FOSSIL Webinar Series

[Lisa Lundgren]

alas, Asa, no, we’re postponing until Wednesday, November 29th, at 7:00pm EST and changing the focus to be topical for the (american) thanksgiving holiday. We’ll be going over foods that people often eat for thanksgiving and discussing their fossil record. I’m personally excited to hear about the history of turkeys in the fossil record (paging @egardner and her avian taphonomy background!), because turkey (with gravy, obviously) is one of my favorite parts of the thanksgiving meal. so @asa-kaplan , want to share your favorite thanksgiving food??

[Asa Kaplan]

Oh, I see. Thanks, Lisa. I would like to see better support on this website for event subscription, so that updates go out to those folks who intended to attend. Otherwise, let’s leave event functionality to a platform like Eventbrite or even Facebook that can handle the relevant tasks.

Thanksgiving food………..mushroom gravy. I would like to know what we know about mushrooms from the fossil record.

 

 

[MacKenzie Smith]

That’s great @asa-kaplan! I know a thing or two about fossil fungi so we’ll add that to our list. Thanks for the input and hopefully see you the 29th?

[Eleanor Gardner]

Hi, all! @llundgren, @sadie-mills, @asa-kaplan, @mackenzie-smith, @jeanette-pirlo, @lcone, @george-powell

Apologies for the delayed response.  I hope that everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving had a terrific holiday!  I know that I enjoyed lots of delicious turkey… And speaking of, here are some random factoids about turkeys! 😉

Turkeys belong to the order Galliformes (ground dwelling / game birds), which also includes pheasants, grouse, guinea fowl, chickens, quail, etc.  True turkeys probably arose around 10 million years ago, give or take — although turkey-like birds arose around 20 mya.  Lucky for me, fossils of the modern turkey (Meleagris sp.) can be found in my new home state of Kansas!  There are a variety of subspecies of turkey, several of which are now extinct such as Meleagris californica – the California turkey.  The California turkey went extinct about 10,000 years ago and fossils of M. californica are the second most abundant at the La Brea Tar Pits (cool!!).  As you might imagine, based on the zooarchaeological record, there is quite a lot of knowledge about the various turkey subspecies that have served as food sources for humans over time.  If you find yourself interested in the taphonomy and preservation potential of bones of game birds, I recommend reading Dirrigl’s 2001 paper that examines bone mineral density in M. gallopavo and makes connections to differential survivorship of bird bones in the zooarchaeological (and potentially, fossil) record. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440300906009

And, for fun, here is an article discussing how scientists studying biomechanics are putting turkeys on treadmills to examine bipedal bone structure: https://massivesci.com/articles/turkey-treadmill-ancient-humans-walk/

I’m looking forward to the webinar on Wednesday!  It might be too late to make this request, but I’d like to learn about the fossil records of carrots and of turnips.  Why?  Carrots and turnips is a traditional Northeastern dish that my husband’s family makes (they’re from Massachusetts).

Lastly, to @asa-kaplan’s request about receiving event updates… @mjones, @epoirier is there a plug-in that could send updates via the myFOSSIL notification system when event details have changed?

Or maybe @sellis could send out a short email blast via MailChimp when webinar dates change??  I’m not sure if the social media team (@llundgren, @sadie-mills, @michael-le, @mackenzie-smith) might want to make Facebook “events” for the webinars?  We use FB to promote events for the KU Natural History Museum and it seems to generate quite a bit of traffic for us.

[George W. Powell Jr]

Hi Eleanor I am glad you all had a good Thanksgiving and that you did not get to fowl with all of great this info about turkeys HE HE !! I am also looking forward in see this upcoming webinar Wed. night. Take Care George

[Sadie Mills]

Hello FOSSIL Community!

If you weren’t able to attend all the webinars within a series, but would like to earn an attendance certificate for that series, here are the steps:

1. Watch the full recording of each webinar that you weren’t able to attend.
2. In lieu of participation during the live webinars, contribute here in the myFOSSIL webinars forum in the following manner:
   1. For each episode within the series that you missed, create a post in this forum with the following:
      1. Your favorite part or thing that you learned.
      2. A question about the webinar topic, that didn’t get answered within the episode.
      3. A suggestion about a topic or feature you would like to see in a future webinar episode.

Here is an example:

“For the Trilobites Roadshow, I loved seeing the amazing specimen from Morocco. I wonder if both male and female trilobites of that species have the trident? In the future, I would love to learn more about distinguishing male and female specimens of the same species.”

At the end of a series, email me at [email protected] to confirm your completion. Please also email if you have any questions!

[Sadie Mills]

Announcing, the next episode in the FOSSIL Roadshow webinar series:

This episode is hosted by the Special Friends of the Aurora Fossil Museum, and will feature fauna from the Pleistocene, Pliocene, and Miocene from both North and South Carolina. Have you been fossil hunting in the Carolinas? What types of fossils do you hope to learn about?

[Sadie Mills]

In case you missed it, the FOSSIL Roadshow- Fossils of the Carolinas webinar recording is now available: https://www.myfossil.org/video-tutorials/#fourthroadshow

Many thanks to the Special Friends of the Aurora Fossil Museum for sharing their time and specimens with us, especially @lcone @lmccall @don-muller and @george-powell. Additional thanks to @rboessenecker for sharing his expertise on marine mammals.

Finally, here is some further information about @george-powell’s horse tooth featured in the episode:

 

Thank you to all who attended and supported this program!

[Author]

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