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 found during the three day weekend trip.

Day 1 Friday         Day 2 Saturday         Day 3 Sunday

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

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

A small group of dedicated fossil hounds arrived in Dallas County to assist James Lamb in searching for ancient bones and teeth of extinct animals in the Late Cretaceous chalk gullies.  Suffering miserably in the heat of the day where temperatures were recorded at 109 degrees, our spirits were frequently lifted by the amazing fossils that were being found.  We had the opportunity to search in

Alabama Summers - Hot, Hot, and more Hot!