paleontology

If you’ve driven the long way across Kansas on I-70, there are two things that you’ve seen and wondered about.

First and foremost, Wheat Jesus on a billboard in Colby, Kansas. I have no insights, artistic, theological or sociological, on Wheat Jesus, or “Wheatus” as some folks know him.

There’s also the big beige dome on the south side of I-70 in Hays, Kansas. That’s the Sternberg Museum of Natural History. You really should take an hour or two to visit it. Well worth your time.

A Museum You Should Visit

Fossil Butte National Monument is about 20 miles from Kemmerer, Wyoming, and well worth a visit.

A paper worth reading:

Tihelka, E.; Howard, R.J.; Cai, C.; Lozano-Fernandez, J.

Was There a Cambrian Explosion on Land? The Case of Arthropod Terrestrialization.

Biology 2022, 11, 1516.

https://doi.org/10.3390/biology11101516

Ammonites, Neal Monks and Philip Palmer, 2002, Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN 1-58834-024-4

I just read a short note, Earliest Triassic ichthyosaur fossils push back oceanic reptile origins, from Current Biology 33:159-179, March 2023, Benjamin Kear, Victoria Engelschion, Oyvind Hammer, Aubrey Roberts, Jorn Hurum.

I found a bunch of new and new-ish work on the end-Ordovician extinction

A Museum You Should Visit

Hot Springs, South Dakota has a unique museum, The Mammoth Site. If you’re anywhere near South Dakota’s Black Hills, The Mammoth Site is worth a stop.

Paleontogical reconstructions evolve over time.

An interesting popular geology and paleontology book. Long, but it has a lot of great ideas, I recommend reading it.