{"id":20783,"date":"2022-04-03T15:20:16","date_gmt":"2022-04-03T19:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=20783"},"modified":"2022-04-03T15:23:29","modified_gmt":"2022-04-03T19:23:29","slug":"episode-564-discovery-of-horn-coral-fossils-and-bivalves-millions-years-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=20783","title":{"rendered":"Episode 564 DISCOVERY OF HORN CORAL FOSSILS AND BIVALVES MILLIONs YEARS OLD"},"content":{"rendered":"
Episode 564    DISCOVERY OF HORN CORAL FOSSILS AND BIVALVES MILLIONs YEARS OLD<\/p>\n

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alan skeoch<\/div>\n
April , 2022<\/div>\n

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\u201cI paid $5 for this basket full of stones.  From when comes this episode 264\u201d<\/div>\n
Question:  \u201cWas it worth $5?”<\/div>\n

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Curiosity is one prominent characteristic of the human animal.  You and I.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

We both cannot resist a mystery.  Rudyard Kipling expressed this<\/div>\n
best. <\/div>\n

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\/ <\/span>keep <\/span>six <\/span>honest serving-men<\/span><\/div>\n
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(They <\/span>taught <\/span>me <\/span>all I <\/span>knew);
Their <\/span>names <\/span>are <\/span>what <\/span>and <\/span>why <\/span>and <\/span>when
And <\/span>how <\/span>and <\/span>where <\/span>and <\/span>who. rudyard <\/span>kipling<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A BASKET FULL OF STRANGE STONES<\/div>\n

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Just looked like s basket of stones.   Not even pretty stones.  Tiny Notation  about size of my thumb.<\/div>\n
 Notation taped to what looked like an Ontario clam shell.<\/div>\n
When I got my reading glasses focused the notation said it was a fossilized bivalve. <\/div>\n
Someone had collected this basket of fossils long ago and then sold them<\/div>\n
to the antique\/collectable dealer in Rockwood.  <\/div>\n

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I arrived on the last day of the Rockwood business. They would close forever.<\/div>\n

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“How much do you want for the basket of stones?\u201d\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cFive dollars\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cWhat does the note say\u2026this little note\u2026so small I cannot read it?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cNo idea,\u201d said the owner.<\/div>\n
\u201cLet me try my reading glasses.\u201d<\/div>\n
 \u201cAhah!\u201d<\/div>\n

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THE TINY NOTE<\/div>\n

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Argopectens cf. solariodes<\/div>\n
                            9helprin)<\/div>\n

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PERIOD  – NEOGENE<\/div>\n
EPOCH  –   PLIOCENE<\/div>\n
FORMATION  –  DUPLIN<\/div>\n
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+\/- 3\/5 Milion Years<\/div>\n

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Pelecypod<\/div>\n

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$9.95 each,    319BV45<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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There was only the one bivalve\u2026fossilized bivalve \u2026in the collection.  All the other<\/div>\n
stones were unknown to me but looked old\u2026.like 500 million years old.  These fossils <\/div>\n
turned out to be an ancient extinct form of coral.  Once very common but became<\/div>\n
extinct after the Permian extinction when many many life forms disappeared forever.<\/div>\n

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The \u2019stones\u2019 were fossilized BULLHORN CORALS\u2026scientifically known as RAGUSA<\/div>\n
SOLITARY CORALS.  Quired common.   Horn corals were carnivorous animals that<\/div>\n
thrived in the Devonian and Ordovician seas that once covered much of North America.<\/div>\n

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Their fossilized shells are ringed.   Growth rings.  The older the Bullhorn coral live<\/div>\n
the more rings it had on its shell.  The living carnore was restricted to the tip of<\/div>\n
of the coral where its long feathery fingers reached out to catch microscopting plankton<\/div>\n
swimming by.   The bottom of the coral was a pointed root attached to the ocean floor.<\/div>\n
They are called BULLHORN OR HORN corals because their segmented bodies look<\/div>\n
like the growth rings on the horns of cattle.  The word REGUSA means the shells<\/div>\n
are roughly segmented.<\/div>\n

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Overview<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Rugose corals are an extinct group of anthozoans that originated in the Ordovician and went extinct at the end of the Permian. Members of the Rugosa are sometimes called horn corals because solitary forms frequently have the shape of a bull’s horn (colonial forms do not have this shape, however).<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Two solitary rugose corals in a slab of Ordovician limestone from near Cincinnati, Ohio. Note the similarly of the left specimen’s shape to that of a bull’s horn.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A reconstruction of Ordovician-aged solitary rugose corals on display in a diorama at the American Museum of Natural History<\/a> in New York City.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Paleobiology Database<\/a> recognizes a total of 29 families of rugose corals, 488 genera, and 1337 species. Rugose corals reached their peak diversity during the Devonian period, when colonial forms were important reef builders. As far as we know, rugose corals did not survive the end-Permian mass extinction event.<\/div>\n

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WHY?  WHY?  HOW?  WHERE? WHEN?<\/div>\n

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WHY did these BULLLHORN CORALS become extinct.  Some scientists believe it was climate change.  The earth got warmer over a few<\/div>\n
million years.  And the oceans got warmer.  Ninety percent of the living creatures in the ocean suffocated\u2026they could no longer breath in the<\/div>\n
warming oceans.   Was that the reason?   The great Permian Extinction may have been caused by many factors.  Perhaps a Perfect Storm<\/div>\n
of causes.   <\/div>\n

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When I taught the principle of Causation to my classes in history at Parkdale Collegiate I would premise remarks with the fact that there<\/div>\n
are often many causes for a single effect.   Why so people sometimes pack up snd bit their jobs?   Why do some marriages end in divorce?<\/div>\n
What were the causes of both World Wars One and  Two    Why do you love history classes?  Why do you hate history classes?<\/div>\n
Why are you so healthy and robust?   Multiple causes for single events.  Is it possible to find a Principle Cause for any of these Effect?<\/div>\n

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Well, it seems that the reasons for the Permian Extinction cannot be traced to single event.<\/div>\n
252 million years ago life on earth nearly ended.  Why?   Read below and see how many possible<\/div>\n
causes could have brought about the Perman Extinction.  Was the principle cause Climate Change?<\/div>\n

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The Permian Extinction\u2014When Life Nearly Came to an End<\/h1>\n

This mass extinction almost ended life on Earth as we know it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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BY<\/span>HILLEL J. HOFFMAN<\/span>REPUBLISHED FROM THE PAGES OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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THE PERMIAN EXTINCTION<\/div>\n

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 Nearly all the world’s trees died en masse\u2026252 MILLION YEARS AGO<\/p>\n


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“It’s not easy to kill so many species,” says Doug Erwin, a Smithsonian Institution paleontologist. “It had to be something catastrophic.” Erwin and geologist Samuel Bowring of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have dated volcanic ash in Chinese sediments laid down during the extinction. Bowring thinks the extinction took place in as little as 100,000 years\u2014quicker than the click of a camera shutter on a geologic scale of time. Suspects must be capable of killing with staggering swiftness both on land and in the seas. As I spoke with some of the researchers on the killer’s trail, I learned how many suspects there are\u2014and how difficult it is to develop a tight case.<\/p>\n

An enormous asteroid impact is the prime suspect of Gregory Retallack, a geologist at the University of Oregon. The collision would have sent billions of particles into the atmosphere, he explains. They would have spread around the planet, then rained down on land and sea.<\/p>\n

Retallack has discovered tiny quartz crystals marked with microscopic fractures in rocks from the time of the extinction in Australia and Antarctica. “You need staggering force, many times greater than a nuclear explosion, to create this shocked quartz,” said Retallack. “Only an impact could deform it this way.” A team of researchers recently found what may be that impact’s footprint buried below Australia\u2014a 75-mile-wide (120-kilometer-wide) crater left by an asteroid more than three miles (4.8 kilometers) across.<\/p>\n

I asked Retallack what an impact would be like if we had been standing a few hundred miles from ground zero. “You’d feel a shudder,” he replied. “Clouds of noxious gases would billow in and block out the sun for months. Temperatures would drop, and corrosive acid snow and rain would fall. After the clouds cleared, the atmosphere would be thick with carbon dioxide from fires and decaying matter. CO2 is a greenhouse gas; it would have contributed to global warming that lasted millions of years.”<\/p>\n


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