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Carnegie Museum of Natural History

One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

Benedum Hall of Geology

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Understanding Fossil Fuels through Carnegie Museums’ Exhibits

by Albert D. Kollar, Collection Manager, with assistance from Suzanne Mills, Collection Assistant, and Joann Wilson, Volunteer Section of Invertebrate Paleontology

The exhibits of Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Carnegie Museum of Art are ideal for a multidisciplinary study of fossil fuels in Pennsylvania and beyond. Such a study must properly begin with some historical background about the landmark Oakland building that houses both museums, as well as some background information about fossil fuels.

When the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh opened in 1895, the architects, Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow incorporated roof skylights for maximum daytime lighting in the Italian Renaissance designed building1. Nighttime activities were illuminated by interior gas lighting fixtures, possibly supplied by the Murrysville gas field, which began production in 1878.  With the opening of the Carnegie Institute Extension in 1907, the Bellefield Boiler Plant was built in Junction Hollow to supply in-house steam heat and electricity from bituminous coal1. From the 1970’s, coal and natural gas had been used to heat the boilers that supply heat to the Oakland Campus, Phipps, the University of Pittsburgh and the Oakland hospitals.  In 2009 coal was eliminated as a fuel source.  Electricity on the other hand, is supplied through Talen Energy from multiple sources (coal, gas, and renewal energy sources). For the future, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh plans to receive its electricity from renewable solar energy via Talen Energy2.

What are Fossil Fuels?

Coal, oil, and natural gas (methane), known collectively as fossil fuels, are sources of energy derived from the remains of ancient life forms that usually  are found preserved in coal rock, black shale, and sandstone.

Exhibit called "What's a Fossil Fuel?" Fossil fuels on display are labeled clockwise from the top as follows: peat, bituminous coal, anthracite coal, sub-bituminous coal, oil glass tubes, lignite.
Figure 1.

Coal is a rock. The coalification process starts from a thick accumulation of plant material in reducing environments where the organic matter does not decay completely. This deposit of plant residue that thrives in freshwater swamps at high latitudes forms peat, an early stage or rank in the development of coal. With the burial of peat over geologic time and a low temperature form of metamorphism produces a progression of the maturity or “rank” of the organic deposits that form the coal ranks of lignite, sub-bituminous, bituminous, and anthracite)3 (Fig. 1). The Pennsylvanian Period was named for the rocks and coals of southwestern Pennsylvania that formed more than 300 million years ago.

Oil and natural gas, collectively known as hydrocarbons, were forming in the Devonian rocks of Pennsylvania between 360 and 390 million years ago. These hydrocarbon deposits or kerogens are made of millions of generations of marine plankton and animal remains that accumulated in a restricted anoxia ocean basin that extended from southern New York, through western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia to eastern Kentucky4. The thick layers of sediment formed black shales or mud rocks such as the Marcellus Shale. Black shales are rich in oil and gas and are called source rocks. Sandstones such as the Oriskany Sandstone that is older than the Marcellus Shale is a reservoir rock. An amorphous mass of organic matter or kerogen undergo complex geochemical reshuffling of the hydrocarbon molecules first with burial then by thermal “cracking” as heat and pressure through the geologic process of metamorphism over millions of years transform kerogen into modern day fossil fuels4.

Fossil Fuels in Modern Society

As commodities converted to fuels for our modern world, these resources account for 80% of today’s energy consumption in the United States5. All three fossil fuels, in furnaces of vastly different design, have been used to directly heat homes, schools, workplaces, and other structures. In power plants, all three have been used for generating electricity for lighting, charging mobile phones, and powering computers, home appliances, and all manner of industrial machines. In the United States, , coal became the country’s primary energy source in the late 1880s, displacing the forest-destroying practice of burning wood. It ceded the top spot to petroleum in 1950 but enjoyed a late-20th-century renaissance as the primary fuel for power plants5. Coal now generates approximately 11% of our country’s supply down from 48% just 20 years ago. Natural gas is currently used to generate approximately 35% of US electricity supplanting the use of coal6. While petroleum is less than1%6.

Transportation accounts for approximately 37% of total energy consumption. Coal played a historic role in powering railroads, and both compressed natural gas and batteries (charged with electricity generated from various sources) are of growing importance, however, refined oil products currently power 91% of the transportation sector6.

Newspaper clipping from The Rodnen & Otamatea Times dated Wednesday, August 14, 1912. The story shown is as follows: Science Notes and News. Coal Consumption Affecting Climate. The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.
Figure 2.

In the early 20th century, scientists warned about how the burning of coal could create global warming in future centuries by raising the level of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse or heat-holding, gas, in the atmosphere. (Fig. 2 ). It took less than a century for evidence to mount of climate change associated with the burning of fossil fuels, the clearing of forests associated with industrial scale livestock production, and from waste management and other routine processes of modern life. In recent decades headlines have routinely proclaimed the risks of a warming planet, including damage to terrestrial ecosystems, the oceans, and a rise in sea level7.

Fossil Fuels and Museum Geology Displays

When architects Frank E. Alden and Alfred B. Harlow designed the Carnegie Institute Extension (1907), they incorporated Andrew Carnegie’s vision to create an introduction hall to the museum named Physics, Geology and Mineralogy8. This hall (the forerunner to Benedum Hall of Geology) was intended to introduce Pittsburghers to the regional natural history subjects of geology, paleontology, and economic geology (fossil fuels)9.

Exhibit in Benedum Hall of Geology with fake trees in the foreground and a swamp diorama in the background.
Figure 3.

In the 1940s, the 300-million-year-old Pennsylvanian age coal forest diorama was installed in a corner space of what is now part of the Benedum Hall of Geology (Fig. 3). Because coal converted to coke is a vital ingredient in steel production, this three-dimensional depiction of the conditions under which Pittsburgh’s economically important coal deposits formed was (and remains) an important public asset.

Exhibit labeled Pennsylvanian Marine Life. Below the sign is a diorama designed to look like an aquarium.
Figure 4.

In 1965, as part of an overall plan to bring more of the natural history museum’s fossil collection to the public, Paleozoic Hall opened with funding from the Richard King Mellon Foundation10. This exhibition featured nine dioramas that recreate the ancient environments through 290 million years of Earth history. Sadly, only one of the nine units remains on display, the diorama depicting the Pennsylvanian age marine seaway (Fig. 4 ), in the Benedum Hall of Geology.

Since the Benedum Hall of Geology opened to the public in 1988 the exhibition has featured an economic geology component with displays explaining differences between coal ranks Lignite coal to anthracite coal, and a variety of Pennsylvania’s crude oils and lubricants processed from the historic well Edwin Drake drilled in Titusville in 1859 (Fig. 1 )11.

Benedum Hall of Geology strata wall. Shows different colors of rock stratigraphy from left to right: tan, blue-grey, maroon, beige, dark gray, olive green.
Figure 5.

Today, the Hall’s “strata wall,” a towering depiction of some of the rock layers found thousands of feet below western Pennsylvania, is in my opinion, an under-utilized display in terms of conveying information about fossil fuels. Although the wall is not currently documented with any geologic information, minor changes might allow visitors to use the lens of rock strata  to better understand historical events such as the Drake Well, and economically important geologic reservoirs such as the Marcellus Shale (the second largest gas deposit in the United States), the natural gas storage reservoir of the Oriskany Sandstone, and the gas and liquid condensate (ethane) extracted from the Utica Formation (Ordovician Age) for making plastic products at the Shell Cracker Plant in Beaver County, PA (Fig. 5 ).

Exhibit case labeled Holzmaden. A blue arrow points to a crinoid fossil.
Figure 6.

Elsewhere in the museum, visitors can learn more about the topic of fossil fuels at several other locations. At the Holzmaden fossil exhibit in Dinosaurs in Their Time, there is a large fossil crinoid preserved in a dark gray limestone of Jurassic age, that represents a  reservoir of crude oil in Germany (Fig. 6). At the mini diorama of the La Brea tar pits, oil seeps from natural fractures from an approximately six-million-year-old rock of Miocene age,  to the unconsolidated surface sediment in what is now part of the City of Los Angeles (Fig. 7).

La Brea tar pits diorama. A vulture sits on a tree above the tar pits.
Figure 7.

Looking for Fossil Fuel Evidence in Art

In 2018, I reviewed 58 landscape paintings and the John White Alexander wall murals on the first and second floors of the Grand Staircase within Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA) galleries to look for artistic documentation of what I interpreted to be causes for climate change based on the science. I found many examples based on the use of coal as a fossil fuel for power and coking in steel mills and the natural formation of bio-methane as portrayed in ecosystem landscapes of  the industrial age of the middle 19th and early 20th century12.

Collage of coal landscapes. Clockwise from top right: Waterloo Bridge, London, Claude Monet c. 1903; The Great Bridge, Rouen (Le Grand Pont, Rouen), Camille Pissarro, c. 1896; Pittsburgh Fifty Years Ago from the Salt Works on Saw Mill Run, Russell Smith, c. 1884; The Crowning of Labor Murals, John White Alexander, c. 1905 - 1908; The Coal Carrier, David Gilmore Blyth, c. 1854 - 1858
Figure 8.

Collage of five illustrations of steel mills
Figure 9.

Searching for the CMOA landscapes paintings takes a little patience, but the visitor is rewarded by taking a new look at some of the art museum’s classic paintings (Fig. 8 and 9).

Three historic landmark signs. On left: First Mining of Pittsburgh Coal. This State's bituminous coal industry was born about 1760 on Coal Hill, now Mt. Washington. Here the Pittsburgh coal bed was mined to supply Fort Pitt. This was eventually to be judged the most valuable individual mineral deposit in the U.S. Sign on the top right: Drake Well Park. On this site Col. Edwin Drake struck oil Aug. 27, 1859; the birth of the petroleum industry. Sign on the bottom right: Murrysville Gas Well: First gas well in county and one of the world's most productive. Drilled, 1878. Caught fire in 1881, burning for years with tremendous roar and brilliance. Later was controlled and piped to Pittsburgh. Site lies 500 yards S.E. near railroad.
Figure 10.

Within day trip visiting distance of Carnegie Museums are historic plaques highlighting the discovery of coal on Mount Washington, natural gas in Murrysville, and oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania. (Fig. 10). At all three stops you’ll have a better understanding of the significance if you begin your investigation of fossil fuels at Carnegie Museums.

Albert D. Kollar is the Collection Manager for the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology. Suzanne Mills is the Collection Assistant and Joann Wilson is a volunteer Section of Invertebrate Paleontology. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

References

  1. Kollar, A.D. 2020. CMP Travel Program and Section of Invertebrate Paleontology promotes the 125th Anniversary of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh with an outdoor walking tour. https://carnegiemnh.org/125th-anniversary-carnegie-library-of-pittsburgh-outdoor-walking-tour/
  2. Personal communications Anthony J. Young, Vice President (FP&O) Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.
  3. Brezinski, D. K. and C K. Brezinski. 2014. Geology of Pennsylvania’s Coal. PAlS Publication Number 18.
  4. Geology of the Marcellus Shale. 2011. Brezinski, D.K., D. A. Billman, J.A. Harper, and A.D. Kollar. PAlS Publication 11.
  5. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-03/coal-consumption-in-the-u-s-declines-as-natural-gas-solar-wind-energy-rise
  6. United States Energy Agency (EIA) 2019.
  7. Bill Gates. 2021. How to Avoid A Climate Disaster.
  8. Kollar et al. 2020. Carnegie Institute Extension Connemara Marble: Cross-Atlantic Connections Between Western Ireland and Gilded Age Architecture in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ACM, 86, 207-253.
  9. Dawson, M. R. 1988. Benedum Hall of Geology. Carnegie Magazine, 12-18.
  10. Eller, E. R. 1965. Paleozoic Hall. Carnegie Magazine, 255-338.
  11. Harper and Dawson 1992. Benedum Hall-A Celebration of Geology. Pennsylvania Geology, 23, 12-15.
  12. Kollar et al. 2018. Geology of the Landscape Paintings at the Carnegie Museum of Art, a Reflection of the “Anthropocene” 1860-2017. Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, v. 49, 243.

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Carnegie Museum of Natural History Blog Citation Information

Blog author: Kollar, Albert
Publication date: May 5, 2021

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Behind the Scenes with the Baron de Bayet and L. W. Stilwell Collection Part 3:  The Wild West Formed Million of Years Ago

New to this series? Read Part 1 and Part 2.

photo of Badlands National Park
Figure 1:  Badlands National Park today, National Park Service photo, 2014.   This view of the Badlands topography illustrates the erosion that took place over the last 2 million years.

The Lakota called the Badlands “Mako Sica” or “land bad.” The early French-Canadian trappers referred to it as “les mauvais terres pour traverse” or “bad lands to travel through.”  Seventy-five million years ago, this area was a lush underwater seaway filled with creatures such as mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, diving birds, fish, baculites, and ammonites (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Taxa that swam in the Western Interior Seaway from Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibit at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.  Photo by Patty Dineen.

The Stilwell fossils of Cretaceous age (Figure 3) were deposited in a black mud that accumulated on the sea floor from 82 to 70 million years ago (Figure 4).  The Pierre Shale is part of the extensive Western Interior Seaway of North America (Figure 5).  Museum visitors can view a changing geographic representation of the seaway on a wall-mounted flat screen monitor within the Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibit.  The seaway extended from the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, and southern Gulf Coast, north through Texas, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, and the Canadian Provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. This vast waterway terminated in the Artic region of Canada.  At the time of the Pierre Sea, the ice sheet-free greenhouse to hothouse paleoclimate was much warmer than it is today, creating the highest sea levels in earth’s history.  Sea level rises and falls were primarily controlled by the presence or melting of glaciers in the polar regions, the shifting of the continents, and the uplifting of proto-Rocky Mountains by plate tectonics.

Figure 3:  Western Interior Seaway fossils on display at Carnegie Museum’s Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibit.  Stilwell fossils are highlighted in blue.
Figure 4: Outcrop photo of Pierre shale.
Figure 5:  Western Interior Seaway approximately 75 million years ago. Red dot locates Deadwood, South Dakota today.

Fast forward to the Wild West of the 1890’s, and dealers such as Stilwell found and sold fossils to museums and private collectors.  Knowledge of Badlands fossils spread as far as Europe, and by 1889 Bayet wanted some for his own collection.

Next, in our final post of this series, we will delve into the Stilwell-Bayet correspondence in search of clues about how fossils were bought and sold over a century ago.

Joann Wilson is an Interpreter for the Department of Education and a volunteer with the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology. Albert Kollar is Collections Manager for the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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Behind the Scenes with the Baron de Bayet and L. W. Stilwell Collection, Part 2:  The Wild West a Century Ago

black and white photo of Deadwood from a distance
Figure 1:  Deadwood, Dakota Territories 1879.   Image courtesy of the Deadwood Historic Preservation Commission, City of Deadwood Archives.
black and white photo of a Deadwood street
Figure 2:  Deadwood, Dakota Territories 1879.  Image Courtesy of Deadwood Historic Preservation Commission, City of Deadwood Archives.

Fancy yourself on the hottest day in summer in the hottest spot of such a place without water — without an animal and scarce an insect astir — without a single flower to speak pleasant things to you and you will have some idea of the utter loneliness of the Bad Lands.”   Thaddeus Culbertson, 1850

When Lucien Stilwell stepped off the stagecoach on September 25, 1879, he was not your typical visitor to Deadwood.  Photos of Stilwell in later years show a thin scholarly figure with glasses. In 1879, Deadwood, Dakota Territories was known for gold prospecting, gambling and lawlessness.  Just three years prior, Wild Bill Hickock had been shot in the back while playing poker here.  It would be a few more years until Seth Bullock, first sheriff of Deadwood, would begin to bring order to town.

As Stilwell stepped off the stagecoach, he was leaving a fifteen-year career in the grocery and grain business in Cairo, Illinois.  A yellow fever epidemic blanketing parts of the United Sates prompted him to uproot his life.  He arrived just one day before a fire destroyed over 300 buildings and displaced over 2000 people in Deadwood.   According to Michael Runge, City Archivist of Deadwood South Dakota, photos of Deadwood in 1879 (Figures 1 and 2), were taken just before the great fire.  If you look closely at Figure 2, you can see a law office, hardware store, liquor store, and city market.

Despite the great fire and the dangers of Deadwood, Lucien W. Stilwell found a job at a bank, brought his family to town and built a home.  Along the way, he became fascinated by the fossils in the surrounding Black Hills.   He began a careful study of the region and developed relationships with other fossil collectors.   Eventually, he turned his hobby into a side business.

photo of faculties fossil
Figures 3 & 4:  CM 33067 – Baculites collected by Stilwell.  Baculites, translated as “walking stick rock”, are an extinct group of straight cephalopods that swam the seas 75 to 80 million years.  “Sutures” or growth lines are formed when the animal adds new shell material as it grows.  Sutures assist paleontologists in the identification of the genus and species.

Prior to leaving the bank in 1890, Stilwell began selling Badland fossils and minerals.  In a correspondence to the Baron de Bayet of Brussels dated January 12, 1889, Stilwell said, “I tried to catch your meaning in your last letter.  As I understand it, you wanted one of every specie and variety of fossils I had, excepting the large and costly specimens of mammals.”    

In one letter to Bayet, Stilwell wrote, “I put in a number of baculites, all of which have some different interest.  One is to show fine sutures another to show iridescence to rare degree, another to show size, another to show form so differing as to be a specie of baculite by another name…”   Albert Kollar of the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology explained that in circumstances when the exact stratigraphic locality is questionable, having the original fossil labels as seen in Fig. 4 are critical to accurate fossil identification.  Stillwell was a capable researcher because of his grasp of the geology and paleontology of the Badlands region.  Figures 3 and 4 show a baculites sold by Stilwell to Bayet.  There are 100 Stilwell fossils in the 130,000 specimen Bayet collection.

The next post in this series will explore why dealers such as Lucien W. Stilwell, found so many fossils in the Badlands.

Many thanks to the generous assistance of Michael Runge, Archivist for the City of Deadwood, South Dakota.

Joann Wilson is an Interpreter for the Department of Education and a volunteer with the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology. Albert Kollar is Collections Manager for the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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The Giant Eurypterid Trackway: A Great Fossil Discovery on Display in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Figure 1.

When museum patrons enter Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Benedum Hall of Geology, they encounter a one-ton block of coarse sandstone with a series of bilateral footprints encased on the rock’s surface. Most visitors don’t know what type of creature made these footprints (Fig. 1) or realize that this fossil trackway represents one of the great fossil discoveries in the history of western Pennsylvania paleontology.

Figure 2. Illustration by Kay Hughes.

Last month, the cover of Pennsylvania Geology (Fig. 2) helped address both deficiencies. The magazine bears a colorful illustration by Kay Hughes of a 315 million-year-old scene: a large six-legged arthropod emerging from the water and dragging its tail onto a sand bar among fallen Lepidodendron logs. The intruder is a Giant Eurypterid, a creature known to science as Palmichnium kosinskiorum, and a member of an extinct family of arthropods informally called “sea scorpions” that are distant biological cousins.

Within the journal is a fuller explanation for the artistic interpretation of the creature behind the Benedum Hall trackway, an article I co-wrote with Kay Hughes and John Harper titled, Reflections on Palmichnium kosinskiorum-The Footprints of Pennsylvania’s Elusive Elk County Monster.

Fortuitous Discovery

Figure 3. Photograph of Elk County in situ trackway looking southward (Brezinski and Kollar 2016).

Figure 4. Trackway closeup showing tail drag on display in Benedum Hall of Geology (Brezinski and Kollar 2016)

Seventy-two years ago, in an Elk County section of the Allegheny National Forest, James Kosinski, a preparator in the Education Department of Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and his brother Michael were hunting deer in heavily wooded terrain. When Michael stumbled upon a large sandstone boulder bearing a pattern of unusual impressions, he informed James, who (Fig. 3) immediately recognized the impressions as the fossil tracks of an unknown animal (Fig. 4).

Later, when James described the discovery to Carnegie Museum’s Dr. E. Rudy Eller, Curator of the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology, and Dr. J. Leroy Kay, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, plans were made to remove a section of the boulder containing the best-preserved section of the trackway and transport the heavy block to the museum.

Exhibit History

Figure 5. Former Paleozoic Hall Silurian Period Marine Diorama with Eurypterids.

Upon arrival at the museum in 1948, the sandstone block was prepared for exhibition and placed near the museum’s Coal Forest exhibit in 1949. In 1965, the trackway was incorporated as a floor centerpiece in the newly open Paleozoic Hall which featured dioramas of characteristic life forms of that Era’s time periods (Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Pennsylvanian, and Permian) along with representative fossils from the museum collection. (Fig. 5) In 1998, when Paleozoic Hall was dismantled, the trackway was placed temporarily in the Invertebrate Paleontology lab. The trackway returned to public view in 2007 as part of Bizarre Beasts, a temporary exhibition in the R. P. Simmons Family Gallery about unusual life forms. When Bizarre Beasts closed, I worked with James Senior, Chair of the museum’s Exhibit Department, to place the trackway in the Benedum Hall of Geology entrance as an introduction to great fossil discoveries from western Pennsylvania.

The Research – Locality Data Supports Recent Theory

The fossil trackway was initially identified by Dr. Kay as a hopping reptile inhabiting a Pennsylvanian coal forest 300 million years ago. Although Dr. Eller, citing his own research, suggested the track was formed by a crawling eurypterid, it would take 35 more years for the fossil trackway to be studied by expert arthropod paleontologists from Europe.

The eventual designation of Palmichnium kosinskiorum as a holotype specimen (CM 34388), a category of first order scientific importance, dates to the fossil’s description as a eurypterid trackway in a 1983 research paper by Dr. Derek E. G., Briggs and Dr. W. D. J. Rolfe, titled, A giant arthropod trackway from the Lower Mississippian of Pennsylvania (Journal of Paleontology, 57, 377 – 390). In paleontology, when a non-scientist such as Michael Kosinski discovers a fossil of importance, paleontologists, in this case Derek Briggs and Ian Rolfe, name the new fossil species after the founder, hence P. kosinskiorum.

For years, paleontologists in the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology assumed the scientific conclusions of Briggs and Rolfe (1983) about the eurypterid trackway were beyond dispute. This situation changed in 2009, when Yale University Professor Adolph Seilacher, a world-renowned expert on fossil trackways visited the museum. While Briggs and Rolfe concluded the trackway formed in a marine sandstone, Seilacher explained to me that the trackway was likely formed in an eolian or wind-blown sand environment. He also recommended that someone investigate the rocks at the fossil location in Elk County to substantiate his hypothesis.

Figure 6. D.K. Brezinski at trackway. 

Later that year, when I accompanied David K. Brezinski, Associate Curator Adjunct, Section of Invertebrate Paleontology, to re-locate and re-examine the sandstone boulder with the remaining tracks, we discovered the original geologic and deposition conclusion by Briggs and Rolfe (1983) was incorrect (Fig. 6). In 2011, we reported these new findings at the Northeastern Sectional Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Pittsburgh.  After the meeting, we continued our research and eventually published our conclusion that the geologic age of the trackway was Early Pennsylvanian age and the embedded footprints represented a fluvial sand bar environment of deposition.(Reevaluation of the Age and Provenance of the Giant Palmichnium Kosinskiorum Eurypterid Trackway, from Elk County, Pennsylvania, Brezinski and Kollar (2016),  Annals of Carnegie Museum 84, 39 – 45,)

School Groups and Museum Interpreters

Based upon repeated anecdotal reports from the Interpreters who guide tour groups through the museum’s exhibit halls, the eurypterid trackway is one of the most celebrated education stops for elementary school students. According to Interpreter Patty Dineen, the appealing factors of the trackway include the size and possible scariness of the creature who made the tracks, the fact the track-maker lived long before the dinosaurs, the fossil’s local origin, and the sheer amount for information that can be gathered from the ancient preserved tracks.

Figure 7. Interpreter field trip.

As part of an effort to better inform school groups about the eurypterid trackway, in 2017 Patty Dineen and Joann Wilson, co-coordinators and instructors for the museum’s Natural History Interpreters, arranged for six Interpreters to participate in a PAlS geology fall field trip to the fossil site in Elk County. (Fig. 7) An important by-product of field excursion was the creation of an instructional video that explains how museum scientists conduct research.

“Treasures of the Carnegie” Planning for a better Trackway Experience

Now that an illustration exists (Fig. 1) of the eurypterid that shaped the trackway walking out of the 315 million-year-old Olean River onto a sand bar, it might be time to consider how to best devise an improved visual and virtual tour experience for the Carnegie patrons and school groups.

Albert D. Kollar is Collections Manager for the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum staff, volunteers, and interns are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

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Citizen Science, The Last Ice Age in Western Pennsylvania and Carnegie Museum of Natural History Exhibits

Recent education initiatives in the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology encourage citizen science collaborations among professional geological societies to elevate the value of fossil collections, research and museum exhibits of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. For example, this April, 20 members of the North Alleghenies Geological Society were introduced to exceptional Pennsylvanian age fossils on display in Benedum Hall of Geology, i.e., the giant Eurypterid trackway (discovered in Elk County, PA) and the amphibian fossil skull Fedexia (discovered in Moon Twp., near the Pittsburgh International Airport), and the Jurassic age Lyme Regis of England, Holzmaden and Solnhofen fossils of Germany in Dinosaurs in Their Time. And yes, we did view the Carnegie dinosaurs from the Morrison Formation of Sheep Creek, Wyoming and Dinosaur National Monument, Jensen, Utah. The group was amazed with the behind-the-scenes in fossil invertebrates. This month, another citizen science field trip event took place to Slippery Rock Gorge and Moraine State Park in Butler and Lawrence Counties for 40 members of the Pennsylvania Council of Professional Geologists (PCPG). The title of the field trip: The Last Ice Age in Western Pennsylvania: A Changing Climate as Seen in the Glacial Landscape co-led by Albert D. Kollar of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Dan A. Billman (Billman Geologic Consultants, Inc). Dan and his wife Pam (both geologists) are longtime supporters of the section and museum. They are members of the section’s PAlS (Patrons and lauradanae Supporters). Dan co-authored the 2011 PAlS Publication 11, Geology of the Marcellus Shale and has provided drill cuttings of the 390 million-year-old Marcellus Shale for the section’s Geology and Energy workshops. Dan served as president of PCPG in 2017 and 2018 and asked if I would be interested to co-lead a glacial geology field trip for PCPG in June of 2019.

The 23,000 year old Jacksville Esker in Butler County, PA. The esker is the ridge between the shrubs and base of the tree line.

So why propose a field trip to the region known with the best-preserved landscapes of the Last Ice Age in western Pennsylvania? In Dan’s opinion, many of the PCPG members are certainly aware of the current discussion on human induced climate change but may be less familiar with the climate change and landscapes that occurred and formed respectively just 23,000 years ago. For instance, a summary of the professional affiliations of the 40 participants on the field trip confirms a division of sorts in disciplines. The dominant groups in attendance are made up of sixteen environmental geologists, followed by nine oil and gas geologists, four with PA DEP, four earth resource scientists, four geologic consultants, two academic professors, and one part-time school teacher – who asked to volunteer in the section – a new citizen scientist for the section.

To plan the field trip, we reviewed past geologic field trip guides and publications on the subject and visited the sites several times over the last six months. We also looked at key exhibits in the Carnegie Museum that mimic many of the glacial and climate change features that we would see on the field trip. These include the bedrock geology of western Pennsylvania i.e., coal, sandstone, limestone and shale that represent depositional cycles associated with the Milankovitch cyclothems and Earth’s precession. These are related to some 120 glaciation events in the rock record that occurred over Permo-Carboniferous time (Pennsylvanian Period) 319 MA to Early Permian 270 MA. In the museum dioramas: A replica coal forest and coeval marine seaway can be seen in Benedum Hall of Geology. In Botany Hall, the Northern Pennsylvania Bog is an example of a glacial tundra bog like the West Liberty Bog – a paleoclimate indicator. And the Muskox exhibit of the Arctic tundra biome is representative of the Alpine permafrost periglacial environment in the Appalachian ridges, which formed “rock city”. The Last Glacial Maximum, a +/-23,000-year-old Kent glacial terminal moraine, Jacksville Esker, and the scenic gorge at Cleland Rock were the highlights of the trip.

Blog post by Albert D. Kollar, collection manager in the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and Dan A. Billman of Billman Geologic Consultants, Inc.

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Benedum Hall of Geology –  A Teaching Laboratory for the Carnegie Interpreters

The new class of Education Interpreters of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History are training for their new positions through classroom instruction and practicing their presentations on the exhibit floors. The new name of Interpreters supersedes the language of Docents that previously described educators leading museum tours.  The Interpreters are enthusiastic, eager to learn, and rely on their diverse backgrounds and experiences to find their comfort zone about natural history sciences. Their training is being coordinated by Patty Dineen and Joann L. Wilson of CMNH Education.

As the museum’s geologist and invertebrate paleontologist, I’ve been asked to help train the Interpreters on geologic time, and to expound upon some of the new science recently published on the fossils and exhibits on display in Benedum Hall of Geology.  Most Interpreters have little or no working knowledge about geology and paleontology. This is not unusual in the least, as many of our patrons are not schooled in the geologic sciences. That’s unfortunate, because the scientific principles of geologic time, evolution, extinction, climate change, and biodiversity, are featured throughout the dioramas as noted in Benedum Hall of Geology, Dinosaurs in Their Time, Age of Mammals: The Cenozoic Era and Ice Age – The Pleistocene.

group of interpreters in from of dinosaur display

Andrew Carnegie’s interest in geology, paleontology and minerals is well documented. He instructed the Carnegie architects Alden & Harlow to design museum galleries to showcase the museum’s growing collections in invertebrate fossils, Vertebrate Paleontology (dinosaurs), and Minerals for his museum that opened in 1907. Some eighty years later, Alden & Harlow’s gallery opened as Benedum Hall of Geology and was recognized as the premier public exhibition to celebrate the geologic history of the state of Pennsylvania (Dawson 1988 and Harper & Dawson 1992). Even though the hall’s dioramas are more than 30 years old, most of the science concepts are relatively unchanged.

Over the last several years, publications and geology guides by section staff, research associates, and volunteers present new science on some of the hall’s content. For example, Brezinski & Kollar 2011 determined from years of field work in the central Appalachian Basin, the relationship of Pennsylvanian Age climate change events and congruent biotic responses, i.e., the evolution and extinction of the short lived Fedexiaamphibian. The fossil climate events as cited in the publication can be inferred through the content in the Pennsylvanian Coal Forest, Pennsylvanian Marine Life, and local stratigraphy dioramas – and as an extension to the modern anthropogenic climate events.

Two famous fossils discovered from western Pennsylvania, the giant eurypterid trackway from Elk County, PA (Brezinski & Kollar 2016 & Harper, Kollar & Hughes in press) and Fedexia striegeli, an amphibian skull from Moon Twp. (Berman, Henrici, Brezinski, Kollar 2010) are exciting new fossils to look at.  There are several unpublished education manuscripts that address other content in the hall: What Do Fossils Tell Us– brachiopod evolution and extinction (Kollar, Carter (deceased) & Hughes), Strata Wall (Kollar), and What’s A Fossil Fuel (Kollar).

In their instruction with me, the Interpreters receive printed handouts summarizing the published citations and section geology guides relevant to the hall’s dioramas.  The PAlS guides are, Geology of the Marcellus Shale 2011 (Strata Wall), History and Geology of Pennsylvania Petroleum 2012 (Stratavator), Geology of Pennsylvania’s Coal 2014 (Fossil Fuel), and The Geological Evolution of Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers (Where has the Water Gone).  The Interpreters are the museum’s ambassadors to the public, our advocates of Carnegie science, collections, and exhibitions. Welcome.

Albert D. Kollar is the Collection Manager in the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.