Thursday, September 15, 2011

Late Cambrian Brachiopod Talk on 09-30-2011

Cambrian Brachiopod Obolella crassa

Dr. Rebecca Freeman, lecturer at the Earth & Environmental Sciences Department of the University of Kentucky, will present "Brachiopod Extinction and Predation During the Late Cambrian" on September 30, 2011.  This talk will be given at the meeting of the Kentucky Paleontological Society (KPS) of Lexington, Kentucky. Learn more about Dr. Freeman at the U of K web site.

From the KPS "Paleozine" newsletter (Sept. 2011, Vol. 19, No. 9):

"Dr. Freeman’s research uses systematic taxonomy and
biostratigraphy to address the broader issue of understanding
how brachiopods responded to a series of extinction
events that repeatedly affected Laurentian trilobites
during the Late Cambrian–earliest Ordovician. She is also
interested in how linguliform brachiopod diversity was
affected by these extinction events, and whether these
events played a role in the transition from the Cambrian
Fauna, with a dominance of linguliform brachiopods, to
the Paleozoic Fauna, with a dominance of rhynchonelliform
brachiopods."
 
 
The meeting will start at 7:30 PM in the Mines and Minerals Resources Building, Room 101, Rose Street, University of Kentucky campus in Lexington.  Free parking at the structure on Hilltop Avenue. Visit the KPS web site for more information: www.kyps.org

Cambrian Brachiopod Obolella gemma
The brachiopod illustrations were obtained from Second contribution to the studies on the Cambrian faunas of North America by Charles Doolittle Walcott (1886),  Plate X figures 1 and 2.  Images were enhanced and resized before posting.  Book is available at Google Books for free and it is the scan of the copy at the Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College which once belonged to Dr. Alex Agassiz given to him by Charles Walcott on December 13, 1886.  See image of personal inscription: