Categories
VMNH online geosciences collections database
VMNH Cast Catalog
Teaching Kits
Virtual Field Trip-Badlands National Park
Virtual Field Trip-Oakes Quarry Park
Fossil Insect Collaborative
- Current activities from the Virginia Museum of Natural History Paleontology Department, and information about fossils and geology, updated by Christina Byrd.
Twitter: Christina Byrd
- #FossilFriday: before and after - Megacephalosaurus reborn! #CollectionsLife #plesiosaur #pliosaur #Cretaceous… twitter.com/i/web/status/9… 23 minutes ago
- RT @tetrameryx: Happy #FossilFriday! Juvenile Columbian #mammoth dentary from #Pleistocene of Florida. Teeth as they grow & become encapsul… 4 hours ago
- #TuskTuesday: polished cross-section of opalized #Mastodon tusk from the Miocene of #Kansas. #Paleontology… twitter.com/i/web/status/9… 3 days ago
- #PokemonGo has people moving en masse, tied together by VR tech! How can the same method be used in classroom?… twitter.com/i/web/status/9… 1 week ago
RSS Feeds
Blogroll
- A Central Coast Paleontologist
- Beatrice the Biologist
- Caribbean Paleontology
- Chinleana
- Dinochick Blogs
- Evokat: Evolution, Plants, and People
- Ex Libris
- Fossils and Other Living Things
- Highly Allochthonous
- Laelaps
- Life Traces of the Georgia Coast
- Mountain Beltway
- Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week
- Stages of Succession
- Tetrapod Zoology
- The Aquatic Amniote
- The Coastal Paleontologist
- The Open Source Paleontologist
- The Theatrical Tanystropheus
- Valley of the Mastodon
- When Pigs Fly Returns
- why I hate theropods
Support research at Carmel Church
Archives
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- December 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- January 2016
- November 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
Monthly Archives: August 2011
Foundations for filter feeders
Life is hard is you’re a sessile animal. Admittedly, there’s a certain couch-potato attraction to sitting around all day, waiting for food to blunder into your mouth. But there are lots of challenges that come with being anchored to a … Continue reading
Posted in Invertebrate Paleontology
Leave a comment
A few minor points on the Virginia earthquake
I had not initially intended to do a post on yesterday’s earthquake in Virginia, mostly because there are a lot of structural geologists and seismologists that can do a much better job of describing this event than I can. For … Continue reading
Posted in Carmel Church Geology, Carmel Church Quarry, General Geology
Tagged Earthquake
Leave a comment
A few hours of cleaning…
One of the obstacles we face at Carmel Church is weathering. In Virginia’s wet and variable climate weathering rates are very high. Moreover, at Carmel Church the sediment chemistry is such that the sediment becomes very acidic when exposed to … Continue reading
Posted in Carmel Church odontocetes, Carmel Church Quarry, Chesapeake Group
Tagged Cetaceans
4 Comments
From the Collections Room (Planocephalosaurus robinsonae)
It has been almost two years since I last talked about VMNH’s collection of Triassic fossils from the fissure-fill deposits of Britain. These sediments were deposited in caves and sinkholes that had been dissolved out of Carboniferous limestones. Apparently Triassic … Continue reading
George Washington, canals, and geology
I grew up in Virginia, in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains. At 18, when I went off to Minnesota to start college, I had no intention of returning to Virginia except to occasionally visit relatives. Little did I … Continue reading
Posted in General Geology, Science and Technology
Tagged canals, George Washington, Iron mining
2 Comments
Mysticete squamosal revisited
During our most recent Carmel Church excavation, we collected a squamosal (cheek and ear region) from a small baleen whale (above). Since returning to the museum I’ve had a chance to clean this specimen and compare it to other bones … Continue reading
New donations
After returning from Carmel Church I decided to take a few days off, which is the reason for my lack of recent posts. The pace should pick up a bit next week. But this does give me a chance to … Continue reading
