Dry Dredgers Indoor Field Trip
February 25, 2012
A Tour of the Geier Collections and Research Center


As a winter field trip, the Dry Dredgers were treated to a tour of the Geier Collections and Research Center, which houses the collections for the Cincinnati Museum Center. The Geier Center is located near Cincinnati Union Terminal, which is the home of the Cincinnati Museum Center, but is a separate facility in Queensgate. 

Joining us that day was the Kentucky Paleontological Society, our sister fossil club in Lexington, Kentucky.

Dr. Brenda Hunda, the Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology, hosted the tour. She displayed for us some of the most exciting treasures cataloged. Assisting her are two Dry Dredgers, Rich Fuchs and Dan Phelps.  Thanks guys.

The Dry Dredgers extend a huge THANK YOU to Brenda Hunda for giving us an excellent tour of this impressive collection.

As we entered the Geier Center, display cases line the walls with Cincinnati's ancient history.

We gathered in the large conference room where Brenda Hunda began the tour with a talk about the collections. This conference room in itself is loaded with interesting artifacts from Cincinnati's past.

As we entered the collections department, we were greeted by a nearly complete juvenile skeleton of a sauropod dinosaur, collected and assembled by staff and volunteers.


A big thank you also to the Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Glenn Storrs, who led the collection and preservation of the Sauropods.

And of course, there was plenty of time to show invertebrate fossils. The Geier Center has a huge collection of upper Ordovician fossils, as you might expect for a Cincinnati museum. Here are some examples of trilobites. 

...and Edrioasteroids.

Dan Phelps brought out the Eurypterids, an extinct form of sea scorpion.

Brenda Hunda then brought out an Ordovocian Eurypterid, Megalographtus ohioensis. This specimen is the interior surface of the third appendage (front arms).

 

The Geier Center has a nice collection of Burgess Shale material. Here Brenda also showed us examples of Anomalocaris.

Another extinct Arthropod from the Burgess Shale shown was Waptia fieldensis.

Rich Fuchs dug out one of our specimens of Helicoplacus, an early and strange form of Echinoderm.

Thanks again to Brenda Hunda, Glenn Storrs, Rich Fuchs, Dan Phelps and Bob Bross for making this winter field trip successful.

Now let's have a look at the photos from our March 2012 field trip to the Maysvillian Stage of formations.

Here are pictures from our last visit to the Geier Center collections in November 2007.

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