The South Carolina State Museum has four floors of permanent and changing exhibits, a digital dome planetarium (opened in 2014), 4D interactive theater and an observatory (both opened in 2014). The State Museum, is located along the banks of the Congaree River in downtown Columbia, South Carolina. It is the largest museum in the state, and is a Smithsonian Affiliate and part of the American Alliance of Museums. Positioned on an old shipping canal (Columbia Canal) that dates back to pre-Civil War times, the museum is widely recognized[citation needed] as a resource for South Carolina history and lifestyle. The museum opened on October 29, 1988, and is housed in what it calls its largest artifact, the former Columbia Mills Building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. When the mill opened in 1894, manufacturing cotton duck cloth (a canvas-like material), it was the first totally electric textile mill in the world. It was also the first major industrial installation for the General Electric corporation. On certain levels of the museum, the original flooring has been kept intact, distinguishable by hundreds of textile brads and rings (that carried the threads during the spinning process) that became embedded in the floor while it was still being used as a mill. The South Carolina Confederate Relic Room & Military Museum is located within the Columbia Mills Building, and is the oldest museum exhibit (est. 1896) in Columbia.The museum represents four disciplines: art, cultural history, science and technology, and natural history. Exhibits include life-size replicas of the Best Friend of Charleston- the first American-built locomotive in 1830; and the Civil War's H.L. Hunley, the first submarine to sink an enemy ship in combat. The second floor on natural history is notable for its recreation of a 3.6 million-year-old megalodon, named Finn, suspended mid-air just around a corner, which has scared countless groups of young children, and for a life-size Columbian mammoth (which was once native to SC). There is also the Lipscomb art gallery on the first floor, which features an iron gate made by Charleston's Philip Simmons. And there is the Cotton Mill Exchange gift shop with South Carolina souvenirs and books. The museum has the Crescent Café with sandwiches. The museum has a 1989 mural of the nearby Gervais Street Bridge by Columbia's Blue Sky (artist) in a room next to the Café. It has topiary sculpted by Bishopville's Pearl Fryar in the parking lot. The Stringer Discovery Center for small children opened in 1997.The museum has an "Official" Story Chair (named Sammy) designed and donated by Storyteller Mike Miller (greatstoryteller.com) for the benefit of children and storytellers.Travelling exhibitions at the State Museum have included Body Worlds Vital in 2012, Titanic: the Artifact Exhibition (100 yr. anniversary) in '12, Secrets of the Maya in '12, King Tut in '13 and '03, Dinosaurs: A Bite Out of Time in '14, Julius Caesar: Roman Military Might in '15, "RACE: Are We So Different?" in '16, Savage Ancient Seas in '17, the 2017 Solar Eclipse in Columbia in the observatory, The Wizard of Oz in '17 for Halloweeen, Hall of Heroes (superheroes) in '19, 50 Years of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing (with items from SC astronaut Charles Duke) in '19, Sherlock Holmes: the International Exhibition in '20 (with items from the Museum of London), "Spanish Explorations in the Caribbean and the US, 1492-1570" (for the 500th anniversary of Columbus' discovery) in '90, WWII and SC in '91 (for 50 years since the Pearl Harbor attack), "Rock, Roll, and Remember: Hootie & the Blowfish and Other SC Greats" in '97, The World of Insects in '98, Star Trek: The Exhibition in '99, The Magic School Bus in '99, Inside Africa in '04, Prehistoric Predators in '04, Napoleon Bonaparte in '06, Aliens: Worlds of Possibilities in '07, Leonardo da Vinci in '08, an '08 exhibit on several of the movies (like The Patriot and Forrest Gump) filmed in SC ("Hollywood Comes to South Carolina"), "Football in the Palmetto State, 1889-2000" in '08, Pirates in 2010, and 150 years of the Civil War in SC in 2011..
The Sichuan-Yunnan Basin in southwestern China represents a region of global significance for Early- to Mid-Jurassic tetrapod fossils. The area is home to a renowned assemblage of saurischian body fossils in the Lufeng and Shaximiao formations, and also has rich track records that, compared with the former, are broader in spatial and chronological scope. Of these, the upper Lower Jurassic Ma’anshan Member of the Ziliujing Formation contains the most abundant and diverse track records in Guizhou Province. This paper presents the discovery of dinosaur tracks from the Wucha sites, including those belonging to cf. Parabrontopodus, cf. Liujianpus, Anomoepus isp., and Grallator. Unusual are didactyl tracks, which exhibit some affinities to Cretaceous deinonychosaurians, based solely on their morphology. But detailed analysis suggests that they are possible punting or running traces produced by non-didactyl trackmakers. Furthermore, the stratigraphic age of the Wucha didactyl tracks is much older if compared to the lower temporal range of Deinonychosauria.
Isolated elasmobranch and teleost teeth, jaws, otoliths, scales, vertebrae, and fin spines were recovered from the upper Oligocene (Chattian) Catahoula Formation in Wayne County, Mississippi, USA. A total of 13 551 specimens were examined and 12 340 of these were identified at least to the ordinal level. These remains represent 49 unequivocal fish taxa, viz. 29 elasmobranchs and 20 teleosts. The 3614 elasmobranch remains indicate that Carcharhiniformes is the most diverse group of Elasmobranchii, with 12 taxa belonging to five families. Orectolobiformes and Lamniformes are represented by far fewer taxa (three and four, respectively). Carcharhinus acuarius (Probst, 1879) constitutes 49% of the total number of shark teeth in our sample. Ten batoids have been identified within Myliobatiformes (seven taxa) and Rhinopristiformes (three taxa). Partial teeth of durophagous myliobatids (three genera) are the most abundant batoid remains, constituting 41% of the total number of ray fossils. However, teeth of Dasyatidae and Rhynchobatus cf. pristinus (Probst, 1877) are abundant and represent 36.5% and 15.4%, respectively, of the specimens identified. Herein, we erect five new elasmobranch taxa, including Galeocerdo platycuspidatum sp. nov., Hemipristis intermedia sp. nov., Hypanus? heterodontus sp. nov., “Sphyrna” gracile sp. nov., and “Sphyrna” robustum sp. nov. The Catahoula Formation sample includes over 9935 teleost fossils, which constitutes 73% of the total fish sample. Nine bony fish taxa are represented solely by teeth, jaw elements, or fin spines. Although otoliths are much less common than the other identifiable remains (409 versus roughly 8430, respectively), they allowed us to identify four taxa not known from other skeletal remains. Albulidae, Sciaenidae, and Sparidae are represented by isolated teeth, jaw elements, and otoliths, but we could not ascertain whether the various teeth and jaw elements are conspecific with the otolith-based species we identified. The remains of Sciaenidae (teeth, jaw elements, otoliths) dominate the Catahoula Formation bony fish assemblage, constituting 70% of the teleost specimens identified at least to the ordinal level. Our sample includes the first Oligocene occurrence of Tetraodontidae in the Western Hemisphere. The vertebrate assemblage within the Catahoula Formation at the study site indicates an estuarine depositional environment, which is consistent with previous interpretations based on lithology. At the study site the Catahoula Formation disconformably overlies the Paynes Hammock Limestone, and we believe the disconformable contact locally represents the Rupelian (early Oligocene)/Chattian (late Oligocene) boundary. The fish fauna described herein is therefore of Chattian age.
The Lanzhou-Minhe Basin is a representative Early Cretaceous inland sedimentary basin in western China. Numerous Jurassic sauropod body fossils were collected in the Haishiwan area of Yongdeng, located along the northern margin of the basin. This study reports new theropod tracks from the Hongmensi tracksite in Yongdeng County, preserved on a fallen block of the Hekou Group. The assemblage comprises three trackways and at least 18 isolated tridactyl tracks, grouped into two morphotypes (similar to 12 and similar to 20 cm). Despite minor morphological variation, all tracks are most appropriately referred to Grallator cf. ssatoi. Track preservation varies across the ichnosurface, with flattened, shallow, and normally preserved examples reflecting differences in substrate consistency and mud layer thickness. These conditions produced marked morphological variation within a small area, highlighting the importance of preservation in ichnotaxonomic interpretation. The Hongmensi assemblage represents a composite grallatorid ichnoassociation comparable to those of the Tuchengzi Formation and other Hekou Group sites, underscoring both the consistency and size-structured nature of Early Cretaceous small theropod ichnofaunas in northern China.
Bonebeds occurring in exposures of the Burlington and Keokuk Limestones (Mississippian/Osagean) along the Iowa and Illinois border (USA) contain an abundant and diverse collection of chondrichthyan remains that includes teeth, spines, denticles, and coprolites. These remains represent cochliodont, hybodont, petalodont, ctenacanthid, symmoriid, and acanthodian (stem chondrichthyan) taxa. The thickest of these beds, herein referred to as the Burlington–Keokuk bonebed, occurs at the top of the Burlington Limestone and presents a remarkable opportunity to study the assemblage of mid-continent, Middle Mississippian chondrichthyans. Bulk matrix samples of this bonebed were collected from two quarries (Biggsville Quarry, Biggsville, IL, USA, and Nelson Quarry, Mediapolis, IA, USA) and disaggregated. Among the multitude of previously known taxa, several teeth represented a new genus and species of hybodont shark. Herein, we describe these teeth as Columnaodus witzkei (gen. et sp. nov.), a hybodontiform with dental features comparable to unnamed specimens reported from elsewhere.
