HUNTING FOR FOSSILS IN LOUISIANA
The Mission of the
LSU Museum of Natural Science
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Acquisition,
Preservation, and
Study
of research collections to generate knowledge of:
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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.
Divisions of the LSU MNS
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7 main fields of RESEARCH
 Ornithology (Birds)
 Genetics
 Ichthyology (Fishes)
 Mammalogy
 Herpetology (Reptiles and Amphibians)
 Paleontology
 Anthropology (Archaeology and Ethnography)
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EDUCATION
1.THE PALEONTOLOGY
COLLECTIONS
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
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)
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
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.
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.
18 meters (60 feet) in length
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.
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
2. ACTIVITY:
HUNTING FOR FOSSILS IN LA
Goals:
- help you
identify some of
the fossils
- describe the
history of their
journey
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 don’t 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
- The earth was formed
approximately 4,600 million
years ago.
- Geologists have divided the
earth’s 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.
- Study rocks -> in what environment sediments were deposited.
-> 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).
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.
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.
Paleozoic life - The marine invertebrates!
Arthropodes
Brachiopoda
Bryozoa
Cnidaria
Echinodermata
Mollusca
Insects, trilobites
Shells
Moss-like animals
Corals (tab. & rug.)
Starfish, sand dollars
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, let’s look at what each fossil type looks like.
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.
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
‘honeycomb’ appearance.
like
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
3. FIELD TRIP: PRACTICAL DETAILS
General Info
& Tours
Monday-Friday
8:00 am - 4:00 pm
FREE!
Scheduling
Materials
Rules
Parking
…
4. MNS ACTIVITY BOOKLET
Activities for
Self-guided tours
The MNS book is available:
- in French thanks to:
… Anne-Sophie & Stanislas Dubois
- in Spanish thanks to:
… Ana Morales
Learn about
paleontology!
Learn about
mastodons!
5. HANDS ON ACTIVITIES
Learn about
the different
types of fossils