e-wing Posted May 3, 2016 Share Posted May 3, 2016 Hello! I'm relatively new here, but I've been coming to this site for years to look at the great photos and read the discussions. I started this topic to share some of my own research that's going on right now about mass mortalities of marine invertebrates in Patagonia, Argentina. Over that past couple of years I've been working in Argentina, studying fossils (mostly decapods and mollusks) which were killed en masse by volcanic ash. We found some really interesting things in our first trip to the Valdes Peninsula, and documented that volcanic ash can have a killing effect on marine fauna even hundreds of kilometers away from the eruption! I'm also describing a new species of marine isopod that was found preserved in volcanic ash right now. This work is really exciting to me because there is a huge opportunity for new discovery. I hope to describe the numerous different effects volcanic ash has on marine ecosystems, and how they recover from catastrophic events. The ash also plays a really important role in fossil preservation processes, which I also hope to test and describe. I recently launched a "crowd funding" campaign on a website called experiment.com to help raise funds to go back to Argentina for a more comprehensive study of the mass kill sites we know about. If any of you are interested in learning more about the research, or donating to help support it, you can find a video, and other info at http://www.experiment.com/deathbyvolcanicash. I'm also interested in any comments or thoughts anyone has on this topic. I'm always looking for new field sites which may involve volcanic activity and marine fossils, and my research is also more broadly related to mass mortality events in the fossil record in general, so if anyone has any insight into any of this, please comment! Also, if anyone is in the Cleveland area, I'll be giving a talk to a local fossil club on Saturday, May 7th, so if anyone is interested, let me know! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
e-wing Posted May 3, 2016 Author Share Posted May 3, 2016 Here are a couple photos from our last trip to Argentina Each arrow represents a fossil crab! Here is what some of the volcanic ash looks like under the microscope. It's essentially just shards of broken glass, rock and mineral fragments. Nasty stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raggedy Man Posted May 3, 2016 Share Posted May 3, 2016 Hello and welcome to the forum. I look forward to reading about your research. I am curious about that isopod. I won't ask any specific questions about it, but are you able to divulge it's geological age? Thanks! Best regards, Paul ...I'm back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doushantuo Posted May 3, 2016 Share Posted May 3, 2016 (edited) thinking Jeff Heikoop(lethaia,1996) right now https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259287117_Corals_as_Proxy_Recorders_of_Volcanic_Activity_Evidence_from_Banda_Api_Indonesia and http://2dgf.dk/xpdf/bull50-1-115-123.pdf Edited May 3, 2016 by doushantuo 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joel77520 Posted May 3, 2016 Share Posted May 3, 2016 Sounds interesting...hope to hear more about your trip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plax Posted May 4, 2016 Share Posted May 4, 2016 the link works but a "bad font file" message comes up with a warning on my MAC. The text is all "A"s. A subject I'm interested in so a shame I can't see it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
e-wing Posted May 4, 2016 Author Share Posted May 4, 2016 Hello and welcome to the forum. I look forward to reading about your research. I am curious about that isopod. I won't ask any specific questions about it, but are you able to divulge it's geological age? Thanks! Best regards, Paul Thanks! I'm glad you're interested. The isopod is early Miocene age. I'm excited about it too because isopods are so rare in the fossil record. This one even has a few appendages preserved, which is even more rare! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
e-wing Posted May 4, 2016 Author Share Posted May 4, 2016 thinking Jeff Heikoop(lethaia,1996) right now https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259287117_Corals_as_Proxy_Recorders_of_Volcanic_Activity_Evidence_from_Banda_Api_Indonesia and http://2dgf.dk/xpdf/bull50-1-115-123.pdf Thanks! Those are both great papers that I cited frequently in my recent manuscript. There's really not a lot out there about volcanic ash in the marine record, when compared to terrestrial. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
e-wing Posted May 4, 2016 Author Share Posted May 4, 2016 the link works but a "bad font file" message comes up with a warning on my MAC. The text is all "A"s. A subject I'm interested in so a shame I can't see it. Hmm, I don't know what the problem could be. I will try to get it figured out. Thanks for letting me know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raggedy Man Posted May 4, 2016 Share Posted May 4, 2016 The link works just fine for me(iOS, android, windows). ...I'm back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raggedy Man Posted May 4, 2016 Share Posted May 4, 2016 Thanks! I'm glad you're interested. The isopod is early Miocene age. I'm excited about it too because isopods are so rare in the fossil record. This one even has a few appendages preserved, which is even more rare!I went to your link and discovered the age was Miocene. To be honest, I was hoping you were going to say you couldn't divulge the info. This would of made me consider an isopod in the fossil record that predates the Pennsylvanian specimens found in the mazon creek records. However, describing a new Miocene isopod species is still fantastic. I will definitely keep an eye out for the publication.Best regards, Paul ...I'm back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Pocock Posted May 4, 2016 Share Posted May 4, 2016 Very interesting post good luck with the project hope you can raise the funds you need. Do you have any images of the fossil crabs. Regards Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raggedy Man Posted May 4, 2016 Share Posted May 4, 2016 Very interesting post good luck with the project hope you can raise the funds you need. Do you have any images of the fossil crabs. Regards Mike If you visit his link and scroll down, it gives a detailed description of the research and images, crabs included. Best regards, Paul ...I'm back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doushantuo Posted May 4, 2016 Share Posted May 4, 2016 (edited) you might need papers like e.g.:Durig & sonder: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011JB008628/epdf or Wetzel: https://earth.unibas.ch/sedi/Publications%20pdf/Wetzel%202009%20Pinatubo%20ash%20layer%20preservation%20Sedimentology%2056.pdf also:Isn't the Fur formation volcanically influenced? yep,thought so: http://2dgf.dk/xpdf/bull32-01-02-43-65.pdf I'm also thinking:zeolitization and: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sally_Potter-McIntyre2/publication/277681145_Concretion_Formation_In_Volcaniclastic_Host_Rocks_Evaluating_the_Role_of_Organics_Mineralogy_and_Geochemistry_On_Early_Diagenesis/links/560da10708ae6cf6815403e7.pdf (Mind whirling crazily ): epiclastic sediments,Aegean Arc,sediment provenance studies(<<<>>lapses into insane muttering<<<<<>>>>>>) liu/cashman/rust: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283847081_Optimising_shape_analysis_to_quantify_volcanic_ash_morphology ostracods and volcanism: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236149322_Biotic_response_to_explosive_volcanism_Ostracod_recovery_after_Ordovician_ash-falls Edited May 4, 2016 by doushantuo 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doushantuo Posted May 4, 2016 Share Posted May 4, 2016 (edited) This shouldn't be new to you,but,hey............. http://eprints.port.ac.uk/3390/1/Wall-Palmer_etal_MarGeol_2011.pdf neither should this: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/EarthSci/people/m-kaminski/reprints-pdfs/Galeotti_etal2002.pdf Edited May 4, 2016 by doushantuo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plax Posted May 4, 2016 Share Posted May 4, 2016 I'm curious about the state of the crabs in the volcanic sediment. Do you ever get molts or are all all of the crab fossils representative of complete dead specimens? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
e-wing Posted May 11, 2016 Author Share Posted May 11, 2016 (edited) This shouldn't be new to you,but,hey............. http://eprints.port.ac.uk/3390/1/Wall-Palmer_etal_MarGeol_2011.pdf neither should this: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/EarthSci/people/m-kaminski/reprints-pdfs/Galeotti_etal2002.pdf Thanks for all the great papers! I'm familiar with many of them, but a couple of them are new to me, which is fantastic! I have found the literature on marine responses to volcanic events to be very sparse when compared with the terrestrial world. I'm particularly interested in the volcanic concretion paper, because I'm working on some concretions which are made entirely of volcanic glass shards right now, and there's some really neat chemistry and taphonomy going on with them. Thanks again! Edited May 11, 2016 by e-wing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
e-wing Posted May 11, 2016 Author Share Posted May 11, 2016 I'm curious about the state of the crabs in the volcanic sediment. Do you ever get molts or are all all of the crab fossils representative of complete dead specimens? That's a good question, that I looked into a good deal. They are mostly all corpses in "life position" which suggests that they were rapidly killed and buried. Some exhibit what looks to be an "escape position" that suggests they were trying to climb out of the accumulating sediment. Many are just concordant with the bedding and look like they died going about their daily life! It's very interesting. We can look for evidence of mass molting, which has been seen in some other crustacean fossil assemblages (I've seen isopods in mass molt assemblages), but we see no evidence of that here. Crabs exhibit a predictable molting position called Salter's position, which makes molts distinguishable from corpses. In our case there's no evidence of Slater's position. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doushantuo Posted May 11, 2016 Share Posted May 11, 2016 Any taphofacies analysis yet? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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