Once again, BPS took a trip south to Dallas county, Alabama, to search in the extensive Cretaceous chalk gullies found there. This was our last gully trip of the season, since hunting season is about to start, so we were in a frantic hurry to collect the items we had previously flagged, and find as much as we could so it could be preserved, and not get washed down a gully, and potentially los
The next regular meeting of the BPS will be Monday, December 1, 2008, 7-9 pm at the McWane Science Center in Birmingham, Alabama.
The "Fossils of the Black Belt - A Hands-On Field Workshop" was a huge success! This fossil workshop was sponsored by the Geological Survey of Alabama, The University of West Alabama, and Discovering Alabama. Approximately 35 teachers from around the South arrived bright and early in Livingston, Alabama to learn about fossils and field geology. After a morning lecture, the group
The next regular meeting of the BPS will be Monday, November 3, 2008, 7-9 pm at the McWane Science Center in Birmingham, Alabama. Our speaker will be Dr. Mark Uhen, a paleontologist at the Alabama Museum of Natural History. Dr. Uhen's specialty is the evolution of cetaceans (whales and dolphins). His lecture is titled "Where Did Whales Come From?".
In October 2008, Dr. Uhen spoke on NPR's All Things Considered, on the topic "Legs Propelled Whale Ancestor".
A weekend trip to the Cretaceous chalk gullies of Dallas County Alabama and a creek in Perry county turned up numerous fossils. Ancient creatures, including shark, turtle, mosasaur, ptychodus, fish, clam, and ammonite were fou
The next regular meeting of the BPS will be Monday, October 6, 2008,
7-9pm at the McWane Science Center in Birmingham, Alabama. James Lamb,
Curator of Paleontology for McWane Science Center will be speaking on
"Fossil Preservation and Preservation of Fossils".
Free
parking, enter the McWane parking deck from 2nd Ave. NORTH and proceed
to yellow level "C". Enter door marked "Special Events" and turn left
to the large auditorium.
Optional supper prior to the meeting
Nic Minter is a visiting paleontologist from the Univ. of Bristol in the UK. Dr. Minter specializes in coal-age fossil footprints/trackways. He is visiting the fossil trackways at McWane and the Alabama Museum of Natural History over the next few weeks and will be speaking at the Dept. of Geological Sciences' seminar on Wednesday, Sept. 24th. His talk will be held on the Univ. of Alabama campus in Smith Hall (the AL museum), room 205, at noon. The title of his talk will be: "Terrestrial trace fossils from the Permian of the southwest USA”.
3D Wall of Photos
Now you can view BPS trip photos in a very unique way, as if they are posted on a wall of a huge art gallery! There is a new menu link in the left sidebar "3D Photo Wall" that links to all the trip photos since the website was upgraded in 2007 (prior photos are housed on a different server). Download and install the free browser add-on Cool Iris if you haven't done so yet, then follow the instructions in the link to browse the BPS 3D Wall of Photos. (Feature no longer available)
Our speaker for the September 8th BPS meeting will be Sandy Ebersole, Geologist and Paleontologist from the Geological Survey of Alabama. The topic will be "The GSA Paleo Collection and Where it is Headed". (No, we are not meeting on Labor Day.)
BPS regular monthly
meetings
are held
on the 1st
Monday of each
month at the McWane Science Center.
Park in the deck on "Level C", go through doors marked Special Event
Center, and follow signs to the meeting. The program begins at
Just what the heck does this mean, right? Cool Iris is a new browser add-on that makes viewing large numbers of pictures a cool experience! Many web sites, including Google and Flickr, are Cool Iris enabled (or the old name, PicLens, may also be seen.) We are still awaiting an upgrade to our content management system software for the final easy to maintain code (using mediaRSS). However, you can still experience The Wall by following these instructions:
First, go to the Cool Iris website to download and install the free add-on for your web browser.
