Club Annual Show-and-Tell: Best Field Trips, Lapidary Projects, and Jewelry 
 

Thursday, November 8th, is the night of our “2007 Field Trips Show-and-Tell”, long known as the Towel Show. It is an opportunity for you to share those great specimens you found, that beautiful lapidary project you completed, or the jewelry you made this past year.

Awards are presented to both juniors and adults in eight different categories, including:

● Best minerals collected on a club field trip
● Best fossils collected on a club field trip
● Best minerals collected on a personal trip
● Best fossils collected on a personal trip
● Best lapidary work
● Best jewelry project
● The all important UGLIEST ROCK
● And don’t forget the most interesting towel

So bring your specimens and projects, plus a towel to display them on. Set up your towel at 7 and the program starts at 7:15. The Towel Show is a wonderful time to learn about places to go collecting next year and to get ideas for your lapidary and jewelry projects this winter.

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Martin Hultquist Inducted into the National Rockhound Hall of Fame

FMC co-founding club member Martin Hultquist was inducted into the National Rockhound and Lapidary Hall of Fame in the Lapidary Division this year for his outstanding bowl making techniques. He was nominated by the club for this award last spring, based on his exquisite bowls.

Intrigued with an agate bowl he purchased in 1965, Martin set out to create his own machinery to make bowls at home. Using his lapidary skills and mechanical ability, Martin began with designs that others had developed. Over the next several years, he modified these designs to create unique equipment capable of creating the thin bowls he desired. Martin has created bowls up to 5 inches in diameter, using many materials, including agate, amethyst, rose quartz, rhodochrosite, petrified wood and bone, jasper, and jade. Martin also taught many club members his bowl making techniques.

Martin began displaying his bowls at Flatirons Mineral Club shows in the late 1960s. At the American Federation of Mineralogical Societies’ national mineral hobby craft competition in 1972, Martin took first place over approximately 100 other entries for his world-class bowls. He was also honored with an article featuring his bowls in the February 1990 Lapidary Journal.

One of the perks of being the Flatirons Mineral Club president is that you get to keep and display a fabulous tiger-eye bowl, made by Martin, for the length of your term of office. At the club’s 50th anniversary meeting on March 8th of 2007, Martin received the first ever Flatirons Mineral Club Lifetime Achievement Award for both his bowl making expertise and for the time and effort he spent over the years to make the club the success it is today.

The National Rockhound and Lapidary Hall of Fame is located in Murdo, South Dakota. It was founded in 1987 to recognize excellence in the earth sciences by inducting one or more persons each year in six categories: Minerals, Fossils, Metalcraft, Lapidary, Education and Deceased. The Hall of Fame is located in the Pioneer Auto Show and has a fine collection of rocks, gems, fossils, and lapidary works on display. Certainly, it is worth a stop, if you are visiting in the area. For more information about the Hall of Fame, see their website.

The Flatirons Mineral Club congratulates Martin on selection into the Hall of Fame and thanks him for all he has done for the club over the years.



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An Elephant Never Forgets!

A friendly reminder that the annual dues to the FMC become due on October 1st, 2007. The dues are still only $15 per individual (or) immediate family. You can pay in two ways:

SEND A CHECK TO :
(made to) "Flatirons Mineral Club” (or) "FMC"
P.O. Box 3331
Boulder, CO 80307
(or) pay Alex Cook, Chuck & Jan Buda (Membership Co-Chairs) or Gerry Naugle at any FMC monthly meeting. One of them is at the sign-in table upon entering the room for the monthly meetings. Your receipt is your new annual 2007-08 FMC membership card.

You can pay by CASH at an FMC meeting. Please do not send cash to the Club P.O. Box 3331 by USPS mail. Remember you can receive electronic (or) paper club newsletters containing the general meetings information, guided club field trips information, annual show opportunities, silent auction opportunities and an annual club summer picnic when you are a member of the Flatirons Mineral Club. The 2007-08 dues must be received by the club by Jan 31st, 2008 in order to stay current on the newsletters and club member benefits.

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Club Librarian Needed

The Flatirons Mineral Club has one of the best libraries of books, videos, CDs, and other resources of any of the rock clubs in the state of Colorado. Our current librarian, Ray Gilbert, lives in Berthoud, which limits access for most of our club members in the Boulder area. We are looking for a new club librarian, who will store our club's books, provide a selection of books at each club meeting for people to check out, help club members find information about various aspects of our hobby, and periodically update the list of available resources for club members. Ideally, the librarian should have some space in their basement or a room at their home. If you would like to volunteer or to get more information about being the club librarian, please contact Ray Gilbert.

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Club Lapidary Equipment
 

The club owns a wide range of lapidary equipment that is set up in Charlotte Morrison’s basement and garage. This equipment is available for use by club members on Wednesday evenings or at other times by appointment. If you are inexperienced, but want to learn how to use the equipment, Charlotte will arrange for an experienced member to show you how to use the equipment. Be sure to call Charlotte at 303-499-9289 and let her know when you will be coming.

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Jr. Geologists Program for the Year

We have a great Jr. Geologists program planned for the fall and winter. For September’s meeting, we will meet at Charlotte Morrison’s home to split shale from Florissant, which contain leaves and insects. Charlotte has several flats of shale that she is donating for the meeting. Please note: because the club meeting date
was moved, September’s Jr. Geologists meeting will be on the fourth Thursday, September 27.

Based on input from the kids involved in the program, we have a great program planned for the fall and winter. Beginning in October, we will begin working on the badges again. By popular acclaim, we plan to complete the requirements for the Rocks and Minerals, Collecting, and Fossils badges. The older members will be helping to teach these badges and will be able to finish the Leadership and Communications badges. At each meeting, we’ll have the rock of the month – a time to learn more about a special rock or mineral.

Other activities we have planned include:

• Special lapidary evenings to use the clubs equipment to cut specimens and polish stones.
• Preparing to display our specimens at the Towel Show in November and putting together a display case at the Club Show in December.
• Helping with the kids activities at the Club Show in December.
• Special Saturdays for the older kids to do experiments.

The Jr. Geologists program is open to all Flatirons Mineral Club families. For more information about the Jr. Geologists program, please contact Dennis Gertenbach or Todd Shannon.

 

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Bring Your Field Trip Findings and Makings to the Nov. Towel Show

If you found some great specimens at one of our club field trips, or on a trip of your own, please bring them to the November club meeting “Towel Show” on November 8th to show others in a non-formal competition. See article on the front page of this newsletter. Everyone enjoys learning where to collect specimens and what can be found, and you might win a ribbon.

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Fossils in the News
 

Velociraptor Covered in Feathers? 

Paleontologists at the American Museum of Natural History and the Field Museum of Natural History have reexamined a fossil forearm unearthed in Mongolia in 1998 and found it to have a series of small bumps, much like the “quill knobs” on modern birds. In modern birds, these quill knobs are the locations where wing feathers are anchored to the bone with ligaments.

As recently reported in Science, finding quill knobs on Velociraptor does not mean that this dinosaur could fly; however, they definitely show that the animal had feathers. The Velociraptor's short arms indicate that the creature could not fly; but its feathers may have been useful for display, to shield nests, for temperature control, or to assist it when running. Many scientists had suspected that Velociraptor had feathers, but no one had been able to prove it until now.


What Really Killed the Dinosaurs?

Was it a large asteroid? Giant volcanoes? Or something else? Two recent studies have provided additional information about this question.

The first study suggests volcanoes are to blame. Scientists have long studied a series of massive lava flows in India, known as the Deccan Traps. These were the result of a series of giant volcanic eruptions that took place at the end of the Cretaceous period, the time when the dinosaurs became extinct. Gerta Keller of Princeton University, and her colleagues reported their discoveries at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting last month.

The Deccan Traps, the largest known eruptions on the surface of the earth, consist of two major eruption periods, separated by about 250,000 years. The first eruption is responsible for about 80% of the lava, while the second one was much smaller (but still huge). By studying fossils trapped by the lava flows, they found that the most massive eruption happened at the same time that the dinosaurs went extinct. This eruption would have sent vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which would have cause a rapid change in climate. The second eruption would explain the unresolved mystery of why it took so long for living things to recover. Again, this second eruption would have emitted so much gas, that the earth’s climate changed a second time.

A second study, reported in Nature, points the finger at an asteroid. Using computer modeling, a US-Czech research team has shown that a massive collision 160 million years ago set things in motion for the massive extinction 100 millions years later. A major asteroid collision asteroid sent debris spinning throughout the solar system, including a chunk that later smashed into Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs. The scientists claim that other fragments from this asteroid collision are responsible for the large impact crater found on the Moon, Venus and Mars. A number of studies have considered what appears to have been an increase in asteroid strikes on Earth in the last 100-200 million years - something like a doubling over the long-term norm.

Dr. Bottke of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, and his colleagues have attempted to show that these events were triggered by the collision of a 100- mile wide rock in the asteroid belt with a second one half its size. The results of this collision are still seen today in the asteroid belt as a cluster of asteroids known as the Baptistina family. They contend that one large fragment created the 110-mile wide Chicxulub crater off of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico 65 million years ago, which many scientists consider the smoking gun that killed the dinosaurs. Their analysis also shows that a smaller fragment from the collision was probably responsible for the 50-mile wide Tycho crater on the Moon, formed 108 million years ago. So, what really killed the dinosaurs? We still don’t know for sure.

Could the First Animals See Color?

When prehistoric fish first crawled onto land about 400 million years ago, was their world pretty much colorless or could they see a full range color? A study recently published in the online journal, BMC Evolutionary Biology, the answer is that they likely saw the land in full color. A team led by Helena Bailes at the School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Queensland, in Australia, analyzed retinas from Australian lungfish, thought to be the closest living relative to the first fish to come on to land. These results were compared to the retinas of other fish and amphibians. The DNA of five genes in the retinas of lungfish that are responsible for determining color are more similar to those of four-legged vertebrates (which can generally see a wide range of color) than with fish retinas (that tend see only some colors).

New Dinosaur Records

The most teeth: A duck-billed dinosaur, Gryposaurus monumentensis, discovered in southern Utah, had hundreds of teeth packed inside its giant beak. This herbivore, described in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, lived in the Cretaceous forests 65-80 million years ago. It had 300 teeth inside its beak, with an additional 500 teeth in its jaw ready to grow as replacements. The animal was described by researchers of the Utah Museum of Natural History.

The largest: Scientists from Argentina and Brazil have described a new dinosaur, a 105-foot plant-eater that is among the largest dinosaurs ever found. Futalognkosaurus dukei lived 88 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period. The neck was about 56 feet long, and the tail is estimated at 49 feed, based on the vertebrae unearthed. The dinosaur would have been over 43 feet tall. Two other Pategonian dinosaurs are as big or bigger than this latest find, with Argentinosaurus estimated at about 115 feet long and Puertasaurus reuili at 115 to 131 feet long. It is difficult to decide which is the largest, as many bones of these species have not been found.

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Nov-Dec Jr. Geologists Activities
 

Monthly Meetings During November and December, we will continue to learn more about rocks and minerals, including how to identify minerals using the mineral ID kits we put together last month. Beginning in November, we will have separate programs for the younger and older kids. That way, we can get more in-depth with those 10 and older. All juniors taking part in the monthly meetings will be able to earn the Rocks and Minerals badge.

Crystal Growing Day Also this fall, we will have a special weekend meeting to learn how to grow crystals. We will discuss different crystal shapes, and how they help us identify minerals. The younger kids will be able to make 3 different types of crystals, while the older kids will learn advanced crystal growing techniques.

Displays at the Club Show Jr. Geologists are encouraged to put together a display for the club show in December. Display cases will be provided. We will be taking more about putting together a display at November’s meeting. Be sure to sign up for a display case with Dennis Gertenbach

Activities from Past Meetings In September, the juniors split shale from the Florissant fossil beds, looking for plant and insect fossils. The Jr. Geologists decided that visiting the Florissant fossil beds would make a great field trip next summer.

The FMC Jr. Geologists program is open to all Flatirons Mineral Club families. For more information about the Jr. Geologists program, please contact Dennis Gertenbach (303-462-3522, gertenbach@comcast.net) or Todd Shannon (303-494-5893, eldoTodd@gmail.com).

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Updated 11/27/07