The Alberta Palaeontological Society’s upcoming monthly meeting will take place on Friday, April 11, 2025 at 6:30 p.m PST at Mount Royal University, room B108. The meeting will be held in person and online through Zoom (info included below). There is both a short and a long presentation organized for April; please see abstracts and bios below.
Short Presentation by Dr. Leslie Eliuk
Title: Visit to Mammoth Site at Hot Springs, South Dakota
A sneak peak and prelude to the presentation by expert Dr. Chris Jass, rescheduled for November 2025.
With no speaker scheduled for the April 9th meeting, our President will report out on recent activities – we did just host a Fossil Fair! – and catch us all up, as well as introduce new members to our Society.
The meeting link will be sent via separate email to paid members.
We are in the final stages of determining which workshop will take place on April 12th, and details of the April 20th fieldtrip will be circulated a week in advance. Look to your email for further details.
If you’re planning to hike the Burgess Shale this year, don’t miss this joint VIC/VAN PS presentation. Hear about the extraordinary life represented in BC’s Burgess Shale from David Moore, a professional geologist, seasoned communicator and Burgess Shale hiking guide. Join David for deep knowledge, breathtaking photos and practical advice for how to prepare for this physically challenging and intellectually inspiring adventure.
The Burgess Shale Foundation is a not-for-profit society with an education mandate similar to our own and it’s exciting to welcome David to present to our BC paleontology societies.
This event is ZOOM only, and open to anyone, so invite your friends. Note the early start (6:00 PM Pacific Time). A big shout out to David Moore for being generous with his time, John Fam for the great social media exposure for this presentation, and to Dan Bowden for his stellar poster skills!
Meeting Item
Details
When
Wednesday, Feb 19th, 2025 06:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Courtesy of the North America Research Group, you may attend and enjoy listening to Liz Nesbitt, author of “Spirit Whales and Sloth Tales: Fossils of Washington State.” Dr. Nesbitt recently retired from her Curator position at the Burke Museum in Seattle. She will talk about her book and experiences in paleontology.
VicPS members will have received the Zoom meeting link details via email. If you have not received this info, please contact vicpalaeo@gmail.com ASAP.
Understanding ontogeny in Deep Time: 29-million-year-old grasshopper ootheca (egg pod).
VicPS members should check the email they’ve received about this event for virtual meeting connection details, or join us IN PERSON at the Uptown Community Room.
About the presentation:
Reproductive ecology and ontogeny play a critical role in insect dispersal which shapes their biogeographic patterns. Ontogenetic strategies, such as holometaboly, are some of the most important traits contributing to the evolutionary success of insects. However, understanding the non-adult life history traits in Deep Time is challenging due to their ephemeral and soft-bodied nature.
I described a grasshopper egg pod using microtomography from the Oligocene John Day Formation, Oregon, together with Nick Famoso (NPS Paleontologist at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument) and Angela Lin (X-ray imaging core Director at University of Oregon). The specimen, preserving ~50 slightly-curved elliptic eggs and also the ovipositional strategy of laying an underground ootheca, represents the oldest fossilized grasshopper ootheca and also the first known orthopteran eggs in the fossil record. Due to the rarity of fossil insect eggs, systematic praxis have yet been established to systematically study them. However, the number of described fossil insect eggs has rapidly increased in the past decade, and is likely to continue increasing. So we proposed to apply an ootaxonomic system when studying fossilized insect eggs, to establish a standardized systematic practice, which is already practiced in fossil amniote eggs; and an ichnotaxonomic system that describes the ootheca-laying behavior, which has convergently evolved several times among insects.
If you’re heading to Hornby Island this weekend, be sure to visit the Hornby Island Fossil Fair, presented by our friends of the Vancouver Island Paleontological Society.
Now fossil fair 2024 is in the rearview mirror, here are some words from our president about the event:
The VicPS annual Fossil Fair at Swan Lake was March 23rd-24th. About 250 people attended, down almost half from some previous years, but enthusiasm and interaction were up, and more than 100 kids participated in the annual scavenger hunt to find specimens in the collection. The National Geographic Fossil Dig/ID kits were a big hit among this year’s winners, as was the ‘Happy Little Dinosaur’ board game. … New this year was a poster about the Nigel House vertebrate fossils found near Swan Lake. A shout-out to Edward Davies for sharing dozens of high-resolution slides and photos from which we were able to put together a poster. Fossil ID is always a favourite among volunteers and this year IDs offered a few very exciting moments. We had the highest number of fossils brought to Fossil Fair for identification in recent memory. A few notable specimens:
Mt. Tzouhalem, Duncan – Hexanchid shark teeth, several Glyptoxoceras specimens with helix intact, and what appears to be a cross-section of a coral (button, hexacoral—still seeking verification). …
Gulf Islands – A brachiopod from Russell Island. We don’t get many specimens brought in from the Islands (other than Hornby and Saltspring), so this was interesting.
Bone material, Northern BC – What appears to be marine reptile. As is often the case, the exact location of the discovery is unclear, as this was found some time ago by a family member of the person who brought it in for identification. The family is trying to establish providence.
We brought the RBCM and GSC into the conversation to assist with identification. Those conversations are ongoing.
This year, the RBCM and Fossil Management Office were unable to participate in Fossil Fair due to other commitments, and a few other usual volunteers were unable to attend. VicPS member Kalene (who works at DinoLab) offered up a few volunteers, plus an Elasmosaurus paddle (full scale) model (thanks, Kalene!). DinoLab’s Kirsten had the kids doing Elasmosaurus ‘high-fives’ and it was a great opportunity to showcase the new provincial fossil and hand out lapel buttons provided by the Fossil Mangement Office (thank you, Elisabeth and Genivieve for the buttons!). Serendipitously, the DinoLab preparator who volunteered on Sunday (Jake) was the only Fossil Fair volunteer experienced in working with bone, and in particular marine reptile specimens, and recognized the specimen brought in for identification as likely marine reptile. His hunch was later supported by vertebrate experts in our network. As is our usual way of working, VicPS members came together in the week before the event to ensure lots of volunteers were on hand when the event weekend arrived. Thanks to John, Carol, Caleb, Justin and Thor for participating. …
The Alberta Paleontological Society’s Paleo Symposium takes place Saturday, March 16 from 9:00 am to 4:30 pm MDT ( 8:00 am to 3:30 pm PDT) at Mount Royal University.
Please view the Paleo 2024 Flyer that briefly describes the symposium, and forward this flyer to people who might be interested in attending. The event is open to the general public.
Please make note of the Paleo 2024 Speaker schedule, below, and note that times are all Mountain Daylight Time (MDT).
Lectures will be presented nearby in the Jenkins Theatre, located in F Wing and accessible from Main Street through a hallway next to Cougars Campus Store.
Our website now has a page that shows the Google calendar for the vicpalaeo@gmail.com account that our president generally uses to communicate by email with members. All those events that we’re being notifed about can be found listed there. Note that field trips will continue to lack info about where we’re going; look to your email for those details as the field trip date approaches.
From the top level menu, Events->Calendar of Events should get you to https://vicpalaeo.org/events/.
