Fossils Discovering Alabama Fossils

this program is supported by grants from the solon and martha dixon foundation the alabama wildlife federation working for wildlife since 1935 and the osher lifelong learning institute at the university of alabama providing educational and social opportunities for adults discovering alabama is a production of the alabama museum of natural history stand up no if you stay like this when i was a kid roaming the alabama outdoors with my buddies we were always coming across things that seemed a little bit unusual for many of us that curiosity sparked by the unusual never left us my own quest to understand the world can be traced back to my childhood years exploring the alabama wilds and in the decades since i first roamed this countryside i've had the good fortune to share my curiosity in conversation with numerous other educators and scientists and i've discovered that despite our differences we often have one thing in common at about age three i started finding small shell fossils in the limestone gravel in the alleyway behind my house so i liked collecting rocks i liked collecting shells and plants and things like that my my hobby ever since i was a kid has been has been hunting for fossils and growing up in chicago they always took us to the field museum and i was always fascinated by the dinosaurs the curiosity that motivates scientists and educators today was more often than not formed when we were kids exploring the wonders of nature and many times that curiosity was first sparked by a specific object a friend of my mother's gave her some sharks teeth that had been collected near montgomery while i was there i actually discovered a juvenile ceratopsian femur from that point on anytime anyone said what do you want to be when you grow up i always said i want to be a paleontologist fossils who among us doesn't delight in the idea of discovering a fossil [Music] here in alabama fossils can be found just about anywhere south where the sands meet the sea there are fossils across our state's mid section where ancient seas once bustled with life there are fossils in the coal country in the caves of north alabama [Music] fossils fossils everywhere hi i'm doug phillips today we're going fossil hunting across the state we'll discover how alabama is one of the significant places on the planet to uncover ancient life we'll get acquainted with long ago life both small and large join me as we go on a fossil hunt that digs deeply into the past while seeking to shed light on a very modern day conundrum how is it that fossils lead so many a young person down the path to a life of grime [Music] this program is about a land unknown to many people a land that in many ways has maintained its native natural wonders a place of bountiful backcountry forests streams and wildlife more diverse than can be found in much of the inhabited world come along with me as we explore the wild wonders of this land come along as we discover alabama [Music] welcome to discovering alabama and welcome to a land of lost worlds worlds created by the rise and fall of ancient seas created by the upsurge and the demise of mountains worlds once teeming with life now return to the dust of the earth or resurrected at a museum near you fossils the remains of ancient life preserved in geological layers of the earth and providing insights to the history of our earth alabama land of lost worlds many worlds over many millions of years and many periods of geological time as so wonderfully described in the popular book lost whirls in alabama rocks by fellow fossil enthusiast dr jim lacefield well alabama is special in several ways but one of the main ones is that because of our location right at the edge of the north american continent we have rocks from many different time periods so geologists can come to alabama from different parts of the world and they can study much of the geologic record of the types of changes over about the last half billion years that life has been through and the many geological periods spanning more than 500 million years can be grouped into three major eras from before the dinosaurs during the dinosaurs and after the dinosaurs what's unique about alabama is that evidence of all three eras can be found in rocks and sediments across the state actually taking us through time the rocks in northern alabama are often paleozoic with fossils several hundred million years old rocks from central parts of the state are mesozoic or from the time of the dinosaurs with most fossils here between 100 million and 66 million years old and all the rocks in south alabama are cenozoic meaning from the time after dinosaurs and since 66 million years ago alabama's variety of geological regions representing different geological periods is the basis for scores of fossil areas across the state too many to visit in one show but let's take a first-hand look at several impressive sites no this is not a moonscape from far across the reaches of space but it is a landscape revealing a world from far back in time this location known as harrell station is a chalky soil outcropping in middle alabama that like much of lower alabama was once covered by prehistoric seas of the cretaceous period fortunately for science and education the site is today owned by the university of alabama and managed by ua's alabama museum of natural history we have uh students that go there as part of their their courses researchers that go there alabama museum natural history has actually had numerous expeditions during the summers out at harrell station which resulted in many wonderful discoveries out there that then end up in our collections it's a it's a great place to have fossils for people that we've had a lot of school groups children and adults out here just introducing them to a type of of activity that they may never have been able to experience so this is an area where an ancient sea bottom ancient dinosaur age sea bottom is exposed and you can find uh fossils of vertebrates like mosasaurs swimming lizard-like animals sometimes even dinosaur remains here as well as a whole host of invertebrates that were alive at the time at harrell station nature's weathering has eroded alabama's surface to uncover the ancient layers of the past in other places the forces of nature have worked from beneath the surface in north alabama for example fossils can be found in deep layers from geological periods dating back several hundred million years one such site is the famous cave cathedral caverns today accessible to the public as one of alabama's great state parks alabama is one of the best states in the u.s for caves all the caves are cutting through limestones all these limestones would represent ancient seabeds all of them contained fossils i've never been to a single cave in northern alabama that was not full of fossils what a lot of people don't realize is when you're walking through the caverns if you look in the walls and look in the ceilings you can still see fossils from ancient organisms in the walls and in the ceiling you see that thing oh yeah the this is all the mississippian period here so these sharks teeth are some of the earliest ones uh you'll find in the state and really even in north america these are about 325 million year old sharks so very very very primitive it's easy to see pretty easy to identify yeah so this this is a species here of uh from the mississippian sub period it's called cybotus striatus it's actually one of the larger sharks you can find from this time period you can see a lot of evidence of other fossils around here you'll see some sea willy crinoid stems and such so could be some of the things that these early sharks were eating now of course nature isn't the only force that uncovers hidden history wherever we humans move large areas of earth very likely opportunities are uncovered to find fossils we are at st stephens quarry and what this is is we're standing in a 30 million year old seabed what we're doing today is we're fossil hunting vertebrate and invertebrate remains of all kinds of different sea creatures that lived once long ago make up this limestone the animals are where they died or where the teeth fell out of the shark so we're not going to find a big concentration of these animals we're going to have to spread out and look for them okay because they're just gonna be where they dropped in in a soft mud back some 30 million years ago look at that so our only window into these certain times in these certain areas are going to be through some sort of disturbance but these you know these are treasure trove of information for scientists excavation sites road cuts even quarries can at times yield evidence of lifelong past even in alabama's coal mines coal is not the only thing often uncovered was did the tree go down and it just got nope it grew up like this and when the tree fell over like that it squished into the mud and the least cars that were on the trunk of the tree uh that's what's preserved right there that is a clam it's a scallop kind of like you know scallops we got today in the ocean if you like seafood you're probably eating scallops at a seafood restaurant and this is a ancestor of those scallops only this thing was around 310 million years ago alabama fossil sites include some of the world's best records of creatures that once walked flew or swam across the face of the earth for example what's known as the old union chapel mine site the stephen c menken paleontological site in northwest alabama today is a world famous site with uniquely abundant fossilized tracks and trackway paths from roughly 280 million years ago this is extremely important it was not any exaggeration to say that this is the most important carboniferous trackway site in the world in terms of the number of species represented and a number of specimens that have been found we said that fossils you have two main groups so body fossils are remains of animals that lived in the past but trace fossil is a completely other group of fossils they are activities of organisms so what they produced when they were alive locomotion activities like feeding nesting so these are life activities this is the dead remains both very useful right in different senses some of alabama's more recent fossil explorations are being conducted in the coastal area right now we're standing on dolphin island what we're standing on right now is alabama's newest fossil site we're finding all sorts of sharks teeth invertebrate fossils and crab fossils so how is it that you find you know these teeth that are 10 000 years old along with teeth that could have popped out of a shark yesterday the sand that we're standing on right now on the beach this is actually sand that was dredged from offshore and dumped right here on land and so what's happening is that when they're dredging they're digging down to these older ice age deposits where all these teeth are there these are from deposits that are higher up so you know this could have been a shark just from three weeks ago or something that you know shed its teeth and there's digging down to lower deposits so you get a mix here on the beach the lower ones are t being one of our younger fossil sites in the state is actually telling us what the gulf of mexico was like three and a half million years ago we're looking at the origins of these recent species that we have in the gulf of mexico but we're also finding extinct things telling us that the environment is slightly different than it was today [Music] from where the coastal lowlands meet the sea up through her rolling hills and prairie lands to her mountainous region fossil evidence of lost worlds is a defining part of alabama's past lying in the layers of ancient rocks of changing geological periods down through time in rugged wilds in hidden meanders and fascinating outcroppings from north to south across the state [Music] fossils and the whole area of paleontology are part of what we call natural history the study of the history of earth and all the natural creatures and features of earth paleontology is the study of ancient life what animals were there in the past on land and in the sea and how did these animals interact with one another and how did climate change and the changes on the earth affect life and vice versa paleontology does give us a unique perspective on human existence that we do see way back in the time the changes that life has been through over tens of millions and hundreds of millions and even billions of years and what that allows us to do is understand that the earth of the future is going to be different than our earth of the present life is going to continue to change the landscape is going to continue to change the continental positions will continue to change and this progression that we've seen through time is going to continue way into the future perhaps long after humans are no longer around to take note of it of course evidence of the history of the earth and the record of life on earth is there to be explored all around the world but in my opinion not always as accessible as right here in our own backyard so let's say you're an alabama youngster and you want to explore fossils or heck let's say you're a big kid a grown-up with a keen interest in fossils well you're lucky alabama is home to a number of wonderful education and science centers with opportunities for fossil study and a sampling of these places will take us to different parts of the state way up to decatur for example to see the many interesting items on display at cook natural science museum but specifically we wanted to engage excite and educate people about what's outside of their door right here in north alabama that's why we do everything we do we want people to fall in love with learning so on this side we've got the gopher tortoise and of course this one lives on land or down to flamington for some nature study and to examine the fossil collections at turtle point environmental science center we have got a large donation of different types of fossils that came from rivers right around this area so this just gives them a chance to kind of understand the history of alabama and that's an exciting thing for them to realize and throughout alabama are exceptional opportunities for public enjoyment of natural history we're a very non-traditional museum where we're a science center a children's museum an imax theater an aquarium and a natural history museum all in one building and it's a wonderful venue where we can not only do the cutting edge research describing new fossil species and what it means but at the same time having the exhibits at mcwane we can interpret these things and disseminate the scientific information very easily to the general public when you first walk in our museum you're going to see a true-to-scale pteranodon hanging from the ceiling and when you look up and you you're you know maybe three and a half feet tall and you see this huge stranded on at in the ceiling that's terrifying but it's it's impactful and then they're like oh my gosh but what's next so here at the auburn university museum in natural history we are all the research collection so when you get a chance to visit here you get to actually see this is the heart of what a museum is it's curators that go out collect specimens understand our biodiversity on this planet and find ways of conserving it and about all the great places to learn about fossils in alabama i'd be remiss not to return to the home base of discovering alabama the alabama museum of natural history the alabama museum of natural history is one of the earliest museums of natural history in the nation a visit to its exhibit gallery is quite an experience including a very close encounter with the awesome size of alabama's state fossil bacillusaurus satoidis an ancient toothed whale that lived in the sea waters over lower alabama millions of years ago indeed the alabama museum of natural history is home for one of the best scientific collections of fossils in the south providing an exceptional resource for paleontological research yeah the museum stores over half a million fossils mostly from the state of alabama and those fossils are extremely important because they form the basis for loss of scientific research each year they're being used for teaching they're being used for making public exhibits either permanent or semi-permanent so in the paleontology collections we have some great strengths in particular we have one of the finest collections of mosasaurs these aquatic creatures that lived over 75 million years ago and we manage them in a way that makes them very accessible for research and so scientists sometimes come from all over the country to to study our fossil collections and the same can be said for our archaeological collections we have very rich collections and scientists come from all over to study those as well but scientific collections and research are not all of the important functions of the alabama museum of natural history so we have obviously in addition to the public exhibits we have here in our museum in smith hall we offer a variety of programs we go out to schools we have educational programs we serve a very broad spectrum of the population everything from school kids we have pre-k programs where parents will bring their kids in to do crafts that are tied into natural history and learning about plants and animals in the state i think we're lucky to work at a natural history museum because i feel like no matter what we have something that people are really into so maybe when they were kids they were really into dinosaurs we've got dinosaur stuff maybe they were really into fossils we've got fossil things maybe they're really into history we've got historical content too so i think we're fortunate in the content that we have in the museum that we no matter what you'll find something we have lots of kids very fortunate to have lots of kids that have grown up through the programs so we've gotten to see them come from age i don't know maybe 10 all the way up through graduating high school and then go on to four-year degrees that are in that same vein or that same content area which is kind of incredible you have to have educated citizens school kids that come through here that take pride in their environment and given a venue like the museum here its exhibits and programs produce content which i think is hopefully attractive and interesting and engaging to a general public you gotta come visit us sometimes we can create some great interdisciplinary experiences for the the general public in addition we can connect the important academic work of the university of alabama to the general public in ways that no other academic units at the university of alabama can in addition to visiting any of alabama's many science and natural history centers those wanting to explore alabama's lost worlds can join with members of alabama's amateur paleontological organizations the alabama paleontological society and the birmingham paleontological society the fossil realm in alabama is so rich no wonder so many are drawn by the intrigue by the mysteries no wonder so many are drawn to a life of grime searching for the evidence of lost worlds and ancient life and opportunities for that entry for exploring and learning about those mysteries are especially abundant right here at home in alabama [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] so discovering alabama is produced in partnership with the university of alabama college of continuing studies discovering alabama is produced in partnership with alabama public television discovering alabama is a production of the alabama museum of natural history this program is supported by grants from the solon and martha dixon foundation the alabama wildlife federation working for wildlife since 1935 and the osher lifelong learning institute at the university of alabama providing educational and social opportunities for adults

Channel: Discovering Alabama

Views: 5,548

Keywords: discovering alabama, alabama, alabama fossils, fossil, fossils, paleontology, paleontologist, paleontologists, dinosaurs, natural history, natural history education, science education, conservation, natural history museum, museum, museums, alabama public television, things to do in alabama

Id: PP1Ov3j_0tU

Length: 26min 42sec (1602 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 21 2021