Early Donations for the Fossil Teaching Sets

This past Friday I attended the monthly Dry Dredger meeting here in Cincinnati. I always enjoy these meetings, lovely people, great discussions, and people always bring interesting specimens to look at. The members of the Dry Dredgers are wonderfully generous people. They have on three separate occasions now, provided funds for my graduate research projects, various members are always giving me new outcrop localities to check out. Last night, members of the Dry Dredgers showed me overwhelming support for my Fulbright and some even donated some  fossils from their person collections to help with my Mobile Fossil Teaching Sets.

I wanted to take the time to thank these individuals and share with you all some of the early specimens that will be included in this set. The majority of the images below are of fossils donated by Jack Kallmeyer, President of the Dry Dredgers. In addition Jack, a number of other Dry Dredgers including Ron Fine and Steve Felton have offered to help fill in gaps in the teaching sets. I am extremely grateful to all of you.

Beautifully articulated Flexicalymene retrorsa donated by Jack Kallmeyer

Enrolled Flexicalymene retrorsa donated by Jack Kallmeyer

Cephalon of what I believe is an Allolichas or Amphilichas trilobite although I have never found one before myself. Specimen donated by Jack Kallmeyer

Pygidium of an Acidaspis trilobite donated by Jack Kallmeyer. I may have found a form like this once in the Waynesville Formation. Dr. Holland does confirm its presence there on his page.

Cephalons of what was labeled as a possible Achatella trilobite. It certainly has the eyes but I need to do more research. One of the added bonuses of this outreach project is I myself get exposed to some of the rare fossils and will be able to improve my own understanding of the local paleontology. Donated by Jack Kallmeyer.

Wonderful specimens of Isorophus cincinnatiensis, an Edriosteroidea and the Cincinnati city fossil. I have certainly never have found one of these myself. I don't think they have been reported from the Wayenesville but I will keep looking! Specimens donated by Jack Kallmeyer

A selection of Ectenocrinus simplex pieces. This is just one of a number of genera of crinoids that Jack Kallmeyer donated.

Aside from these specimens there are a number of others that I have added to the set myself including a number of Cincinnetina meeki, Vinlandostrophia ponderosa, Grewingkia, and Solenopora.

I also of course want to thank the friends and family who have donated monetarily on my Go Fund Me page. At the time of this post we are up to $230. These funds and any additional funds that people may donate will be vital in setting up worthy displays for these specimens.

Thank you everyone for you continued support and generosity and I welcome you to contact me if you have any questions about what this project is about and how you can help.

Bringing the Cincinnati Arch to Canada

Welcome to the maiden post of what I hope will be a fun shared journey through my Fulbright experience to Ottawa, Canada this coming year.

Before I get into what I will be doing in Canada and the first initiative I am working on, a quick background about what a Fulbright is. Fulbright is an international exchange program which sends US students and scholars to various nations (and vice versa) across the continents to conduct research relevant to the participating nations, to teach English to non-native speakers, to foster shared artistic expression, but more importantly, to promote cultural exchange and understanding between the United States and the countries of the world. Members of the Fulbright community serve as 'citizen ambassadors'. If you want the full history of the Fulbright I will direct you to the Fulbright page however I do want to highlight this one quote from their site.

"The program currently awards approximately 1,900 grants annually in all fields of study, and operates in more than 140 countries worldwide. Fulbright U.S. Student alumni populate a range of professions and include ambassadors, members of Congress, judges, heads of corporations, university presidents, journalists, artists, professors, and teachers."

For my Fulbright (which I am still in shock about) I will be spending the next academic year working with Dr. Andre Desrochers at the University of Ottawa, to look at the Late Ordovician (Katian; Richmondian) strata of Southern Ontario in attempts to compare it to coeval strata here along the Cincinnati Arch. The hope is to ultimately be able to compare patterns in change of sea level, climate and biotic communities between these two regions as part of larger project which will look at the same interval in Europe as well.

Now as I mentioned earlier, the Fulbright is not only about conducting the research, but also about fostering this cultural exchange and understanding through interaction with the greater Canadian community. I have a multitude of ideas at to how I would like to do this, and first initiative or project related to this requires help from all of you!

A lot of what I will be doing (planned anyways) during the Fulbright will be to give presentations on the Ordovician to schools, universities, local organizations and museums. To enhance my presentations, I am working on constructing 'mobile teaching sets' which highlight the wonderful Ordovician fossils of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. Ideally these sets would have representations of as many different genera possible. Now to do this, I obviously need the fossils to display in bring with me, that is the first way you all can help me out.

How can I help?

I am looking for people who are willing to donate Upper Ordovician (Edenian-Richmondian) fossils from the Cincinnati Arch to this collection. Ideally these fossils would be of some decent quality in the sense they represent the taxa well. Some taxa (like Platystrophia ponderosa, Cincinnetina, Hebertella, etc) are pretty easy for me to find and collect, however some of the more rare taxa (various trilobites, echinoderms, less common brachiopods) are much more difficult. I already a number of donations being offered from the wonderful members of the Dry Dredgers and if any of you are willing to contribute in this way I encourage you to contact me with what you might donate so we can see where the need is!

If you think this project is a great idea but can't contribute any fossils because you don't live nearby and don't have any, or because you are attached to the ones you have (trust me I understand) or whatever the reason might be, there is another way you could help. As with basically any project, creating these mobile teaching sets will require some funding to purchase display boxes, generate information cards etc. To that end, I have set up a FundMe Campaign where people can donate to this outreach project.

I greatly appreciate anything you might be able to do to help, with it be fossils, money, spreading the word, or however you choose to help. Any extra fossils or money beyond what is needed for these displays, will be applied to other outreach initiatives including small 'fossil kits' which can be mailed to kids and teachers, development of Ordovician related creative products (stories, photo books) and more!

That is way too much text for one post, thanks for reading this and I hope you'll keep coming back to share my Fulbright experience, one that has been 450 million years in the making!