Exploring Geology on the World-Wide
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- - - - - . - - -- - - --- - - Exploring Geology on the world-wide web - invertebrate ale ontology and Evolution Steven Henry Schimmrich Department of Geology University of Illinois Urbana, Illinois 61 801 [email protected] Keywords: Earth science - teaching and curriculum; life along with some fossil images. There are also education - computer assisted; paleontology - inver- some interesting temporary exhibits on microfossils tebrate; paleontology - paleobotany. and conodonts that are worth visiting. INTRODUCTION University of California at Berkeley This issue's column will focus on World-Wide Web Museum of Paleontology resources for learning about invertebrate paleontology, http~/ucmpl.berkeley.edu/exhibittext/phylogeny. paleobotany, and evolution. This is essentially a con- html tinuation of last month's discussion of Web resources The Museum of Paleontology at the University of for dinosaur and vertebrate paleontology information. California in Berkeley (UCMP) is arguably the best All of the URL addresses in this article are avail- virtual exhibit for paleontology on the Web. This is able as hypertext links from a Web page I created at: the Phylogeny entrance to the exhibit that will allow http~/www.geology.uiuc.edu/-schimmri/geology/ access to all of the exhibits. From any point within geology.htm1 the museum, you can take a Web lift to any specified Connecting to the resources below from this single taxon, geologic period, or glossary topic. While parts of Web page will save you a substantial amount of typing. the museum are still being built, there is an extremely large amount of information here about various organ- isms, biologcal evolution, paleoenvironments, geology, GENERAL EXHIBITS and tectonics. The images alone are worth the visit. There are several invertebrate paleontology ex- httpY'/ucmpl.berkeley.edu/exhibittext/evo1ution. hibits, of varying quality, currently available on the html Web. While some present only images, others ar- You may, if you prefer, enter the Evolution en- range their images around a unifying theme such as trance to the UCMP. This page contains information phylogeny or geologic age. about Charles Darwin, some biographies of scientists St. Louis Science Center who helped develop modern evolutionary theory, and http.Jlslsc.wustl.edu/-slsc/docs/mod3/mod3~2/ links to online versions of Voyage of the Beagle and mod3~22/ep1000m.htm The Origin of Species. This is a virtual exhibit at the St. Louis Science Royal Tyrrell Museum Center with some basic information about the geologic httpJ/www.cuug.ab.ca:800llVT/tyrrell/tyrelmp1. periods and fossils represented in Missouri. Unfortu- html nately, as seems to be the trend in museums today, The Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, Canada most of the descriptions are brief one-sentence blurbs specializes in dinosaur fossils but also has a very good without much substance. It's worth a peek but not invertebrate paleontology exhibit. You can use the much else. clickable museum map to begin your tour anywhere Wayne State University in the museum and systematically follow the arrows College of Science Museum of Natural History through the exhibits that present lots of high-quality http://gopher.science.wayne.edu/animals/fossil/ information and many wonderful images. index.html This is an archive at the Museum of Natural His- 1 tory at Wayne State University College of Science in Detroit which contains several fossil images. While the The following resources present various types of 1 descriptions of these images are somewhat sketchy at specialized information about selected fossil inverte- present, there is a promise to provide more information brates. Hopefully, in the future, more paleontologists in the near future. Th~sis a good site to visit if you're will set up Web pages about the organisms they 1 interested in collecting some fossil images. study. I Hunterian Museum Crinoids I http://www.gla.ac.uk/Museum/HuntMus/earthl httpd/l41.218.91.93/crinoid/zcrinoid.html index-html The BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium is develop- 1 The Hunterian Museum at the University of Glas- ing an interactive educational software project detad- gow in Scotland offers an overview of the history of ing the process by which paleontologists reconstruct I Journal of Geoscience Education, v. 44, 1996, p. 95 --- Exploring Geology on the world-wide Web - Invertebrate Paleontology and Evolution paleoenvironments from fossil crinoids. These Web FAQ pages briefly describe the fossil crinoid collection at http://ucmpl.berkeley.edu/FAQ/faq.html Beloit College in Wisconsin and outline the goals of The acronym FAQ stands for "frequently asked the project. This is an informative site with some questions7' and this Web page at the University of interesting images. California at Berkeley Museum of Paleontology an- swers quite a number of common questions about Diatoms paleontology and fossil collecting. httpd/www.indiana.edu/-diatom/diatom.html Present general information about diatoms from the Mazon Creek Biology Department of Indiana University. This infor- http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/mazon~ mation was contributed by biologists studying modern creek/ diatoms but there is some material here that may be of This virtual exhibit, at the Illinois State Museum interest to those interested in fossil diatoms as well. in Springfield, is devoted to the world-famous Mazon Microfossils Creek soft-bodied fauna found in the Pennsylvanian- httpd/~.cs.uwindsor.calmeta-indexfmcafia- age Francis Creek Shale just south of Chicago. This docs/woop.html site has some interesting images and information Information from Dr. Cyril Rodrigues of the Depart- about some unique fossil organisms. ment of Earth Sciences at the University of Windsor in Ontario describing Quaternary Foraminiferida Mohawk Valley and Ostracoda from the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This is http:l/zircon.geology.union.edu/Gildner/stack. a professional-looking site with many high-quality html images of microfossils. An informative virtual exhibit created by Dr. Ray- mond Gildner of the Department of Geology at Union Radiolarians College in Schenectady, New York. The exhibit dis- http://mindlink.bc.ca/Fabrice-Cordeyl cusses the paleoecology of the middle to late Ordovician A series of Web pages from Dr. Fabrice Cordey of as reflected in the stratigraphy and paleontology of the Geological Survey of Canada with large amounts strata within the Mohawk River Valley of central New of information on radiolarian biostratigraphy as it York. This site has a great deal of information, refer- relates to unraveling geological and tectonic evolution ences, and images and is well worth examining. of the Canadian Cordillera. This is a well designed informative site on a single topic. MISCELLANEOUS Trilobites The following are Web pages devoted to assorted http://www.udberta.cd-kbrett/Trilobites.html specialized topics in invertebrate paleontology and A Web page with information and images of trilo- paleobotany. bites from Kevin Brett, a PhD student studying trilo- bites at the Department of Geology at the University lchnology of Alberta in Edmonton. httpd/www.emory.edu/GEOSCIENCE/HTMU TFW3.HTML FOSSIL LOCALITIES AND COLLECTING A Web page with interesting information on ich- The following are Web sites containing informa- nology, the study of plant and animal traces, at the tion about famous fossil localities and some general Geosciences Department of Emory University in At- information about fossil collecting. lanta. This Web site also maintains a trace fossil database with unique images of some common trace Burgess Shale fossils. http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/ybsrfl.html Web page for the Yoho-Burgess Shale Research Origins Foundation. The Burgess shale is world-famous for http://rumba.ics.uci.edu:8080/ its middle Cambrian soft-bodied fauna but this site This Web page is maintained for talk.origins - an contains little information about the paleontology Internet newsgroup for the discussion of biological and would mostly be of interest to those planning a and physical origins. Particularly interesting are the visit to the Field area in British Columbia, Canada. files in the archives refuting various aspects of young-earth Biblical creationism, the links to many Collecting creation/evolution resources on the Internet, and the gopherJ/ftp.std.com/ll/associationslRocks-and images of evolutionarily interesting fossils. -Fossils/ The gopher server for the Rocks-and-Fossils In- PaleoNet ternet mailing list. There is information here on fos- http://www.nhm.ac.uWpaleonet/index.html sil collecting localities around the world along with Web page for the PaleoNet listserver with infor- much other information contributed by members of mation on mailing lists in paleontology and links to the mailing list which is relevant to the hobby of assorted resources on the Internet of interest to pale- mineral and fossil collecting. ontologists. Journal of Geoscience Education, v. 44, 1996, p. 96 paleontological Research Institution collections of the Florida Museum of Natural History ~ttp://www.englib.cornell.edu/pri/pril.html (FLMNH) in Gainesville. The bulk of the collection The Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) consists of Cenozoic mollusks of southeastern North gas founded in 1932 by Cornell geologist Dr. Gibert America and the circum-Caribbean. Harris in Ithaca, New York. This Web page is cur- rently under construction but shows great promise lnvertebrate (UCMP) for the future, judging by the proposed structure of http://ucmpl.berkeley.edu/collections/invert. their