The Alberta Palaeontological Society’s meeting will take place on Friday, January 17, 2025 at 7:30 p.m MST at Mount Royal University, room B108. The meeting will be held in person and online through Zoom.
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.
You are invited to join the VIPS link for the presentation,The Mary Anning Story “Struck by Lightning”, the amazing true life story about Mary Anning, fossil huntress and first woman of science.
This story occurs about 200 years ago at the time of the birth of paleontology, 1799-1847.
The scene is along the rugged south west coast of England in the little town of Lyme Regis in the 1800s. This area is possibly the most popular area in England to collect fossils. Today this 95 mile long stretch of coastline, which is now referred to as the “Jurassic Coast”, has over one million visitors each year.
The cliffs erode at a very rapid rate and every year expose literally tens of thousands of fossils. This is a fossil hunter’s dream.
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.
Please look for the virtual meeting connection details in the email to all VicPS members.
The Alberta Palaeontological Society has invited us to their next meeting.
We have two keynote presenters this month, the first is S. Amber Whitebone, MSc, PhD Candidate, University of New England. The title of her presentation is “Bone Cells to Big Dinos: Using Liquid Crystal Polarimetry as a New Tool to Learn about Fossil Vertebrates”. I have attached her abstract and biography. [below]
The January 2024 VicPS meeting will be virtual only. Zoom participation details have been sent to VicPS members in an email.
The in-person meeting at UpTown Shopping Centre has been cancelled due to a threat of snow.
The topic for the evening is Baja B.C. Revisited, a one-hour segment of video from a 26-part series on the latest research into the origin of the Nanaimo Group/Nanaimo Basin. The series was recorded and aired in 2022/23 by University of Washington professor Nick Zentner. The 26-part series covers 4 different hypotheses for the origin of the Nanaimo Basin, interviewing a variety of experts conducting the research. This series became of interest afte Dr. Shahin Dashtgard’s 2022 presentation to VicPS regarding the challenges of interpreting the Nanaimo Group.
Other upcoming events may be discussed, as time and interest allow:
January 21st field trip
February 7th AGM, at which we need a new volunteer to take over the Treasurer role from our long-serving member Scott MacPhail (and thank you Scott!)
Welcome to 2024 and another year of exploring Vancouver Island.
VicPS members have been graciously forwarded the Zoom meeting details to attend the AB Paleo Society presentation by Kathleen Rust, titled, “Reading the Fossil Record: how fossils from China reveal the origin and evolutionary history of the last primate in North American before the arrival of humans.”
The presentation abstract and a short bio for Kathleen rust are presented here. Look to your email from vicpaleo@gmail.com for details as to how to attend.
