Happy National Fossil Day!

As some of you already know, I started teaching a brand new class, Social Media for Managers, this past spring (and will be teaching it again in Spring 2011). Many organizations are just now starting to adopt social media tools, and many more have yet to do so. Thus, my class has been an interesting learning experience not only for my students but for me as well. Things change so quickly in the social media world! So running this blog, and linking it to a Facebook page (and Twitter account) on the same topic is just one way that I am trying to learn how different social media tools can be used more effectively, on a personal level.

As of yet, I haven’t really figured out what sort of content to put on my Facebook page as opposed to the blog. (Right now, the Facebook page simply posts summaries and links to my posts from the blog.) However, I have discovered that it is much easier to upload a large album of photos, with comments, to Facebook than it is to write a lengthy blog post and select just a handful of photos to supplement it. Thus, I am trying something new today. In honor of the first annual National Fossil Day, I have copied four fossil-related photo albums over to my Fossil Muricidae Facebook page, and am linking them here so that you can view them in all their glory. 🙂

 

It’s Official…I Am An Addict…

As an American who has never self-collected in Europe (except for finding a fossil cerith along the streets of Paris back in 2001), do I really need 61 different specimens of Pterynotus (s.s.) crenulatus and all its different variants??!!  The sad thing is, I know I have even more specimens than this laying around my house that I just haven’t uncovered yet…

 

Name That Shell…Part 5 (“Murex fusates,” really a buccinid?)

I bought this small shell several years ago, labeled as “Murex fusates” from the middle Eocene “Stone City Formation” in Burleson County, Texas. The specimen itself is slightly damaged (missing part of the siphonal canal), and I have never been able to confirm the proper generic assignment. A recent Google search on the name took me to the Proceedings of the ANSP in Google Books, so I now know that the species was described by Gilbert Harris in 1895. A search through Emily Vokes’ “Catalog of the Genus Murex” (don’t know why I didn’t check that publication years ago, when I initially got the shell — back issues are available online through the Biodiversity Heritage Library) indicates that Dr. Vokes assigned the species to the Buccinidae, but a specific generic assignment was not provided. A search on the species name in the FLMNH collections didn’t turn up anything. So I still don’t know exactly what this thing is, except that it is apparently not in fact a muricid. You can view the specimen after the jump…

 

Looking for Shells That Aren’t Really There: Pterynotus rogersi

Looking for fossil muricids in shell form is one thing; looking for fossil muricids where they don’t really exist is quite another. In the Eocene Ocala Lmestone at the Haile Quarry near Newberry, Florida, very few true shells can be found. Instead, one hunts for “voids” — holes in the rock where the shell used to be. Or external molds, if you prefer.

 

Cenozoic Fossils at the Smithsonian

Found some old files on my computer from my last visit to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. a few years ago. Figured I would share them here, for the sake of anyone who has never had the opportunity to visit there. Obviously, the Cenozoic fossil invertebrate display is not large, but there are still some really nice specimens on display.