Ancient Ecosystems on Display in New Exhibit
June 26, 2025
We are excited to announce a new exhibit in the third floor hallway of the department! Designed and constructed by students Camille Reinoso (Environmental Science, 2025) and Elise Neal (Earth and Planetary Sciences, 2026), the exhibit highlights two important time periods of Earth’s history and demonstrates some of the lessons we can learn from paleontological reconstructions of ancient ecosystems. The exhibit also showcases specimens from the department’s own paleontological fossil collection, including the “Tully monster” (Tullimonstrum gregarium), the state fossil of Illinois.From the Mazon Creek display, we see north-central Illinois as it was 309 million years old. Camille’s exhibit shows how paleontologists assemble an organism such as a tree from separate fossils of leaves, bark, stems, and roots, as with Calamites and Annularia species. From Elise’s Florissant display, we learn about a 34-million-year-old lake in Colorado and the unique ecosystem that surrounded it. The lake was formed when a volcanic debris flow blocked a stream valley, creating conditions that preserved leaves, seeds, and insects in fine detail. The mean annual temperature of the Florissant ecosystem can be accurately estimated using traits such as the margins of the fossil leaves.
Both students took the Paleobiology course (EARTH 374) taught by Prof. Bush before embarking on this project, and they were also important participants in updating the fossil collection, learning to identify and catalog the specimens they worked with. The lessons learned from these ancient fossils are still relevant today, as we continue to learn how climate and ecosystems interacted in the past and what that may mean for the future.