Title : Pentecopterus decorahensis.
link : Pentecopterus decorahensis.
Pentecopterus decorahensis.
Yesterday, roaming around in the Driftless Area, we spent a few hours in Decorah, Iowa. We loved the little town, home of Luther College, and hiked up to Dunning's Spring:
Somehow, we got to talking about the meteorite — "as big as a city block" — that hit right here 470 million years ago. There's a 4-mile-wide crater underneath Decorah, and "it is filled by an unusual shale that formed after an ancient seaway sluiced into the crater, depositing sediment and an array of bizarre sea creatures that hardened into fossils." The most interesting of these creatures is Pentecopterus decorahensis:
Pentecopterus is a genus of eurypterid, an extinct group of aquatic arthropods. Fossils have been registered from the Darriwilian age of the Middle Ordovician period, as early as 467.3 million years ago. The genus contains only one species, P. decorahensis, that is the oldest known eurypterid, surpassing other Ordovician eurypterids, such as Brachyopterus, in age by almost 9 million years. The generic name derives from the penteconter, a warship from ancient Greece, and the suffix -pterus, which means "wing" and is often used in other genus of eurypterids. The specific name refers to Decorah, Iowa, where Pentecopterus was discovered.
Pentecopterus is among the largest known arthropods, with the largest specimens having an estimated length of 1.7 metres (5 ft 7 in)....
So something like this...
... something lobster-y... was longer than I am... and yet still only "among the largest known arthropods." What other bizarre creatures are out there in the unusual shales of ancient sluiced seaways?
They found something they called Jaekelopterus. It sounds like a joke — like a jackalope — doesn't it? But, here, they found it in Rhineland (Germany). This thing was, we're told, 7.64 to 8.50 feet long.
The smaller one may seem unworthy of your attention. I notice that the man is looking right past him as he extends his hearty welcome to his arthropod overlord. But the little guy hails from Wyoming, and I think that gives him a little pizzazz.
By the way, Luther College deserves a moment of your attention:
[A]t the start of the Civil War, the [Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church] decided to open its own college that fall in a former parsonage at Halfway Creek, Wisconsin... On September 1, 1861, classes officially began with an enrollment of 16. The following year classes moved to Decorah, Iowa...
In 1866, a group of students signed a "bill of rights" criticizing the rigid schedule, the rules about going downtown, the lack of windows in some of the sleeping rooms, and the woodcutting and shoe-shining chores, concluding that "there was not enough freedom."
I'm sure this wasn't the earliest student protest, but look at these issues — personal freedom and comfort.
The leader of the group, 18-year-old Rasmus Anderson, was expelled. This event was viewed as a rebellion and "the worst of sins" by the pastors assembled in a pastoral conference shortly after....
In 1932, Luther College dropped its mandatory study of the classics and embraced the modern concept of the liberal arts education. Due to financial constraints associated with the Great Depression, the college decided to admit women as students in 1936....
Women! Sometimes we're accepted not out of love or fairness but just for good old money.
In 1964, Luther's museum collection became separate from the college and was established as the Norwegian-American Museum. Now known as Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum, it is the largest and most comprehensive museum in the United States devoted to a single immigrant group....
Ah! We saw the museum, but failed to step inside. It's not too late, for we intend to go back to Decorah, Iowa. People there were super friendly — and that's compared to Wisconsin. Someone told us that Decorah was recently declared the "second-best" something — something like "place to live in America" or "small town in America." He couldn't remember exactly what, but it was definitely second-best, and he couldn't remember what was first, because if your town is second-best, that's great news, and what does it matter that there's also one place that's better? One, none — what's the difference?!
Thus articles Pentecopterus decorahensis.
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