Vol 17, Number 3, September 2001
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• News from the CMM Paleontology Department • Fall Field Trips • • Calvert Units 13-14-15 described ....._ . Minutes of the .June meeting -~~::;~~~[~~'r~r:'i',:;;f~~;~~$.; -~:;;; A\Q~~;;-~---'~;~'-:"~ The Newsletter of Calvert Marine Museum Fossil Club The Volume 17 • Number .3 September 2001 Whol£' Number 56 What are you going to do to get more involved with either the CMM or the Fossil Club? however scheduling conflicts made it baleen whale partial skeleton from impossible for him to be with us on Parkers Creek originally written for that day. He will be our guest in the the Warrior's Rest Sanctuary near future.) newsletter. We have had a happening kind of A MioceneBaleenWhalePartialSkeleton From ParkersCreek summer ... so much good news to BetweenMay 22nd andJune 7th, report. ateam ofpaleontology enthusiastsfrom the Calvert Marine Museum excavated Saturday, July 21Sf was an the remains of a fossil baleen whale amazing day. This year's Shark Day from the second cliffsouth of Parkers broke all records for paid attendance. Creek. ,FRQMf.~;;Q~RA"i:~~••··•······My sincerest thanks go out to the Earlv in Mav. fossilfinderPaul many club members including Mike Murdoch sp~ttedth~leftlower jawof a Please highlight Saturday, Ellwood, Steve Grossman, Kathy baleen whale protruding from the base September 22nd on your calendars. and Tom Haberny, Hammon Hobbs, of the cliff, and notified Dr. Stephen Beginning at 12:30pm, we will have Sandy Roberts, Cheryl Snelson, Flo Godfrey, Curator ofPaleontologyat the our next fossil club meeting and Calvert Marine Museum. Althoughthe show-and-tell. In addition to the Strean, summer paleo research intern Christy Visaggi, and our collections jaw was missingsome of its outer bony aforementioned, our guest, Dr. surface, it was worthy of additional manager Pat Fink who gave their attention. No more than four hours Lauck Ward from the Virginia time to make this event so successful! Museum of Natural History, will would have been required to remove If I've forgotten anyone just give me this bone from the base of the cliff. speak on how he became interested a cuff to the head at the next However, aswork beganto unearth the in paleontology. Then at 2:30pm, meeting. A great variety of fossil jaw, skull and neck vertebrae were also Dr. Ward will deliver a free public shark teeth and related elements were found. Needlessto say,the scopeofthe lecture on The Geology and on display including the results of project quickly mushroomed. Paleontology of Calvert Cliffs. Christy's shark-tooth census and my Additional volunteers were calledto Have you ever wondered why the look at shark help, and on fair-weather days overthe cliffsand fossilsthey preserve, are the dermal (skin) denticles. course ofthe followingtwo weeks,Scott way they are? Then this lecture is for Werts,BillCounterman, PaulMurdoch, you. What were things like in Hammon Hobbs, Mike Foley, John This summer, the Department of southern Maryland during the Redick, Pam Platt, and Christy Visaggi Paleontology has had the good Miocene Epoch? He will explore the quarried at the base of a somewhat fortune of being able to quarry a ' diversity of depositional threatening cliffsouth ofParkersCreek. environments that existed in this area number of important whale and Our sincerest thanks go to dolphin fossils from the cliffs. The Lee Hamilton and the Board of ~\tthattime. (Note: Dr. Mark Uhen following is a short description of our Warrior's Rest Sanctuary for was originally slatted to be our guest, efforts to remove a well preserved permission to quarry this wonderful warm subtropical waters covered club's contribution should be any specimen. southern Maryland. Rivers flowing less. Unlike Shark Day, your fossils • Although fossil bones are, for from the Appalachians into this shallow need not be limited to shark teeth. the most part, very hard due to their arm of the Atlantic Ocean carried Fossils of all kinds are welcome sediments that buried and preserved impregnation with rock-forming (including those that are actually minerals, they are also very brittle and some of the remains of both plants and animals which are the fossils that are permineralized). If you would like to fracture easily. In order to transport have a hand in the fossil festivities most fossil skeletons from their site of found in the cliffs today. burial to a museum, they must be please don't hesitate to give either wrapped, cast-like, to minimize In other news ... myself (410. 326-2042 ext. 28) or additional breakage. This cast-like Scott Werts (paleo assistant, 410. The Clarissa and Lincoln protective coat is referred to as a field 326-2042 ext. 61) a call. You do not jacket. It consists of numerous layers of Dryden Endowment for need to commit to being there both burlap soaked in plaster-of-Paris. The Paleontology here at the Calvert days, or even all of one day. We will Parkers Creek fossil whale bones were Marine Museum funded two summer be grateful for whatever time you can removed in two large field jackets, each internships. The first was awarded to donate to the cause. Scott will be weighing over 300 pounds. Because Jolene Schafer, a recent graduate coordinating the time constraints and weather conditions from the fine arts department at St. did not allow for the bones to be paleontology / CMMFC contributions Mary's College. This internship has for the two day event. extracted individually, the field jacket allowed her to continue to hone her included a large volume of the sandy silt that entombed the bones. It was this skills as a scientific illustrator. She Stephen Godfrey water soaked sediment that accounted continues to work on scientific illustrations of fossils as well as for most of the bulk of the jacket. The following poem was The two bone-filled field completing life drawings of sharks. composed by fossil preparation jackets are now in the Museum's storage The second internship was lab volunteer Paul Darby. Many facility, where they will remain until they awarded to Christy Visaggi, a geology ~Jha1J.J.~s_p-auJL."_._._ .~~ - are completely dry. Then they will be maj'o;'at 'Cofgate Driiversiiy:-the' moved to the museum where intent of her internship was to study volunteers, using little more than dental the distribution of shark teeth Isognomon maxillata is quite picks, will carefully remove the collected as float from beaches versus a lot to say sediments from around the bones. teeth collected from within Miocene• but I found a fossil of one Eventually, they may be put on display at the Calvert Marine Museum. age sediments exposed along the in my backyard one spring western shore of the Chesapeake day. The remains that were excavated are Bay. During the course of her work It really wasn't lonely for beside it I saw two. from a mysticete whale, (from Mysticeti, here, she handled more than 24,000 I think these maxilatta'd derived from the Greek mystax, meaning Miocene-age shark teeth! I am "moustache," and ketos, meaning hopeful that her study will eventually make a lovely oyster stew. "whale"). Mysticete whales are also be published in a scientific journal. referred to as baleen or whalebone Although analysis continues, a Paul Darby whales. Moustache whales don't really preliminary report is given below. have moustaches. The term refers to This year, PRAD (Patuxent the hundreds of baleen plates that hang River Appreciation Days) will be held .JJpcoming -I!:vents down from the margin of the upper jaw. They trap tiny creatures as the whale on Saturday and Sunday, October 6th filters the ocean water for food. These and rho Unfortunately, I will not be September 21,2001 Calvert Marine present as I will be attending the plates are made of keratin (similarto hair Museum Fossil Club Meeting - followed annual meeting of the Society of , or fingernail material). Because the by lecture. At CMM -Solomons, plates are not made of bone, they are Vertebrate Paleontology in Bozeman, Maryland not known to fossilize. Montana at that time. I spite of my When this whale was alive absence, there is no reason why our October 6-7, 2001 PRAD. At CMM• approximately 15 million years ago, Solomons, Maryland ----------------------------------------------- ~:~':;~'-1;:~~-;'~W~;~:~,.~, ':,?,~-{4'.:~~:;4.:·G>,~~_:~". ,-;·r "-~~:';~.~;'-:~'-~':;;:.:,:~'t- Th~<EvQluti~~~:I!,fthe SallsbUty· EI11;lay~ent (The Geology an~Pa~eontdi;%fi,of~~fvertCliffs) t:-~: ,- : "'7.' ' , - ~ :;,.,':';:.~- ; ~' J:~'-:.~;; A Census of Miocene Shark Teeth From Calvert COlUlty Beaches, Maryland A Preliminary Report Christy C. Visaggi and Stephen J. Godfrey A total of 24410 shark teeth collected as float from the Chesapeake Bay beaches of Calvert County, formed the basis for this study. Although our goals in sorting the float collection were many, the two questions for which we have answers are: Which species of sharks are present in this large sample and in what proportions? r:w e also studied the distribution of teeth collected in situ, but we will not consider those findings at this time). A few things to keep in mind while perusing the results! The fact that many of the teeth were water worn precluded identification of most to species. Therefore, several groups were identified only to the level of genus. Although we'd like to think that no mistakes were made, an unknown number of teeth were almost certainly misidentified. Another source of bias in this sample comes as a result of the fact that this sample represents collections that were donated to the Calvert Marine Museum's Discovery Room. Prior to receiving these donations, large or unusual teeth (like those from Carcharodon megalodon and Notorynchus primigenius) were understandably removed by donors. Therefore, it would not be unreasonable to assume that this collection tends to both under represent these kinds of sharks and consequently over represent more common species.