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Board
Corner
Gerry Naugle
The FMC Board would like to invite all members and their guests who
collected minerals, fossils or made lapidary/jewelry this past year to
bring them on Thurs, Nov 8th at the annual 'towel show meeting' at the West
Boulder Senior Center. The meeting will start at 7:10pm and set up starts at 6:45pm. The
categories in both the Senior Division and the Junior Divisions are:
"Best of" Club Field Trip, Personal Field Trip, Minerals,
Fossils, Jewelry/Lapidary, Ugly Rock and Best Display Towel. Come on in and
display whatever you did in 2012!
The annual club mineral show
(with model trains show on Sat & Sun) is on Dec 7th - 9th this year.
Please see the show flyer with information in this newsletter. Please sign
up to help do some fun volunteering at the show. We have set-up on Wed and
Thurs before the show and tear-down on Sunday night in addition to the
three days of show with lectures, classes, demos and kid's area. The new
exhibitor form (many thanks to Gabi) is enclosed in this newsletter also.
****************
Fall Club Meetings
Gabi Accatino,
Co-Chairperson, Programs
Club
meeting, Nov. 8, 7 pm. This meeting is our annual towel
show—see “Board Corner” above.
Club
meeting, Dec, 20 pm. This meeting is our annual holiday
anonymous gift party—bring a gift worth about $5 and enjoy the “give
and take”! Note that this is the third Thursday in December, instead of our
usual second Thursday.
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Jr. Geologists
Activities
Last
month the Jr. Geologists learned about minerals and rocks with special
properties, including double refracting calcite, magnetic magnetite,
floating pumice, minerals that conduct electricity, Amish stink rock, triboluminescence quartz, and ulexite
or TV stone. At the end, the Jr. Geologists staged the Amazing Mineral
Magic Show, demonstrating these various special properties. Each Jr.
Geologist earned the Special Effects badge that evening.
Come
See the Amazing Magic Mineral Show at the Club Show on Sunday, December
9th.
Jr. Geologists
Investigate a Rock that “Sings”
November
Meeting: Because of a scheduling conflict at the library, the Jr.
Geologists meeting for November has been moved to Thursday, November 29th.
We will start working on a new badge this month. Meetings are at the
Boulder Library Reynolds Branch, 3595 Table Mesa Drive in Boulder, starting
at 6:30 p.m.
The
Jr. Geologists program is open to all Flatirons Mineral Club families. Each
month we learn more about geology, plus earn badges for different earth science
activities. For information about the Jr. Geologists program, please
contact Dennis Gertenbach.
The
Jr. Geologists program is looking for adults to help with the monthly activities.
If you would enjoy working with the kids, either for a special project or
at their monthly meeting, please contact Dennis.
****************
Denver
Gem & Mineral Show 2012 Winners in the Special Competitions
Individual
Competitive Case Trophies:
A1
– Richard Tripp – master – 5 large mineral
specimens
EGC-5
– Richard Tripp – master - Fluorescent Agates
BT-1
– Nick North – master – Worldwide thumbnails
BU-5X
– Andreas DeValera – Junior – Minerals containing
copper
EGS-2
– Littleton Gem and Mineral Club – society – How to cut round and emerald
cut gemstones
Club Prospector
Trophy:
1st
– Colorado Mineral Society
2nd
– Littleton Gem and Mineral Club
Best
Fossil: Dennis Gertenbach - crinoid
Best of Species
Trophies
Thumbnail
– Paula Presmyk – Chalcocite, Bristol, CT
Miniature
– Nick North, Azurite, Mipillas Mine, Mexico
Cabinet
– Les Presmyk, Azurite, Bisbee, AZ
Oversize
Cabinet – Carol Smith, Copper in fossil wood
Personally
Collected – Larry Havens, Turquoise nodule,
Turquoise
Chief Mine, Leadville area
Best
of Colorado – Larry Havens, Enargite, Longfellow Mine, Red Mtn. Dist.
Lapidary/Jewelry
– Jody Sawdo, copper necklace with cabs and
trilobite mold
Richard
M. Pearl Trophy: Jack Halpern, Silver, Kongsberg, Norway
Prospector’s
Trophy: Kevin Larsen, 2” blue topaz
2nd
Place: Steve Knox, Smoky Quartz, CA
3rd
Place: Amanda Atkins, pink phenakite, Mt. Antero
Junior
Prospector’s Trophy: Shealeene Kent, Mt. Antero
aquamarine
2nd
Place: Shealeene Kent, fluorite cube
3rd
Place: Shealeene Kent, goshenite
crystal
Best
Museum Trophy: University of Michigan
Shorty
Withers Trophy: Les Presmyk – Colorful AZ
minerals
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A Thank You from the Denver Gem and Mineral Show
Chairman
Larry Havens
Another
Denver Gem and Mineral Show has come and gone – a year of careful planning
and a frenzied 5 days in September. This year’s show was yet another great
success. Our special and museum exhibits glowed with the brilliant colors
of our theme - copper minerals. The Show Committee is gratified by the many
compliments we received from patrons and dealers alike.
The
Committee may bask briefly in a job well done before it’s time to start on
next year’s show that will feature “tourmaline” as its theme. This is also
the appropriate time to acknowledge the generous contribution of that all
too often unsung group of volunteers without whom the show could not go on
every year. In addition to those members of your club who serve on the Show
Committee, there are many more of you who volunteer your time and talents
during the show.
On
behalf of the Show Committee, I extend heartfelt thanks to the many of you
who were our face to the community of visitors to the show. You rolled
posters, sold grab bags, worked in your club booth, walked the floor in an
orange security vest, sold tickets, helped set up or tear down the show.
Some of you pitched in wherever you were needed or worked two or more jobs.
The Committee hopes you are as proud of your contributions as we are.
The
Committee wishes to encourage even more of you to consider pitching in
during the show. The more of you there are, the less the burden on each,
freeing you up to have more time as spectator as well as worker. Please
approach you club show representative with any questions about volunteering
you may have. We look forward to seeing many new faces next year along with
our friends from past shows.
****************
An
Elephant Never Forgets!
A
friendly reminder that your annual membership dues to the FMC are due on
October 1st, 2012. The dues are still only $18 per individual (and) their
immediate family. You can pay in two ways:
SEND
A CHECK MADE TO "Flatirons Mineral Club" (or) “FMC“ P.O. Box 3331 Boulder, CO 80307 (or) pay Gerry Naugle,
Treasurer (or) Kristi Traynor, Membership Chair at any FMC monthly
meeting. One of them is at or near the sign-in table upon entering the room
for the monthly meetings. Your receipt is your new annual 2012-13 FMC
membership card.
You
can pay by CASH at these FMC meetings. Please do not send cash to the Club
P.O. Box 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 current member of the FMC.
The 2012-13 dues must be received by the club by Jan. 20th, 2013 in order
to stay current with the member benefits..
****************
Get Your Very Own Flatirons Mineral Club Baseball
Cap
The
club now has Baseball caps in a variety of colors for sale. They sport the
newly revised FMC logo. Buy them at any meeting. The member price is $10 each,
while the non-member price is $15.
****************
Recent Club Field Trips
Anita Colin
Como Chronicles –
Summer and Fall, 2012
So
far this year, club members plus their friends, neighbors, family, and
co-workers have unearthed quite a few fossils at the Nail Quarry at Como
Bluff, Wyoming. Numerous vertebrae and ribs from both theropods
(“meatosaurs”) and sauropods
(“veggiesaurs”) were removed. In June, we
discovered the end of a large limb bone and after six weekends of work, a
five-foot long femur (thigh bone) was revealed. Several skull and jaw
fragments were found near it, making the extraction process a slow one.
“Fanny Femur” will spend the winter in the quarry before moving to the Tate
Museum in Casper, WY next summer
Jim
Seigwarth takes a look at Fanny Femur’s distal
(knee) end.
What
we found at the distal end. What is it? Hint: Humans don’t have these.
The
last fossil we removed this fall was… well, here’s a photo. What do you think
it is?
If
you are interested in visiting the quarry with us and doing a bit of work
next summer, let me know! There are jobs for everyone, from picking at
fossils with dental tools and small brushes to hauling buckets of “muck”
out of the digging site.
Club
members on the Collector’s Edge tour (“field trip”) in Golden in June.
****************
Fossils
in the News
Dennis Gertenbach
Was Lucy a Tree
Climber?
Our
views of the ancient hominid Australopithecus afarensis
(Lucy is the best known of this species) has long been of an erect being
that spent most of its time walking on the ground. However, a recently
published study has some scientists rethinking about Lucy and her kin. Paleobiologist David Green of Midwestern University in
Downers Grove, Ill., and anthropologist Zeresenay
Alemseged of the California Academy of Sciences
in San Francisco examined the shoulder blades of a 3-year-old A. afarensis girl, found in 2000. They concluded that this
3.2-million-year-old early hominid split its time between scrambling up
trees and walking on the ground, based on the shape of the shoulder blades.
They proposed that Lucy and her kin spent plenty of time on foot but climbed
trees to forage for fruits and to escape predators. They did not rule out
that juvenile members of A. afarensis may have
been more active climbers than adults. The researchers plan to examine leg,
chest, and other bones of A. afarensis to confirm
their theory., which is not accepted by all
paleontologists.
The
right shoulder blade fossil of an Australopithecus afarensis
child which indicates that these ancient hominids both walked on the ground
and climbed trees. (Credit: Zeresenay Alemseged/Dikika Research
Project)
First Feathered
Dinosaurs from North America
Feathered
dinosaurs from China and Germany continue to be discovered each year.
However, feathered dinosaurs from the western hemisphere had not been
discovered until recently. A new paper, led by paleontologists Darla Zelenitsky from the University of Calgary and François Therrien from the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology,
describe the first ornithomimid (bird-mimic
dinosaur) specimens preserved with feathers recovered in Alberta, Canada.
These 75-million-year-old fossils showed evidence of feathers associated
with a juvenile and two adult’s skeletons of Ornithomimus,
an ornithomimid dinosaur. Based on this
discovery, the researchers speculate that all ornithomimid
dinosaurs had feathers. The specimens reveal interesting changed in body
feathers during the life of Ornithomimus. This
dinosaur was covered in down-like feathers throughout life, but as they
matured, they developed larger feathers on the arms, forming wing-like
structures. However, these dinosaurs were too big to fly, so the
researchers speculated that this plumage change was used in attracting
mates.
A
reconstruction of feathered ornithomimid
dinosaurs found in Alberta. (Credit: Julius Csotonyi)
Complex Brains in
Cambrian Animals
A recent discovery published in the
journal Nature has shown that complex brains evolved much earlier than
previously thought. University of Arizona neurobiologist Nicholas Strausfeld led a team that examined a
520-million-yearold fossilized arthropod fossils with remarkably
well-preserved brain structures. According to these researchers, the
3-inch-long Fuxianhuia protensa
is the earliest known to show a brain. This research is helping to answer
how arthropods, which include insects, spiders, and crustaceans, evolved
and what their common ancestors looked like. Some scientists believe that
insects evolved from an ancestor of crabs and shrimp with more complex
brains, while others point to an ancestor of brine shrimp with very simple
brains. This fossil with its more complex brain supports the theory that
insects evolved from an ancient ancestor of crabs and shrimp. The fossils
also support the idea that once a basic brain design had evolved, it
changed little over time.
A
nearly intact fossil of Fuxianhuia protensa with the inset showing the fossilized brain
(dark outlines) in the head of another specimen. (Credit: Specimen photo: Xiaoya Ma; inset: Nicholas Strausfeld)
Duck-Bill
Dinosaurs Had Tougher Teeth than Horses or Cows
A
team of paleontologists and engineers has found that the teeth of
duck-billed dinosaurs were much better adapted to chewing tough and
abrasive plants than those of cows, horses, and other modern grazers.
During the Late Cretaceous about 85 million years ago, duckbill dinosaurs
known as hadrosaurids were the dominant
plant-eaters in what are now Europe, North America, and Asia. Their jaws
contained as many as 1,400 teeth. In a study published October 4 in the
journal Science, the team cut cross sections of fossilized hadrosaurid teeth and examined them under a microscope.
The teeth were found to have six different types of dental tissues - four
more than reptiles and two more than modern horses, cows, and elephants. To
determine the effectiveness of these teeth to grinding abrasive plants, the
researchers used a technique called nanoindentation,
in which a diamond-tipped probe is indented and/or drawn across the tooth
to determine differential hardness and wear rates of the dental tissues. The
wide variety of teeth structures with different hardness and wear,
characteristics allowed hadrosaurids to take
advantage of specialized ecological niches where they ate extremely tough
plants like ferns, horsetails, and other plants that other dinosaurs were
unable to eat.
Cross-section
of a duck-billed dinosaur tooth (Edmontosaurus)
showing the remarkably complex architecture with six main tissue types.
(Credit: G. M. Erickson/Florida State University)
****************
Upcoming Events
Thurs.,
Nov. 8, 4:00 p.m., weekly Van Tuyl Lecture Series
at Colorado School of Mines, Dr. Robert Ewing, Iowa State, “Infinity in a
Grain of Sand: A Soil Physicist’s Struggle with Rocks”, Joint Lecture with
Hydrologic Science and Engineering (HSE). Berthoud Hall room 241; all are
welcome to attend. See http://www.colorado.edu/GeolSci/ for the complete
colloquium schedule.
Nov.
10-11, 33rd annual New Mexico Mineral Symposium, held at New Mexico Tech,
Socorro, NM; a longtime favorite event for area mineral collectors. See http://geoinfo.nmt.edu/museum/minsymp/home.cfm
for details and registration information.
Thurs.
Nov. 15, FYI, two meetings scheduled for this same evening, both titles
still "TBA"; Colorado Chapter of Friends of Mineralogy, meeting
at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, 7:30 p.m., VIP room (a talk on
minerals), and, Colorado Scientific Society, meeting at Shepherd of the
Hills Presbyterian Church, Lakewood, 7:00 p.m. (geology/earth science
talks). I'll be sending info about both these meetings once topics are
confirmed.
Sat.,
Nov. 17, annual Silent Auction of minerals, rocks, books, gems, jewelry,
etc., held by the Littleton Gem and Mineral Club. All are welcome to
attend; always a fun event, lots of interesting item at (perhaps?) bargain
prices, and always great refreshments too! 12 noon to 5 p.m., at Columbine
Hills Church, 9700 Old Coal Mine Ave., Littleton (near Coal Mine &
Kipling).
Fri.-Sat.-Sun.,
Dec. 7-9, Flatirons Gem and Mineral Show, at the Boulder County
Fairgrounds, Exhibits Building; 9595 Nelson Rd. (Nelson & Hover),
Longmont, CO; 10-6 Friday, 9-5 Saturday, 10-5 Sunday.
****************
Officer Nominations from the Greater Denver Area
Gem & Mineral Council
Sharon
Hannu, Secretary
The
by-laws of the Greater Denver Area Gem and Mineral Council require the
Council to notify all member organizations of the nominating committee’s
nominations for Council officers. The nominating committee submitted their
slate of nominations for officers in 2013 at the September 26, 2012 Council
meeting. The Council by-laws require this information be communicated to
all clubs no less than 30 days prior to the election. The election will be
held November 14, 2012.
Nominating
Committee Report:
President: Janie
Bennett
Vice President:
Martin Hannu
Secretary: Sharon
Hannu
Treasurer: Bob
Berry
There
were no nominations from the floor at the September 26, 2012 Council
meeting. Nominations will be accepted from club members, provided the
nominee has accepted the nomination. Club members can give nominations to their
organization’s Council Trustee no later than November 1, 2012.
Council
Trustees:
CMS: Gary Rowe
Flatirons: Carl
Bird
FM: Jim Hurlbut
Guild: Kathy
Honda
Littleton: Nick
North
North Jeffco: Judy Knoshaug
RAMS: Ron Knoshaug
WIPS: Judith
Johnson
Respectfully
Submitted,
****************
Calendar of Events
Nov.
8 - FMC Club Meeting, 7:00 PM, West Boulder Senior Ctr,
9th & Arapahoe - Annual towel show
Nov.
9 - FMC December Show Committee Meeting - Clover Building, Boulder Co.
Fairgrounds, Longmont, 7 p.m. (Ray Gilbert)
Nov.
26 - FMC Board Meeting - Mathias Thurmer's HOA
Building. 7 p.m.
Nov.
29 - Junior Geologists Meeting, Boulder Public Library, Reynolds Branch, 6:30 p.m.
Dec.
7-9 - FMC Annual Gem & Mineral Show, Boulder County Fair Grounds,
Longmont - Volunteers needed!.
Dec.
20 - FMC
Club Meeting, 7:00 PM, West Boulder Senior Ctr,
9th & Arapahoe - Annual anonymous gift party!
Dec.
31 FMC Board Meeting - Conducted via e-mail
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Updated 11/8/12
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