HUNTING FOR FOSSILS IN LOUISIANA

1
HUNTING FOR FOSSILS IN LOUISIANA
2
The Mission of theLSU Museum of Natural Science

• Acquisition,
• Preservation, and
• Study
• of research collections to generate
  knowledge of
• Regional and global biodiversity,
• Geological history, and
• Human history and prehistory
• for the benefit of the people of the
  state, the nation, and the world.

3
Divisions of the LSU MNS

• 7 main fields of RESEARCH
• Ornithology (Birds)
• Genetics
• Ichthyology (Fishes)
• Mammalogy
• Herpetology (Reptiles and Amphibians)
• Paleontology
• Anthropology (Archaeology and Ethnography)
• EDUCATION

4

• THE PALEONTOLOGY
• COLLECTIONS

5
Invertebrate Paleontology Palynology Dr. Sophie
Warny
What is palynology?

• Palynomorphs
• both plant and animal structures
• microscopic in size (from about 5 µm to about
  500 µm)
• made of compounds that are highly resistant to
  decay
• abundant in most sediments and sedimentary rocks
• can be extracted by chemical processing (acids
  digestion sieving)

Spores Pollen grains
Dinoflagellate cysts Acritarchs
Leiospheres
6
What is it used for?

• Biostratigraphy and geochronology
• correlate strata
• determine the relative age of a bed or formation

Palaeoecology and climate change - used to
reconstruct past vegetation (land), hence
palaeoclimatic conditions - used to infer past
environmental conditions (marine)
Criminology (forensic palynology)
Archaeology (past agriculture)
Commercial (melisopalynology, culture
prediction)
Medical field (allergies)
7
Vertebrate Paleontology Dr. Judith Schiebout

• Collections
• Over 17,000 specimens from over 1000 localities
  with emphasis on Louisiana. 
• Research statement Dr. Schiebout's focus is on
• Paleoecology
• Biostratigraphy and paleogeography of southern
  North America and China in the Tertiary
• Early and middle Tertiary mammals
• The Cretaceous-Tertiary and Paleocene-Eocene
  transition
• Louisiana fossil vertebrates, particularly in
  the Miocene

8
Large collection of middle Tertiary mammals from
the Fort Polk region Dr. Schiebout excavates the
lower jaw of 13.5 million year old herbivore at
Fort Polk.
9
Large collection of Tertiary fossils including
this whale Vertebrae and ribs of the Eocene
whale Basilosaurus at Montgomery Landing,
Louisiana. The Museum holds the front 1/3 of the
skeleton including one of the most complete
skulls known for this whale.
10
18 meters (60 feet) in length
11
Large collection of Tertiary mammals from Tunica
Hills, such as early elephant, rhino, hedgehog
and camel relatives. Also Dr. Ting holding an
early Pliocene (Ice age) mastodon tusk and palate
from the Tunica Hills.
12
Allosaurus in Howe-Russell building
The biggest, most abundant meat-eater during the
late Jurassic period in America, about 150
million years ago. It probably preyed upon
large, plant-eating dinosaurs, like iguanodons.
The allosaur¹s serrated teeth, while smaller
than those of the T. rex, were as capable of
tearing free large quantities of meat.

• -walked on two powerful legs
• massive tail
• short arms with 3-fingered hands
• sharp claws up to 6 inches long
• 38 feet long and 16.5 feet tall
• weighed about 1400 kg
• 3-ft long skull
• sharp, serrated teeth 2 to 4 long

13
2. ACTIVITY HUNTING FOR FOSSILS IN LA
Goals - help you identify some of the
fossils - describe the history of their journey
14
1 Gravel can be found in many places in Louisiana
2 It occurs naturally in stream and river banks
3 Gravel is just a loose mixture of rock fragments
4 We rarely wonder where it came from
5 We dont often sit down and look for unusual
shapes or colors
6 But LA gravel is made up of rocks formed
millions of years ago
7 On the sea bottom
8 If we look closely, we can often find distinct
impressions of ancient marine life
15
- The earth was formed approximately 4,600
million years ago. - Geologists have divided
the earths history into intervals - The
period during which the fossils found in
Louisiana gravels lived was between 408 and 330
million years ago. - The fossils in the
Louisiana gravels lived during part of the
Paleozoic Era, in the Silurian, Devonian, and
Mississippian Periods.
16

- Study rocks -gt in what environment sediments
were deposited. -gt Recognize past rivers,
beaches, deltas, inshore/offshore trends. -
Studies of Paleozoic rocks show that the North
America of those times was far from that of
today (it was covered by a shallow sea).
17
This is a scene of how the sea bottom may have
looked at this time.
In this sea, life proliferated with coral reefs,
fields of sea lilies, shellfish, moss-like
bryozoans, insect-like trilobites and other
animals and plants.
18
How did these fossils, buried hundreds of
millions of years ago in the North, arrived as
gravels in Louisiana today?
- Buried rocks uplifed - Weathered and broken up
(erosion) by wind, water, and ice. -
Transported by glaciers between 1.8 and 10,000
years ago (Pleistocene) as the earth underwent a
series of glaciation. - At these times, ice
covered much of North America, large volumes of
rock were eroded. - Some of the Paleozoic rock
was broken up by ice. - Then transported south
to Louisiana by rivers when the ice melted.
19
Paleozoic life - The marine invertebrates!
Arthropodes Insects, trilobites Brachiopoda Shel
ls Bryozoa Moss-like animals Cnidaria Corals
(tab. rug.) Echinodermata Starfish, sand
dollars Mollusca Snails, clams
- The shape, structure, and markings of a fossil
characteristics - Used to classify them
according to the system shown above. - Because
Louisiana gravels contain relatively few
different types of fossils, lets look at what
each fossil type looks like.
20
Crinoid remains preserved in gravel are mostly
hollow molds or filled molds (casts). Look for
circular shapes with a central hole and fine
radiating grooves. Look also for rectangular and
columnar shapes, sometimes stacked.
21
Rugose - solitary or colonial - extinct group of
corals - abundant in Ordovician/Permian - some
were a meter in length
Tabulate - common in gravels - differences with
rugose a) all colonial b) radiating septa
reduced or absent c) main structure horizontal
plate (tabulae) that looks like honeycomb
appearance.
22
Bryozoans are - moss-like animals - grow in
fan-shaped, branching, or encrusting colonies.
- look somewhat like corals - but, more
delicately built, - with a fan-shaped
structure. In gravels look for delicate fan
shapes.
23

• Mollusca Bivalva
• - clams, oysters, mussels
• - shells 2 pieces (valves)
• - joined by an elastic ligament
• shells
• mirror images of each other
• ! bilateral symmetry
• Difference with brachiopods
• Each valve is bilaterally
• symetrical.

24
Mollusca Gastropoda - soft body - a large foot
enclosed in - a single, non-chambered,
coiled shell. The shells may be shaped as a -
dome or - cone The gravels usually contain
casts of the inside coils of the gastropods.
Look for these coiled cross-sections.
25
Brachiopoda - shells - attached to the sea
bottom by a fleshy stalk or pedicle. - a
hole through which this stalk passed - it
can often be seen on the larger of the two
valves - brachiopods always have
different sized valves, each valve is
bilaterally symmetrical. bivalves do
not have a pedicle hole.
26
Trilobites - extinct marine arthropods
(insect-like animals) - lived on the seafloor.
- they have a three-part body plan that
consists of a cephalon (head), a thorax,
and a pygidium (tail) with a chitinous
exoskeloton. The thorax is fairly flexible and
when preserved, the trilobites are often found
curled up like modern rolly-pollies. They are
rarely found preserved in gravels.
27
3. FIELD TRIP PRACTICAL DETAILS
28
General Info Tours
Monday-Friday 800 am - 400 pm
FREE!
Scheduling Materials Rules Parking
29
4. MNS ACTIVITY BOOKLET
30
Activities for Self-guided tours

• The MNS book is available
• in French thanks to
• Anne-Sophie Stanislas Dubois
• in Spanish thanks to
• Ana Morales

31
Learn about paleontology!
32
Learn about mastodons!
33
5. HANDS ON ACTIVITIES
Learn about the different types of fossils