The Grinnell Peat, Part 2. Unboxing the past for a more complete picture.

For the first time since 2018, my BIO 305 class (Evolution of the Iowa Flora) was completely in-person. Equipped with the knowledge gained from that year's investigations of the Grinnell Peat and with a recently published protocol (Santos and Ledru, 2022) for visualizing pollen grains without extemely harsh chemicals, three student groups dived into peat (laid down 27,000 years ago; brought to light 60 years ago by Grnnell Professor Benjamin Graham), searching for fossil wood, other "large" plant fossils (macrofossils), and pollen grains. The students will reveal their findings in the next three posts to this blog. Meanwhile, I'll share something new I discovered in the peat this year: not a plant but a 1 mm long fossil springtail (six-legged arthropods that aren't insects). It's too bad Ben Graham's contemporary, Professor Kenneth Christiansen isn't alive to identify it for us. We need his book.

 

Santos, R. D. A., & Ledru, M. P. (2022). Acid-free protocol for extracting pollen from Quaternary sediments. Palynology, 46(1), 1-8.