Continental trace fossils and museum exhibits - Geological Curators ...

eggs, are displayed just above, next to theMississippian core. The core is near a ‘rock video’monitor which uses songs with catchy lyrics to explainthat Ohio is not like it used to be in the prehistoric past(Hannibal 1998a). The songs and accompanying videodo not include a discussion of trace fossils, but theydo provide context for Ohio’s fossils.The Museum’s Smead Discovery Center is a largeroom designed for young people to visit in order toexamine and, when appropriate, play with materials.It contains one real dinosaur foot impression, a largespecimen that was placed there because it had noaccompanying data and was not scientificallyimportant. Several replicas of dinosaur trackways arealso included in this hands-on area. Dinosaurfootprints also appear on a bronze sundial, designedby sculptor Walter Matia in 2004. The sundial,representing the evolution of life over time, is locatedoutside of the Museum.Trace fossils and urban field tripsTrace fossils have been part of field trips and classesfor the general public, teachers and students at theCleveland Museum of Natural History for many years.Trace fossils are readily encountered in visits to localstream outcrops. In the urban setting, trace fossils arealso encountered in slabs of the Lower CarboniferousSalem Limestone, which is also known by thecommercial name of Indiana limestone, as it has longbeen quarried in south-central Indiana. The mostvisually striking of these urban ichnofossils is‘Margaritichnus’, an elongate form marked in partwith partitions. This trace fossil, noted by otherdesignations, including worm castings (Shrock 1935),has long been known from the Salem Limestone.‘Margaritichnus’ is found in stone used for a numberof buildings in Cleveland, including Saint John’sCathedral downtown and, closer to the Museum, theVeteran’s Administration Hospital and buildings onthe Case Western Reserve University campus(Hannibal and Schmidt 1991, figure 2). Theichnofossil is also found in Indiana limestone usedfor structures in many other cities in the UnitedStates.New Mexico Museum of Natural Historyand ScienceTrace fossil collectionAs noted above, the New Mexico Museum of NaturalHistory and Science (NMMNH) houses NorthAmerica’s most extensive collection of Permianvertebrate footprints (Figure 5). This collection hasbeen extensively documented (see articles in LucasFigure 5. A characteristic Early Permian vertebratefootprint from New Mexico, NMMNH P-2459, assignedto Ichniotherium, the track of a diadectomorph ‘amphibian’.Scale is in centimetres.and Heckert 1995, Lucas et al. 2005). Numerousinvertebrate trackways and other traces of Permianage are also part of this collection. Furthermore, theMuseum has a large collection of Triassic vertebratetracks (Figures 6, 7) and invertebrate trails from NewMexico, as well as smaller collections of Jurassic,Cretaceous and Cenozoic vertebrate and invertebratetraces from New Mexico. The emphasis of thecollection is on nonmarine trace fossils from fluvialand lacustrine palaeoenvironments. The traces arehoused on open shelving in an approximately 1,000square-foot area within the Museum’s GeoscienceCollection. However, plans are underway to movethe collection into a newly remodelled, larger space,so that the trace fossil collection will have its ownseparate area with much room for expansion. TheMuseum also has large holdings of Permian andTriassic vertebrate coprolites (fossil faeces) (Hunt etal. 1998). The coprolites are housed in metal cabinetstogether with other fossils, mostly bones and teeth,from the same or nearby sites.-265-