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Riccardo Levi-Setti Donates Famous Trilobite


piranha

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A classic fossil, returned to it's home. :wub:

Excellent story!

Thanks for the links, Scott! :D

Regards,

 

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    Tim    -  VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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According to the reporting in this article, AMNH offered $10,000 to donate it there.

 

It's refreshing to know that sometimes money is valueless.  Well handled... Bravo!

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That certainly demonstrates integrity and a healthy comprehension of the paleontological value of this specimen as opposed to the merely pecuniary advantage. Very laudable.

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...How to Philosophize with a Hammer

 

 

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Thumbs up for the Dr. An amazing specimen.. However I am actually a bit conflicted having it back in Newfoundland makes it less available for people to see . If it was on display and not just hidden away at the AMNH t would get far more viewers. Interesting delema

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6 minutes ago, Malcolmt said:

Thumbs up for the Dr. An amazing specimen.. However I am actually a bit conflicted having it back in Newfoundland makes it less available for people to see . If it was on display and not just hidden away at the AMNH t would get far more viewers. Interesting delema

 

 

I'm glad it wasn't a dilemma for Dr. Levi-Setti.  He seemed quite pleased to return it to its place of origin.  

 

Score a very nice victory for the underdog!  The Manuels River Hibernia Interpretation Centre:  LINK

 

 

 

 

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Hey Scott, thanks for the links, quite a specimen! Dr. Levi-Setti has been educating us and showing us great bugs for a very long while. I'm dating myself a bit but when his book Trilobites, A Photographic Atlas came out back in 1975 I had to have it-I imagine I've forgotten most everything I ever learned and saw but I do remember I had to have a Phacops (old name) from the Silica Shale after seeing the photos of those eyes on those critters!! Still fascinated by those things! Thanks for drawing up those memories and seeing this particular fossil go home...very neat!

 

Regards, Chris 

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  • 3 years later...

Hello,

I don't have any of Riccardo Levi-Setti's books (shame, I know), and the library is closed... but does anyone know what drew him initially to Manuels River? I saw an interview where he talks about "that part of NL" as once being connected to Europe, so I suppose as a paleontologist he would have an idea where to look for fossils of various ages, but I wonder if he's written about it somewhere? 

 

Many thanks,

Daniel

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Here are a few passages from Levi-Setti.  The first book has an appendix on the Manuels trilobites and the other two have extensive chapters.

 

Levi-Setti, R. 1975
Trilobites: A Photographic Atlas.
University of Chicago Press, 213 pp.

 

Lured by vivid descriptions and by samples collected by A.M. Ziegler during his field trip to Manuels, Newfoundland, I spent a few weeks of summer vacation in 1974 quarrying in the Middle Cambrian Paradoxides beds in the gorge of the Manuels River. The encounter with the fauna of giant Paradoxides was indeed a memorable experience. More remarkable was the realization that the nature of the fossil fauna and the preservation of the trilobites rivaled the most famous comparable localities, such as Bohemia.

 

Climbing out of the Manuels River gorge on my last trip, accompanied by my nine-year-old son Emile, I saw unmistakable signs of impending urbanization of this still-forested remnant of wilderness on the shores of Conception Bay. I left with the feeling that something must be done to preserve these amazing fossils in their natural setting at Manuels. My appeal to the authorities at Memorial University of Newfoundland found a most sympathetic response. The matter of preserving the Paradoxides beds at Manuels, and the small wilderness where they are exposed, is now in the hands of the Canadian Minister of Provincial Affairs for possible action.

 

 

Levi-Setti, R. 1993
Trilobites: A Photographic Atlas. 2nd Ed.
University of Chicago Press, 342 pp.

 

The first edition of my atlas contained a firsthand description of my encounter with the Middle Cambrian Paradoxides beds of Eastern Newfoundland. This field trip was singled out as deserving a special mention in my book, as it represented a significant episode of scientific discovery. It also told an exciting story linking together Carl von Linne's first identified trilobite, Entomolithus paradoxus, the Newfoundland trilobites that I dug out, and spectacular evidence of continental drift. The excitement has not abated in the intervening years. In fact, a systematic study of the strata holding the giant Paradoxides of Newfoundland (Bergström and Levi-Setti 1978) has revealed a fascinating sequence of evolutionary events. This time, I felt compelled to present, as a case history, the completion of a story that left a lingering degree of frustrated suspense in Appendix A of my first edition.

 

The story began on a very wet and cold afternoon in the summer of 1974, when I dug out my first giant Paradoxides from the shale beds exposed in the gorge of the Manuels River, on the coast of Conception Bay, in Eastern Newfoundland. The lore of the paleontological discoveries of the last century flashed briefly through my mind. lt was uncanny to me that all of a sudden I could hold in my hand such a treasure, only known to me from the sepia lithographs found in the monographs of the last century's masters, describing the trilobites of Bohemia, Sweden, and Wales.

 

All this I had read about. But now I was holding this fantastic trilobite, bright yellow and red, even more so under the rain, that was once buried in a very distant and very old Europe. I could touch the amazing reality of continental drift.

 

 

Levi-Setti, R. 2014
The Trilobite Book: A Visual Journey.
University of Chicago Press, 273 pp.

 

The saga of my involvement with the trilobites found in the Middle Cambrian layers exposed in the Manuels River gorge of Conception Bay South, on the Avalon Peninsula of eastern Newfoundland, is narrated in the first and second editions of my trilobite books. Alas, something important to me, the color, has thus far been missing in the published pictures of these captivating fossils, with the exception of the cover of my second edition. Since 1993, when that edition appeared, I have been wishing to remedy this shortcoming, which limited the full visual impact of my findings for the majority of the Manuels River specimens. In the intervening 20 years, aided by the digital revolution, I am finally able to convey the reason for my excitement about the occasional color of trilobites.

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