, les beautés et les fragilités de notre planète

Lieu d’apprentissage et de loisirs, Vulcania est un parc d’attractions qui permet à tous de mieux comprendre le fonctionnement des volcans et de notre planète. Mettre la science en vie sur le mode des sensations et des émotions, tout en restant fidèle à son ambition éducative, tel est le défi de Vulcania. Un objectif qui modifie considérablement le site en forme et en esprit, avec une nouvelle articulation entre attraction et savoir, entre émotion et savoir. Jeunes et moins jeunes peuvent se rassembler autour d'attractions et d'ateliers enrichissants. Le choix d’une scénographie plus vivante et attrayante place l’excitation suscitée par les visiteurs au centre de l’aventure. Il devient un formidable vecteur de connaissance pour mieux partager et comprendre les grands enjeux du 21ème siècle.