Natural History
Monthly Archive: December natu
“A Rolling Stone Gathers no Moss” but the stories they can tell…
Submitted by Vincent Vertolli, Assistant Curator Geology
Biodiversity Series wins award!
The Ontario Association of Landscape Architects recognized the City of Toronto Biodiversity Series of booklets with their Service to the Environment award. The award is “In recognition of the recipient’s ongoing contribution in supporting sensitive, sustainable stewardship of the environment.”
Age Before Beauty: The Acasta Gneiss and Jack Hills Conglomerate
Submitted by Vincent Vertolli, Assistant Curator Geology
The Jack Hills Conglomerate, a 3,000 million year old sedimentary rock from which the oldest, at 4,200 million years, terrestrial minerals have been found. The Jack Hills Conglomerate occurs in the Mt. Narryer and Jack Hills area of Western Australia.
Dr. A. P. Coleman (1852-1939)
Submitted by Vincent Vertolli, Assistant Curator Geology
Meteorite of the month: Springwater pallasite
The world's largest specimen of the Springwater pallasite meteorite.
Mineral of the month: serandite
World's largest twinned serandite crystal.
A Rare and Beautiful Bird
Their distinctive heart-shaped face actually helps improve their hearing. With lop-sided ears, they can easily pinpoint prey with sound alone. Photo by Steve Brace
Meteorite or “Meteor-wrong”?
ROM Earth Scientists receive dozens of requests each year to identify possible meteorites. This is especially the case when there is a spectacular fireball similar to the one which recently streaked across southern Ontario on December 12 of this year (the video was captured by astronomers at the University of Western Ontario). Do you think you have found a space rock?
Yellowjackets (a.k.a. Late Summer Picnic Pests)
We love picnicking outside in the summer but in August and September our meals are inevitably cut short because of wasps. What are they and what can we do about them?
Summerasuarus: Dino Storage
Recently, we visited at the Vertebrate Palaeontology Lab to see how dinosaur bones are extracted from their plaster field jackets after they are hauled back from the field by palaeontologists like Dr. David Evans.
But where does the ROM store these fossils once they are free from their rock matrix? Welcome to Vertebrate Palaeontology Collections room, housing more than 75,000 fossilized bone specimens ranging in size from small toes to an entire row of Hadrosaur skulls!
