Mount Augustana

A peak in the Transantarctic Mountains has been named in honor of my former employer (Augustana College and Bill Hammer)!! It is the larger mountain in the center of this photo.


You can read more about Dr. Hammer and his work in Antarctica here.

From the Augustana College Press Release:

"A 9,000-foot peak in Antarctica has been christened Mount Augustana in honor of Dr. William R. Hammer and Augustana College.


The National Board on Geographic Names, which made the designation, describes the location of Mount Augustana as between the heads of LaPrade Valley and Cheu Valley in the northern Cumulus hills, Queen Maud Mountains.


Hammer was in the Antarctic working in this area on his first trip there in 1977-78 and again in 1995-96. He has made seven expeditions to the Antarctic. He and his team are known for discovering the first dinosaur bones ever found on the icy continent in 1991.


"Augustana College has a long history in polar and glacial geology, with strong ties to Antarctic research," said the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names in its citation. "The Fryxell Geology Museum at Augustana College is the home of the only fossils of Cryolophosaurus, the largest carnivorous dinosaur found to date in Antarctica."


"It is a recognition of the 30 years that I have been involved in Antarctic research," said Hammer. "Since I have been at Augustana for 26 of those 30 years it also recognizes that the college has strongly supported my work. In addition I have worked closely for those 30 years with Jim Collinson, a geologist from Ohio State who is an Augustana alum. In fact, Jim talked me into applying for this job 26 years ago."


Another long-time colleague of Hammer's nominated Mount Augustana to the National Board on Geographic Names.


"The board approves the name if they feel the person or institution has made substantial contributions to Antarctic science," said Hammer.


"Offhand, I don't know of any other Antarctic features named after a liberal arts college, but there could be a few," he added. "There are not many from liberal arts colleges working there today."


However, it's not the first time a name has linked Augustana and Antarctica. Last year the U.S. Board on Geographic Names voted to christen an ice-covered col (glacial ridge) in the Antarctic's Ellsworth Mountains as "Hammer Col" in honor of the Augustana paleontologist [see picture above: Hammer Col is high ridge coming off of the Vincent Massif which is the highest peak in the picture (it is also the highest peak in Antarctica!!)]. The col is at 12,467 feet between the Vinson Massif and the Craddock Massif in the Sentinel Range, Ellsworth Mountains. It is 1.5-miles wide and visually separates the two massifs (mountain groups) when viewed from the east or west.


Also, Hammer said, there is a Lake Fryxell in the Dry Valleys region of Antarctica near the coast (named for 1922 Augustana graduate Fritiof M. Fryxell, first chair of the department of geology) and a Lake Hoare (named for Dick Hoare, an undergraduate at Augustana who was a professor and researcher at Bowling Green State University). Those features were named in the International Geophysical year of 1957-58. Glacial geologist Dr. Troy Pewey named the lakes for Fryxell and Hoare. Pewey was a student at Augustana before doing his PhD glacial work and was one of the scientists funded for that year.


The northern slopes of Mount Augustana are rugged, largely ice-free terrain that descends 4,900 feet to McCregor Glacier. The southern part is ice-covered and descends gradually to the head of Logie Glacier.


Research seasons in Antarctica run from November-January. Hammer's last trip was in the 2003-04 season. He said he has a proposal in for another trip in either 2009-10 or 2010-11."

Story in the Quad-City Times
Another link to the story
And a link to the Chicago Tribune story

Photo courtesy of Bill Hammer

Kryostega collinsoni

I was excited to see this press release the other day. We had this specimen on display at Augustana for a long time (below center) and then I shipped it off to Chris Sidor last year for him to work on. So it is exciting to see Kryostega collinsoni getting some press!


ScienceDaily (2008-09-12) -- Paleontologists have found a previously unknown amphibious predator that probably made the Antarctica of 240 million years ago something less than a hospitable place.

The species, named Kryostega collinsoni, is a temnospondyl, a prehistoric amphibian distantly related to modern salamanders and frogs. K. collinsoni resembled a modern crocodile, and probably was about 15 feet in length with a long and wide skull even flatter than a crocodile's.

In addition to large upper and lower teeth at the edge of the mouth, temnospondyls often had tiny teeth on the roof of the palate. However, fossil evidence shows the teeth on the roof of the mouth of the newly found species were probably as large as those at the edge of the mouth.

"Its teeth, compared to other amphibians, were just enormous. It leads us to believe this animal was a predator taking down large prey," said Christian Sidor, a University of Washington associate professor of biology and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the UW.

Sidor is lead author of a paper describing the new species published in the September issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Co-authors are Ross Damiani of Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart in Germany and William Hammer of Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill.

The scientists worked from a fossilized piece of the snout of K. collinsoni, analyzing structures present in more complete skulls for other temnospondyl species that had similar size characteristics.

"The anatomy of the snout tells us what major group of amphibian this fossil belonged to," Sidor said.

Teeth at the edge of the mouth, as well as on the palate roof, were clearly visible, and the presence of structures similar to those that allow fish and amphibians to sense changes in water pressure led the researchers to conclude that the species was aquatic.

The fossilized piece of snout also contains a nostril, which aided the scientists in judging proportions of the head when comparing it to other fossils. They estimated the skull was about 2.75 feet long and perhaps 2 feet across at its widest point.

"Kryostega was the largest animal in Antarctica during the Triassic," Sidor said.

The term "Kryostega" translates to 'frozen' and 'roof,' which refer to the top of the skull. The scientists named the species for James Collinson, a professor emeritus of Earth sciences at Ohio State University who made important contributions to the study of Antarctic geology.

Hammer collected the fossil in 1986 from an Antarctic geological layer called the Fremouw Formation. He has studied a number of other Antarctic fossils, including dinosaurs, collected at about the same time, and so the temnospondyl fossil was not closely examined until the last couple of years.

At the time K. collinsoni was living, all the world's land was massed into a giant continent called Pangea. The area of Antarctica where the fossil was found was near what is now the Karoo Basin of South Africa, one of the richest fossil depositories on Earth.

Sidor noted that in the early Triassic period, from about 245 million to 251 million years ago, just before the period that produced the K. collinsoni fossil, it appears that Antarctica and South Africa were populated by largely the same species. While Antarctica was still colder than much of the world, it was substantially warmer than it is today, though it still spent significant periods in complete darkness.

By the middle of the Triassic period perhaps only half the species were the same, he said, and in the early Jurassic period, around 190 million years ago, unique early dinosaur species were appearing in Antarctica.

"It could be that these animals were adjusting to their local environment by then, and we are seeing the results of speciation occurring at high latitude," Sidor said. "Here we have really good evidence that Antarctic climate wasn't always the way it is today. During the Triassic, it was warmer than it is today – it was warmer globally, not just in Antarctica."

This work was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation." [link]

Fossil Friday

Todays fossil: Cryolophosaurus ellioti
This is the animal that I work on at Augustana College! While most of his remains that have been recovered are prepared, we still have several blocks of unprepared material, and this is what I work on.

The name Cryolophosaurus means "frozen crested reptile." The characteristic feature of this dinosaur is the large crest on the top of the skull, above the eyes. The nasal bones extend toward the back of the skull as ridges, and then join with the lacrimal bones to form a grooved crest which extends perpendicularly from the skull. Cryolophosaurus was discovered in the Jurassic Hanson Formation in the Transantarctic Mountains and represents the only theropod dinosaur to be found in Antarctica.
Read more about Cryolophosaurus: Transantarctic Vertebrate Paleontology Project website.
See more of my Cryolophosaurus pictures here.