030619b

Three views of rocks from miles below the surface of the earth.

Anhydrite replacing limestone and filling fracture in Smackover Formation, south Alabama. Thin section photomicrograph. Image about 1 mm across.

Light-colored dolomite, which partially replaced red-stained limestone, is being in turn replaced by limestone. Smackover Formation, south Alabama. Thin section photomicrograph. Image about 1 mm across.

Wormy-looking sponge in the upper part of image, Smackover Formation, south Alabama Slabbed and polished core. Core 4 inches wide.

030519e

Every year, we take teachers on a one-day paleontology field workshop in western Alabama. This is the kind of stuff they find:

Participants don't just find fossils, they study them. This year, we will be learning about how to use fossils to correlate rock layers. Of course, if past expeditions are anything to go by, we also could find pterosaurs, mosasaurs, sea turtles, and lots of other things.

To learn more or sign up, go to this website and scroll down:

https://www.gsa.state.al.us/

111318b

I have finished with my latest revision of our interminably in-preparation manuscript about a fossil mound in north Alabama. We really are getting closer to being done, at which point we will be ready to send it out for review  and have it return, perhaps much later, covered with red ink (digitally speaking). Now it's time to get back to my other big project, revising a  30 year old book, and greatly expanding it!

071218b

fossil reefs
in North Alabama
who put them there
to fool us into thinking
the sea occupied that place
long long ago
which has primacy
evidence of our senses
or someone waving an old book
if you even have to ask
you are headed the wrong way

012918c

I know a secret, really exciting one. Soon, I will be able to tell the world. So, watch this space.

121017d

The stones lie

The stones lie, naked,

spread wide in beds whose coverlets

are years. Sand lies with shale, shale with

lime, and many years later

gives birth to that which is dead.

ammonite, trilobite, placoderm,

they all live under glass

and fluorescent lights; fourth graders

escape No Child Left

Behind and leave their schools

behind and soon they grow,

leave their homes

behind, marry and leave their lives

behind where acids burn

their bones, but a few live again

under glass after sleeping with

sand, shale, and lime

for a few million years.

112217b

Stunned scientists this week unearthed proof of late-Cretaceous dinosaurs civilization. A mummified T. rex, wearing a XXXXXXXXXXL T-shirt bearing some sort of cartoon about rat -like mammals. "The joke wasn't very funny," says Prof. John Smith, of Namuria College, "but what do you expect from a reptile?"

080417c

APS Monograph No. 2

Pennsylvanian Footprints in the Black Warrior Basin of Alabama.

Vol. 2: The Ichnology of Multiple Walker County Tracksites

A CALL FOR PAPERS

In 2005, the Alabama Paleontological Society (APS) published a comprehensive monograph on the trace and body fossils of the world’s most prolific Carboniferous (Coal Age) tracksite, the Union Chapel Mine (now the Steven C. Minkin Paleozoic Footprint Site) located in north-central Alabama. More than 2500 specimens of trackways have been collected from this site, a discontinued surface coal mine in Walker County.

APS Monograph No. 1, Pennsylvanian Footprints in the Black Warrior Basin of Alabama, known informally as the “Blue Book,” was a citizen scientist-professional collaboration that stood as the first major attempt to research Coal Age vertebrate trackways in Alabama since Museum Paper No. 9, Footprints from the Coal Measures of Alabama, published in 1930 by the Alabama Museum of Natural History and written by Truman H. Aldrich, Sr. and Walter B. Jones. The entire book can be accessed online at

kudzu.astr.ua.edu/monograph/monofiles/monofiles.html

Although the Blue Book is still of great value, it was not long before its interpretations needed to be revised and updated. For example, the taxonomy and attribution of vertebrate trackways is still in flux, while some “horseshoe crab” trackways are now thought to have been made by wingless monuran insects. Other traces in the Blue Book are still being debated and likely need further work. But in addition, many more specimens have been collected from Walker County since 2005 that have not yet been examined by any professional ichnologist. An example is the large database of new material from the Crescent Valley Mine near Carbon Hill, 23 miles west and a little north of the Minkin Site. Other sites include the Sugartown and Fern Springs Road mines, which have been visited many times by APS members.

We are calling for papers to be part of a second monograph prepared under the auspices of the APS to accomplish the following:

• illustrate new and interesting specimens collected from multiple tracksites since 2005
• arrange for thorough expert examination of the new vertebrate and invertebrate trace fossil specimens, treating both kinds as having the same level of scientific value
• revise the interpretations in the Blue Book accordingly
• cover all the known tracksites in Alabama
• include analysis and illustration of important specimens of plant fossils found at these same sites
• provide a global view of life during the coal age in Alabama, with the idea of connecting the Alabama tracks to other sites in the US and Canada
• provide a venue for several new studies of UCM and CVM material that are already underway or planned

EDITORS:

Dr. Ronald J. Buta, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, rbuta@ua.edu

Dr. David C. Kopaska-Merkel, Geological Survey of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, davidkm@gsa.state.al.us

Dr. Andrew K. Rindsberg, University of West Alabama, Livingston, arindsberg@uwa.edu

We encourage scientists with a strong interest and experience in Carboniferous trace fossils to contribute papers to this volume. A significant number of Walker County trace fossils collected by local amateurs and citizen scientists are housed in museums in Alabama, including the Alabama Museum of Natural History, the McWane Science Center, and the Anniston Museum of Natural History. The database has continued to expand since the first “Track Meet” (gathering of collectors to document and often donate their specimens) held nearly 17 years ago at the Alabama Museum of Natural History. The story behind the discovery and re-discovery of vertebrate trace fossils in Alabama is told in “Footprints in Stone: Fossil Traces of Coal-Age Tetrapods,” by Ronald J. Buta and David C. Kopaska-Merkel, published in mid-2016 by the University of Alabama Press. The book is available through both amazon.com and the UA Press.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE:

• If you are interested in contributing a paper to the proposed volume, please send the editors a letter of intent indicating the topic you would like to focus on. This letter should be submitted by NOVEMBER 1, 2017.

• If accepted by the editors as a possible paper for the volume, the formal deadline for submitting the completed manuscript is DECEMBER 31, 2018. All papers should be submitted in Microsoft Word with illustrations in separate jpeg or tiff format. Line graphs should have a resolution of at least 300 dpi. Halftones should be well-focused and sharp.

061517d — cancer post 2

So yesterday we met with my doctor to discuss the results of the bone scan and the CAT scan. In such situations, I always picture myself weeping and moaning, or screaming, tearing my hair and pounding on things. But that's just not me. Nothing is to be gained as far as I can see from what would be, for me, overacting.

So, he explained that the biopsies from one side of my prostate came in at Gleason scale 9, and those from the other side at 7. "Okay," I said. The two main choices are radiation and surgery, which he said were equally likely to be successful. Surgery sounded like the better option, because it is much quicker and most of the potential side effects are already symptoms of my quadriplegia. Then he said that we might need to do both (about a 30% chance, if I recall correctly), and surgery is much more difficult after radiation. I doubt that the reverse would be true. He almost tried to talk me into speaking to a radiation oncologist by way of a second opinion, and I decided to do that. I don't know what such a person would say, but it might be worth hearing. Also, it is unlikely to delay the surgery, which I can't do for a few weeks anyway. I guess it takes a while to heal from the biopsy and my tender flesh ought to be all good before cutting again!

In the meantime, it is kind of unreal. I don't feel any different than usual. Today I spent the day traveling to one of the many campuses of Coastal Alabama Community College. The one I visited is more than two hours from the coast. It seems that most of the South Alabama community colleges have banded together for mutual support. I helped out with a summer program in which elementary school children from a nearby town's summer program travel to various places that are within a round-trip day's drive.

I brought a bunch of small fossils and they got a big pile of sand from somewhere. Then it turned out there were only seven children: it was a lot of sand for such a small group. But actually, it worked out very well. They only got in each other's way on purpose, not by accident, and everybody was able to find quite a few fossils, which they got to keep. Most of the fossils came from Morocco and all of them had been purchased for the purpose of doing things like this with them. The first time we bought fossils for a fossil dig we found some one- and two-pound bags of inexpensive small fossils. When those were used up and I looked for replacements, I think I had to buy five or 10 kg at a time to get a good price. That was at least 15 years ago and we still have quite a few of them! Anyway, at first the kids were hesitant, but they soon got into raking through the sand and loudly proclaiming each discovery. Some sand was thrown, but not into anybody's eye. Then we went inside, asked and answered questions for a while, gave out postcards with mosasaurs and sea turtles and things like that and ate a snack. A week from tomorrow I do something similar, but without the sand, and it's here in town. In the meantime, I have to send fossils to two different educators. This summer is already the most rife with fossil-related activity in a long time. And this increase in activity is more than timely, because our long-time benefactor of all things fossilized has been sending us boxes of fossils again. A few of these go into our museum collection, but most are to give away and we have many of them to give away. We like to give them to educators and we don't have an efficient method of meeting a whole lot of educators who want fossils. Needless to say, we want to hand deliver these, not mail them.

A poem by me was featured at haikuniverse today. I still haven't quite figured out the aesthetic sought by that site. It is not helped by the fact that most of the poems they publish leave me cold. Most of the ones I write appeal a lot more to the editor of Scifaikuest. I like her selections better too, which is convenient.

A looming task is to proof my latest book of poetry, which was sent to me by the publisher yesterday. A pleasant but tiring task. And one of those about which you realize that if you don't do it very well, you will not be happy later, and you will have no one to blame but yourself

040417b

A Paleontologist Stares out the Window


Describing a mass of tiny tubes
left behind by critters 300 million years ago
they grew in a barrier inlet
that had no name
with sea lilies and more fantastic things
but who were they
and why do we find them
nowhere else?

Middle Schoolers

They are tough crowd. You can't just bring pretty fossils, like you could with kindergartners, or a PowerPoint presentation like you can with adults. I have a football sized piece of a fossil reef 300 million years old, but it's not as cool as, say, a sabertooth tiger skull. I have a couple of weeks to remember what I did last year!

Updates and down dates

Dreams and Nightmares 105. Every subscriber and contributor copy has been mailed. If you are supposed to get one, and you don't get it this week, please let me know.

This is the last day you can nominate speculative poems for the Rhysling award.

In about a month, I will talk about mysterious ancient creatures to science teachers at the Alabama Science Teachers Association meeting. Some creatures leave bones or teeth, others leave only footprints or burrows. In the latter case, how do we learn about them? It turns out we can learn as much or more from tracks than from bones.

"Footprints in Stone" — 30% discount with coupon code

"Footprints in Stone," the book I wrote with Ron Buta about trace fossils in Alabama, is on sale from the publisher. Either print out the coupon below and mail it in, or call your order in and give them the discount code.

Trace fossils are any marks made by ancient animals that are not actually parts of their bodies. Footprints, burrows, borings, tail drag marks, and so on. It just so happens that a coal mine in Alabama turned into the most important trace-fossil site of its age in the world. This book is about the discovery and preservation of the site and about all the marvelous fossils that have been found there.

We wrote the book for the general public. It would be a great gift for any kid who likes fossils.

If you live in or near Alabama, it is not difficult to get permission to visit the Steven C Minkin Paleozoic Footprint site. The book should be interesting and useful to anybody interested in trace fossils, even if they don't live anywhere near Alabama.

021117

off to evolutionize
speaking about long-dead critters
and their lives

Teachers: Dig for dinosaurs at Hell Creek

http://digfieldschool.org/

Montana, dinosaurs, and a four-day field school for K-12 science teachers. You don't have to be from Montana, but that's where you would be going, to Hell Creek, one of the most famous dinosaur localities in the world. Applications accepted through March.

012517

Why do we care about these reefs
dead 350 million years
scarcely impressive when alive
now just blobs in rock
dissolving in the acid rain
will the Great Barrier Reef die twice too?
We are killing it softly
in 350 million years
will anyone mourn its etching
corpse?
Scholarly publications will be more concerned
with that peculiar, short-lived race
that poisoned the planet so thoroughly
it took millennia of millennia
to recover

There are times in earth history
almost devoid of reefs
their bland and ugly cousins
small and unassuming
their time comes once again
with the corals dying
algae and bacteria
bastions of reefs 350 million years ago
750 million years ago
and for a billion years before that
once again will rule the seas
parrotfish will call them Lord
we won't call them anything
you can't do that when you're dead

101416c

Gathering up the goodies for the teacher fossil workshop Tuesday: labeled fossils, books, Ziploc bags, posters and postcards, sharpies, you know the drill. The only important thing I don't have yet is the guidebooks, but I am supposed to get those Monday hot off the presses. I have never cut it this close before, but circumstances beyond my control…. My usual approach is to print them weeks ahead of time, just in case.

National fossil day

It is today!

I won't say hug a fossil, although you are welcome to do so, if you are so inclined. But this is a great day to collect them, talk about them, visit a museum that contains some of them, draw pictures of them, make stained glass windows depicting them, and anything else that unearths your little fossil heart.

Seriously though, if you are in Tuscaloosa this evening, go to the Alabama Museum of Natural History between 4 and 6 PM. Especially if you have kids in tow. You won't regret it

101116b

Spoke about Pennsylvanian trace fossils to another group of retirees today. They really enjoyed it and had a lot of questions. Tomorrow night is national fossil day, and we will be there with a bunch of trace fossils to show kids and I hope many will be there. Today I'm also reviewing part of a master's thesis on cave geochemistry.

National Fossil Day

National Fossil Day will be celebrated on Wednesday, October 12. At the Alabama Museum of Natural History, in Tuscaloosa, this will take place from 4 to 6 PM. Various groups on campus and from around town will have tables and games ,mainly aimed at children. Anyone can attend for free. I will be there with some trace fossils from coal mines. These include footprints of reptiles and other sorts of creatures. Ron Buta and I will be signing copies of our book, "Footprints in Stone."