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Bighorn
Basin GeoScience Center News
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Prepare yourself
for the “Moment of Discovery” CONTACT Cliff
Manuel, Chairman Bighorn
Basin Geoscience Center, Inc. 537
Greybull Avenue Greybull,
Wyoming 82426 Phone:
307.765.2286 Cell:
406.672.1462 e-mail: cliff@bbgeoscience.org |
LATEST NEWS July 9, 2011 The Bighorn Basin Geoscience Center is opening a storefront in
downtown Greybull, Wyoming to provide a physical presence until the new museum
building is funded and erected. The new facility will include a small museum
to house some of our fossils and reproductions, a combination art
gallery/educations room, and a gift/book shop (Homespun Gifts). Stop by and
visit with us when you are in town.
October 7, 2010
Long walk, big discovery:
The Charleston Gazette, Sep 10, 2009
| by Rick Steelhammer
When
laymen imagine a paleontologist searching for the fossilized remains of
prehistoric animals, they are likely to envision a scientist "digging a hole
in the ground and having a whole skeleton pop out," said Dr. Robin O'Keefe, a biology
professor at Marshall University. In fact, finding the remains of prehistoric
creatures isn't easy, and finding them intact is very rare, according to
O'Keefe, who spoke Wednesday as part of a luncheon series at the Clay Center. O'Keefe
has traveled from the British Isles to the Bighorn Basin to study
plesiosaurs - four-flippered, sea-dwelling reptiles that lived 200 million years
ago. As part of a recent National Geographic-sponsored research project in
Wyoming's Sundance Formation - a layer of sandstone and shale that dates back
to the Jurassic era - O'Keefe uncovered the remains of a previously unknown
type of plesiosaur, the Tatenectes
laramiensis. Before
finding the conglomerated mass of fossilized bones that turned out to be
about two-thirds of a Tatenectes laramiensis remains, O'Keefe estimates he
walked over more than half of the North Sundance Formation, found in an expanse
of rock outcroppings and rangeland just west of Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains.
Walking up and down the eroded cliffs, he said, "was like being on a
paleo-Stairmaster." All
that walking had more than aerobic benefits. Although parts of the Tatenectes
laramiensis' neck and tail were missing, enough bones were found to simulate
a fully reconstructed body, giving scientists a good look at the previously
unknown species of plesiosaur. But
what was a sea-dwelling reptile doing in Wyoming? "In the Jurassic period,
the Rocky Mountains hadn't fully formed, allowing a huge inland sea to
form," he said. The body of water was once connected to the Pacific
Ocean, but as the Rockies gradually grew, the Sundance Sea was formed. Hans
Jakob (Kirby) Siber honored with Honorary Doctorate
Hans Jakob Siber (born on 4 September 1942) made the A-Matura (ancient
Greek and Latin) and went to the USA, where he won at Montana State
University, the subjects theater and film. returned
to Switzerland, he and his father John and his brother Edward founded the
minerals company Siber Siber +. His future, he saw first as director and produced
1968-1972 experimental films, with which, however, he could not feed his
family . . . . . He began to intensively look at the history of the past
in-depth, in literature about fossils, and began his own excavations. In the 1980's he dug up in Peru skeletons of fossil
baleen whales, then moved his field of activity to Wyoming (USA), where he
made spectacular finds of predatory dinosaurs (Allosaurus "Big Al")
and plant-eating dinosaurs (including Stegosaurus, Diplodocus etc.) . . . . . .
HJ Siber organized a special series of exhibitions in 2009 and
was the initiator and sponsor of a scientific symposium on stegosaurs. (Worldwide, there are only five good skeletons of Stegosaurus
- two of them have been excavated by HJ Siber and his team.) With the honorary doctorate, a
successful self-made man and scientist is honored . . . . . (Translated from German and edited somewhat by Cliff Manuel) Copyright © 2010, 2011, 2012 Bighorn Basin Geoscience Center. All rights
reserved
(except for images and text as noted) Last updated: December 10, 2011 Bighorn
Basin GeoScience Center ~ 537 Greybull Avenue ~
Greybull, Wyoming 82426 Web
site maintenance by: Cliff Manuel
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