Follow-up: Pipestone National Monument, Scenella, Cylindrocoelia

Here's a little more information on a few enigmas from previous posts, with some additional photos from the University of Minnesota paleontological collections. First up is Pipestone National Monument's "Lingula calumet", then Scenella, and finally Cylindrocoelia minnesotensis.

Joseph Nicollet

Judging by place names, Joseph Nicollet must have been a much more popular man than George William Featherstonhaugh. (Or maybe it was just the fact that it took sixteen letters to spell George's name while only taking seven to say it that proved unappealing.) I'm not sure if anyone in Minnesota attached George's name to anything, whereas Nicollet is the namesake for such pieces of geography as Nicollet County, Nicollet Mall, and Nicollet Island. His name was even attached to a ballpark, the long-time home of the old Minneapolis Millers, although probably the adjacent Nicollet Avenue was the main inspiration.

The "fossils" of Pipestone National Monument

This is being posted on Halloween, which is fitting for a topic that lingers like a ghost in the literature. Even today, you can still find stray references to the fossils of Pipestone National Monument. "Occasional small trilobites - Lingula, Paradoxides" sounds promising, doesn't it? If you're reasonably familiar with the fossils of Minnesota, you may be wondering why you never heard of this before. There's a pretty good reason: these forgotten fossils are not trilobites or brachiopods, and odds are they are not fossils at all.