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Five members of United Cafeteria and Restaurant Workers union Local 471 are sentenced to six months in jail for clashes on the picket line during their 78-day strike in 1948.
The April 18, 1948 Washington Post article reports on the sentences that were given after the strike was settled.
As the article reports, the harsh sentences were designed to send a message to Local 471 and other unions.
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsm1ZnVra
For a deep dive into the 1948 cafeteria workers strike, see washingtonspark.wordpress.com/2018/01/02/against-the-cold...
The image is part of an article published in the Washington Post April 18, 1948.
In Boston, about 45 demonstrators, including a dozen speakers, out for Pvt. Manning on the day of her sentencing. A number of speakers took up the PVT Manning Support Network's call to urge people to sign the petition at pardon.privatemanning.org that calls on President Obama to issue a pardon. Other speakers expressed the view that this approach will be ineffective and that other approaches need to be considered. Everyone who spoke agreed that the 35 year sentence for acts of whistle-blowing is excessive. A number of folks discussed the issues with onlookers and passers-by.
VIsit www.privatemanning.org to learn more about the heroic whistleblower.
The Postcard
A postcard that was published by Hildesheimer & Co. Ltd. of London and Manchester.
The card was posted in Great Yarmouth on Thursday the 23rd. August 1906 to:
Mrs. C. Ascher,
44, Oakhill Road,
Sutton,
Surrey.
The pencilled message on the back of the card was as follows:
"Dear Grandma,
We went into these
gardens last night and
had a little dancing, but
it was too hot to keep
on long.
It's much cooler today.
How are you enjoying
yourself at Sutton?
Love from Emmie."
Great Yarmouth Winter Gardens
Great Yarmouth Winter Gardens (on the right) is a Grade II* listed building in Great Yarmouth, England. It was built of glass and iron in Torquay over the course of three years, starting in 1878.
It was moved by barge to Great Yarmouth in 1904, purportedly without the loss of a single pane of glass. Over the years, it has been used as ballroom, roller skating rink and beer garden.
In the 1990's it was converted into a nightclub by Jim Davidson, and has since been used as a family leisure venue. It is currently (2020) closed.
In 2018, it was named among the top ten endangered buildings of the Victorian and Edwardian eras in a survey released by the Victorian Society.
In July 2021 it received a £10 million National Lottery Heritage Fund grant to support its repair and reopening.
Johannes Thümmler
So what else happened on the day that Emmie posted the card to her grandmother?
Well, the 23rd. August 1906 marked the unfortunate birth of Johannes Hermann Thümmler, also known as Hans Thümmler.
Thümmler was a German Obersturmbannführer and Head of the Gestapo Chemnitz and Katowice, as well as leader of commando 16 group D Einsatzgruppen in Croatia.
-- The Years up to 1945
Johannes Thümmler was born on the 23rd. August 1906 in Chemnitz, Saxony, the son of publisher and bookseller Hermann Thümmler.
He studied law and graduated as a jurist. In 1932 Thümmler joined the NSDAP and in 1937 the SS. After the seizure of power by the Nazis, Thümmler initially worked at police headquarter Dresden and in Schwarzenberg.
Soon after, he was appointed deputy head of the Gestapo Dresden. In January 1941 he became head of the Gestapo Dresden, and in March 1941, he became head of the Gestapo in Chemnitz. On the 20th. April 1943 he was promoted to Obersturmbannführer.
From the 3rd. July 1943 to the 11th. September 1943 Thümmler led the Einsatzkommando 16 of Einsatzgruppe D in Croatia, based in Knin.
In September 1943 Thümmler returned and was appointed head of the Gestapo and the commander of the state police and the SD (KdS) in Katowice, Upper Silesia.
In this capacity, he also took over the leadership of the SS court martial for Upper Silesia. This court martial convened in Block 11 of the main camp of Auschwitz. After the conquest of the territories by the Red Army and the withdrawal of German troops, Thümmler took over at Easter 1945 for the last time a function at the KdS in Stuttgart.
-- Post War
After the war, Thümmler was initially in French captivity; in 1946 he was transferred to the detention center Ludwigsburg. At the detention center, he was the mayor of the camp self-government.
In the denazification he was classified in 1948 as "major offender" and sentenced to two and a half years of forced labor. The internment was credited to the sentence, therefore Thümmler was released in the same year.
In an appeal hearing, the punishment of Thümmler was decreased in 1949 to 180 days in labor camps and inclusion in the group of "tainted".
In October 1948, he took on a job in the optical factory Zeiss Württemberg Oberkochen.
-- The Auschwitz Trial
On the 2nd. November 1964 Thümmler said as a witness in the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial that "several hundred" death sentences have been pronounced by the state court.
In 60% of cases, the death penalty had been pronounced, in other cases, a perpetual KZ-briefing. In his testimony, Thümmler stated:
"An acquittal was virtually eliminated.
In my days, there was no innocent.
We asked the accused if they agree,
and they all said yes, yes."
The Court consisted of him as chairman and one representative of the Judicial Police and the SD as assessor. The accused were civilians who had been arrested by the Gestapo in Katowice. The arrests were made for alleged resistance activities and criminal activities such as smuggling, courier services or listening to enemy broadcasts.
Each trial lasted rarely longer than two minutes; the basis of the judgments were the previous "confessions" of the defendants.
As a witness in Frankfurt, Thümmler stated that he had not heard or known whether the "confessions" were made in "rigorous interrogations". Such interrogation methods by the Gestapo were associated with abuse.
Investigation against Thümmler did not lead to a conviction.
Thümmler died on the 28th. April 2002 in Eriskirch. He was 95 years of age when he died.
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The Barnwell Sentence, Riverside, Cambridge, 31 Mar 2015
When I first saw this I though it was clever street art.
When I saw it close up I realised somebody had been spending lots of money!
'The Barnwell Sentence' mural in Kingsley Walk was created in late 2014 by Lucy Skaer, and is on marble tiles.
The web site says that the artwork takes the form of a 100m ‘sentence', winding its way through the Cambridge Riverside development. It is made up of imprints that tell a story of this site and its proximity. The sculptures and pictograms include Carp fish, strawberries, and school blazers, the largest being a life-sized blue whale skeleton, marking the entrance to the site from Newmarket Road.
I don't speak Barnwell, so don't really understand the meaning of the blue whale. But it does have an exclamation mark!
In Boston, about 45 demonstrators, including a dozen speakers, out for Pvt. Manning on the day of her sentencing. A number of speakers took up the PVT Manning Support Network's call to urge people to sign the petition at pardon.privatemanning.org that calls on President Obama to issue a pardon. Other speakers expressed the view that this approach will be ineffective and that other approaches need to be considered. Everyone who spoke agreed that the 35 year sentence for acts of whistle-blowing is excessive. A number of folks discussed the issues with onlookers and passers-by.
VIsit www.privatemanning.org to learn more about the heroic whistleblower.
These are my personal notes taken during a geology presentation. I give them here because they may be of some interest. Do not expect them to always be in complete sentences, etc.
-----------------------------------
A Neoproterozoic Snowjob: Testing the Limits of the Snowball Earth Hypothesis
Presented by: Nicholas Christie-Blick (Columbia University, New York, New York, USA) (www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~ncb/)
25 April 2002
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Paul Hoffman’s Snowball Earth Hypothesis doesn’t work very well. (www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/20900468815)
A classic locality for seeing Neoproterozoic tillite is in northern Namibia.
The most severe Ice Ages ever on Earth appear to be the Marinoan Ice Age (= Varanger Ice Age) at ~600 million years ago & the Sturtian Ice Age at ~750-700 million years ago.
Showed a photograph of a large dropstone deforming iron formation. (www.snowballearth.org/slides/Ch3-5.jpg)
Evidence for a cold climate at sea level ~600 million years ago: striated pavements, paleo-permafrost (sandstone frost wedges), adjacent to tidal bundles in sandstone.
The Elatina Formation in the central Flinders Ranges, South Australia has the best evidence for low-latitude glaciation at sea level - paleomag. shows this locality was at 7.5˚ North latitude (results are close to a primary position). Can see lots of magnetic reversals in the Neoproterozoic glacial interval of the Elatina Formation. This area really made the case for low-latitude glaciation.
The typical cap carbonate facies - occurs above Snowball Earth glacial sediments. (www.snowballearth.org/images/dating2.jpg) The cap carbonates are peculiar. In the late Precambrian, can see carbonates above the glacial interval. The cap carbonate sediments (deep water and a continuous interval) are event beds - turbidites (they have sole marks and flute casts) of finely-laminated, homogeneous dolomicrite. They directly overlie glacial rocks everywhere. They are present even in terrigenous sections. Most sections have a few meters only of cap carbonates, though Paul Hoffman focuses on the few sections that have 100s of meters of cap carbonates.
See Kennedy, Christie-Blick, & Prave (2001).
Low isotopic values in cap carbonates are perceived to be peculiar.
-5.5 to -6 δ13C (PDB) is the mantle carbon isotopic value. The modern world has C(organic) at about -28.5 and C(inorganic carbonate) of 0. We see mantle carbon values in Neoproterozoic cap carbonates - this implies zero C(organic) burial. This conclusion is the source of the proposed completely ice-covered oceans in Snowball Earth Hypothesis of Hoffman. δ13C curves go crazy during the Neoproterozoic, compared with pre-Neoproterozoic and the post-Neoproterozoic.
Snowball 101: the basic ideas of the Snowball Earth Hypothesis.
1) Freezing phase - the entire ocean surface is frozen (even in the tropics) from a runaway albedo feedback. When sea ice reaches 30˚ latitude, the rest rapidly freezes over. Then, primary productivity in the oceans ceases, which accounts for mantle carbon values in cap carbonates. Then, atmospheric carbon dioxide gas (CO2) increases to ~120,000 ppm [parts per million] due to the shutdown of hydrologic cycle and the shutdown of silicate weathering (both are sinks for CO2). The increasing CO2 is coming from the mantle because there was continued volcanism from continuing plate tectonic processes.
2) Melting phase - catastrophic melting phase from the greenhouse effect, on a scale of hundreds of years - very rapid and very warm. This renews silicate weathering, resulting in a drawdown of atmospheric CO2, which delivers alkalinity and base cations to the ocean. The cap carbonates record the transfer of excess atmospheric CO2 to the ocean. The trend of decreasing carbon isotope depletion upward in cap carbonates is due to: 1) protracted shutdown of marine autotrophic activity; 2) high fractional burial of carbonate carbon; and 3) Rayleigh distillation.
This is the freeze-fry cycle of the Snowball Earth Hypothesis (see Hoffman, 2000). This freeze-fry cycle is on the order of 10 million years. This model is advocated by Paul Hoffman and others because it plausibly explains many paradoxes in the record.
How does one test the Snowball Earth Hypothesis?
Global climate model simulations - the catastrophic freeze over starting at 30˚ latitude is actually the result of an artifact in a previous climate model.
Look at carbon isotopes in synglacial carbonates (looking at non-eroded carbonates only, though).
Sr isotopic information - a measure of weathering influx.
Implications to evolution - what are the evolutionary responses and what about bottlenecks?
Continental locations - equatorially-located continents are “surprised” in the SEH model - the ice creeps toward them from the poles, then reaching 30˚ latitude, and quickly covers the remainder of the planet. Are the continents really all equatorially-located, though, at the required times?
Well, lots of modeling is going on now - each has different purposes, and it is difficult to compare them all. But, can you freeze over the whole ocean at all in climate models? Maybe, but it is very hard to do. The answer is "Not a chance", according to many people.
Models start off with CO2 at 315 ppm (corresponding with pre-industrial levels). In the Marinoan world, many continents are at low latitudes, including Australia. The models can’t get an ice sheet remotely close to Australia. What about changing solar luminosity? In the Neoproterozoic, sunlight intensity was less than now, estimated to ~94% of modern intensity. This value is based on astrophysicists’ estimates of a 30% fainter Sun at 4.5 billion years ago, and scaled forward to the late Neoproterozoic. No astrophysicist has yet argued for changes in the rate of solar luminosity increase. So, change the models to 94% of modern luminosity. Still can’t get ice at low latitude Australia in the Neoproterozoic. Add a lower CO2 value of 40 ppm to the model, can get oceanic ice sheets close to the tropics, but still don’t have an all frozen ocean - not close.
Look at synglacial carbonates - we now have data about this from four continents. Looked at marine cements, peloids, and oolites (all are in-situ carbonates deposited during the glacial interval). The values are scattered, but typically they are positive, +2 or +3, not -5 as the Snowball Earth Hypothesis says (these are supposed to be close to mantle carbon values, because all of Earth is frozen over, and the only carbon input is from the mantle, through plate tectonic-driven volcanism).
Strontium (Sr) ratios are ~invariant throughout the glacial to post-glacial interval. There is no evidence from Sr data for a thousand-fold variation in weathering rates, as expected in Hoffman’s Snowball Earth Hypothesis. The maximum weathering rate for an atmosphere with 120,000 ppm of CO2 is less than 50 times that of the present weathering rate.
Secondary hypotheses have been proposed to circumvent the Sr problem. They assert a substantially longer time scale, and they call upon weathering of carbonates, instead of weathering silicates. There are difficulties with these ideas. The longer timescale argument is inconsistent with high fractional burial of carbonate carbon, plus the cap carbonates likely represent ~1000 years years, plus carbonate weathering cannot draw down CO2. Silicate weathering can, but carbonate weathering can’t. So, the cap carbonates are not a product of CO2 drawdown, which is a key Hoffman idea. Carbonate weathering drives cap carbonate δ13C values into a positive upward trend.
The Pleistocene glacial maximum had sea level at 120 meters lower than now. 73 meters worth of sea level are trapped in glacial ice on Greenland and Antarctica.
Australian glacial facies and magnetic reversals indicate a glacial retreat over a time scale of 100,000 to 1 million years (= much longer than Hoffman’s SEH says).
Glacial-eustatic rise continued after glacial-isostatic rebound at low latitudes (the cap carbonates are late glacial, deposited when there was still ice somewhere on Earth).
Australia has a 30 meter thick cap carbonates section (they are event beds - turbidites).
Alternative Hypotheses for the Origin of Cap Carbonates
1) Post-glacial upwelling (Kaufman et al., 1991). But, it is difficult to stratify a glacial ocean, and upwelling of nutrient-rich water leads to enhanced productivity.
2) Gas Hydrate Hypothesis - accounts for the source of light carbon seen in cap carbonates. Gas hydrates are ice that have methane in the lattice. They are common in continental shelves - buried frozen permafrost. Cap carbonates represent destabilization of permafrost methane hydrates during post-glacial flooding of continental margins and interior basins. The temperature increased, and methane was delivered into the water column. Need to have a methane source from a reservoir in shallower areas (a permafrost reservoir, for example). Deeper marine reservoirs of methane aren’t suitable sources for this because a sea level rise will increase pressure and will stabilize the deep ocean methane reservoirs.
Is there evidence for the gas hydrate hypothesis? Widespread features in cap carbonates (CC) are consistent with cold seep facies. Can see bedding expansion and cementation in deformed beds below the cap carbonates in Australia. Can see sheet cracks in cap carbonates - cement was growing into empty spaces. Can see tubes in cap carbonates - gas escape tubes? They are real tubes - can see sediment falling into them. Roll-up structures in sub-photic zone biohermal communities are present in cap carbonates. Can see barite and aragonite fans in cap carbonates - these are cold seep facies features.
So, the gas hydrate hypothesis calls upon a pulse addition of light carbon from permafrost methane, followed by steady state recovery. Cap carbonates represent ~10,000 years (rapid accumulation). Mass balance calculations show the plausibility of the gas hydrate hypothesis, using modern ocean constraints. Carbon introduced by methane release can account for a -5‰ shift - need about 3 x 10 to the 17th power moles of methane (CH4). How much carbon is buried in cap carbonates? It's estimated to be 8 x 10 to the 17th power moles of CaCO3. That's the same order of magnitude.
How big were the ice sheets in the Neoproterozoic? There is good evidence in Utah - incised paleovalley systems are present in a series of sections - rivers cut into marine sediments (~160 meters of cutting) - they are the same age as the glacial interval.
Apparent sea level change of 193 meters for the Pleistocene Ice Age (120 meters + 73 meters) - that is equivalent to a eustatic change of 130 m (need to multiply 193 m by a factor of 1.4 - this accounts for difference of sea level change values seen from islands, which experience water loading with sea level rise, compared with sea level changes that will be seen on the continents).
How many Neoproterozoic ice ages? All sections show only two. Multiple events or not? The multiple events idea seems to be based on miscorrelation of the two ice ages, especially in southern to northern Namibia. There were two main events, apparently. One is at 600 million years ago, and one is at ~750 million years ago. All workers agree that they were the most severe ice ages in history. There weren't more than two events.
Paul Hoffman's Snowball Earth Hypothesis is not consistent with C and Sr data together, or with eucaryotic evolution (some call on a soft snowball, versus Hoffman’s hard snowball, or a slushball hypothesis), or with the scale of ice-volume changes, or with the duration of glacial retreat (it was on a time scale greater than 100,000 years, not 100 years).
The gas hydrate hypothesis is consistent with climate models, outcrop evidence (including strange features in cap carbonates that have been unexplained for a long time), isotopic data, and biological evidence. Permafrost and associated hydrates should have been unusually widespread, because lots of glaciation occurred in the Neoproterozoic (which is an accepted idea by all researchers).
The upwelling hypothesis doesn’t work. Snowball Earth Hypothesis doesn’t work. Any other hypotheses out there? They are welcome.
Call any of these ideas “Snowball Earth” if you want - the name doesn’t matter.
The methane was coming from marine sedimentary basins.
There was lots of Precambrian organic carbon, including Precambrian oils and C(organic) isotopic values that hover around zero back to the Archean.
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I was reading a Fish & Game publication on wild turkey hunting when I was assaulted by this sentence fragment. Rather than fix it (i.e., turn the period into a comma), I tried to IMPROVE it.
This nifty, mid-century modern ("Googie") four-plus-one burned during Memorial Day weekend last year. I left for Michigan and returned to find it partially burned.
This morning, while walking to the Red Line, I witnessed a city employee affixing the red-X to its facade, indicating that it is slated for demolition.
I can see this building from my condo, and used to like the snowflake Christmas decorations which used to hang from its zig-zag overhang in winter.
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013.
Six Sentences, Volume 3
Edited by Lydia Davis
Third time's a charm! The international authors of "Six Sentences" are back, and this time, no subject matter is taboo, and everything - and everyone - is fair game. The collection features all-new work from some of the finest practitioners of the 6S genre, including Diane Brady, Brian Steel, Joseph Grant, Adam J. Whitlatch, Kim Tairi, Jeanette Cheezum, Kevin Michaels, Emily McPhillips, Rod Drake, Juliana Perry, Linda Simoni-Wastila, Richard M. Johnson, Crorey Lawton, Madam Z, and the former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York, Hal Sirowitz.
Features my short story "The Twelve-Minute War"
$27.95
www.amazon.com/6S-3-Lydia-Davis/dp/1452840067/ref=sr_1_1?...
NJ Governor Phil Murphy announces that he is convening the Criminal Sentencing and Disposition Commission created by the Legislature, to examine racial and ethnic disparities in the state’s criminal justice system on Sunday, February 11th, 2018. Carol McKenna/OIT/Governor’s Office.
Former Peruvian president (1990-2000) Alberto Fujimori waves upon his arrival at the Supreme Court's Special Court 11 December, 2007 in Lima. Fujimori was sentenced Tuesday to six years in prison for ordering an illegal search of an apartment belonging to the wife of his corrupt spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos in November 2000. On Wednesday, Fujimori is scheduled to be back in court for the continuation of the separate trial, in which he is accused of ordering a death squad to kill 25 suspected rebel sympathisers in the early 1990s, the kidnapping of an opposition journalist and a businessman, and several counts of corruption. AFP PHOTO/Eitan ABRAMOVICH (Photo credit should read EITAN ABRAMOVICH/AFP/Getty Images)
These are my personal notes taken during a geology presentation. I give them here because they may be of some interest. Do not expect them to always be in complete sentences, etc.
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The Chengjiang Lagerstätte and the Cambrian Explosion: New Discoveries from China about the Early Evolution of Life
Presented by: Loren Babcock (Department of Geological Sciences, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA) (earthsciences.osu.edu/people/babcock.5)
12 May 1998
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[Note: this talk presents the then-current understanding of the Chengjiang fossil deposit - much information has since been revised.]
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The Chengjiang is emerging as one of the most important lagerstätten on Earth. (photos.wikimapia.org/p/00/00/87/86/15_big.jpg) It dates to the latter stages of the Cambrian Explosion. It is 540-535/536 million years old - not a well constrained age. The Chengjiang is one of the few lagerstätten that represents a point within the Cambrian Explosion. The Burgess Shale has widely been heralded as representing the Cambrian Explosion, but it isn’t - there is at least one major extinction between the Cambrian Explosion and the Burgess Shale.
The Cambrian is not the time of the first appearance of organisms, or even metazoans and metaphytes. Life starts at 3.55 billion years ago with procaryotes and eucaryotes at 2.1 billion years. At 1.2 billion years, one sees the first multicellular algae. Cnidarians and sponges are present before the Cambrian. Ediacaran organisms (570-650 million years old) are also around before the Cambrian. (www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/albums/72157647055182319) Evolutionary connections among these Precambrian life forms are unclear. At the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary is a dramatic appearance of most major clades of organisms (>95% of creatures today appeared at the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary). At the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary, there is dramatic evidence that multicellular organisms were active all over the Earth - lots of trace fossils. The boundary is defined by a trace fossil, Phycodes pedum. (geokogud.info/git/specimen_image/181/preview/181-1.jpg)
Small shelly fossils (SSFs) became abundant after the PC-C boundary. (palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Palaeofiles/Cambrian/fossils/ssf/ss...) They represent disarticulated sclerites worn by organisms with many types of sclerites. In South China, ~100-150 meters above the PC-C boundary (not sure how much above, though - the PC-C boundary is unclear - lots of faulting and unconformities) is a fairly typical Cambrian assemblage - trilobites (mineralized), brachiopods, sponge spicules, echinoderms (rare), hyoliths, and molluscs - a low diversity assemblage. Apart from Burgess Shale and Chengjiang, the Cambrian Explosion would be relatively little known. Lagerstätten are deposits of exceptional preservation - nonmineralized cuticle is common, and gut contents are less common.
The Burgess Shale is famous - ~515-520 million years old (= 15-20 million years after the Cambrian Explosion) - known from a series of middle Middle Cambrian sites in British Columbia, Canada, in Yoho National Park. Lots of trilobites (student.societyforscience.org/sites/student.societyforsci...), brachiopods (www.museumwales.ac.uk/media/7869/thumb_480/popov-5.jpg), and non-shell-bearing organisms. Internal soft part-bearing organisms are celebrated. The mode of preservation of the Burgess Shale is unknown. There's legs with cuticle on trilobites (like Olenoides - www.trilobites.info/Olenoides.jpg). How this leg cuticle got preserved is unknown. Work on Chengjiang helps to understand the mode of preservation. The Burgess Shale has been metamorphosed, destroying the original signature. Why are Burgess Shale-type biotas important? They have nonmineralized creatures (+ internal soft parts/organs) preserved - they tell us about body organization; they preserve for us a record that is more complete than most rocks show. There are 5-6 clades of typical Cambrian creatures. A Burgess Shale-type deposit has >15-20 major clades of creatures. Also, they are important because they are in an important interval in Earth history. At least, they are at times close to the Cambrian Explosion.
Where are Burgess Shale-type biotas found? About two dozen sites have been found in the Cambrian. The Burgess Shale is along the Cordilleran margin of Laurentia. The Cordilleran margin has yielded ~20 or so Burgess Shale-type deposits. Most other Cambrian Burgess Shale-type deposits are from Gondwana. The Chengjiang is on the Yangtze Platform, on the edge of Gondwana. The Cambrian was a time of fairly dramatic sea level (eustatic) rise. There are two good Lower Cambrian lagerstätten - Sirius Passet (a Laurentian deposit in North Greenland - now thought to be older than Chengjiang, but less diverse) and Chengjiang.
Chengjiang deposit - a series of Early Cambrian sites (a dozen or so sites) in Yunnan, China. ~535 million years old at the top & ~540 million years old at the bottom (an overestimate?). Shelly & non-shelly creatures are there, many with soft parts preserved. Chengjiang stratigraphy - has been revised; the lithostratigraphy and allostratigraphy has now been worked out. Lots of unconformities (most previously unrecognized) and faulting make understanding the stratigraphy difficult. Some ages have been revised as well. Have also revised the Proterozoic part of the stratigraphy.
Chengjiang deposit - yellow shales, some siltstone/sandstone in the Yuanshan Member of Heilinpu Formation. The Chengjiang can be characterized as the entire Yuanshan Member, or as pods/lentils within the Yuanshan Member. Preserved soft parts are 1-2 meters above the first trilobites on Earth, and 200 meters above the first small shelly fossils in China. Where that relates to the Avalonian section is unknown: no more than 400 meters above, no less than 200 meters above. The Chengjiang is before the 1st archaeocyathans in the Chinese sections. The Chengjiang is known from a number of localities, but the best is the original locality - Maotianshan (“hat-shaped mountain”). Conditions are often rainy there, making field work difficult. The hillside is pretty much cleared off. There are phosphate mines in the Meishucunian in the area [= Meishucun Stage, lower Lower Cambrian]. Material weathers very quickly - the shale weathers to mud in the rain before your eyes.
Depositional environment of the Chengjiang - originally based on the Burgess Shale - thought to be an anoxic basin adjacent to the base of the Cathedral Reef, where fossils were washed down by slumps, where they were stunned, buried, and preserved. This model has been applied to all other Cambrian lagerstätten. However, the Burgess Shale model jives with its geologic evidence. It doesn’t really apply elsewhere. The model has been applied to Chengjiang. Interpretation - creatures living in shallow, nearshore setting & washed downslope into a deeper anoxic area like Burgess Shale. So, inferring turbidites.
Matrix of Chengjiang samples - not black shale. A black shale unit does exist subjacent to the Yuanshan Member - it is lower in the Heilinpu Formation - there no exceptionally preserved fossils there - only a few pelagic trilobites. So, the black shale model doesn’t work with Chengjiang. Chengjiang has pinstripe bedding - like tidal rhythmites - combine that with a setting in a shallow marine platform, with occasional evidence of fluvial/flood deposits entering the main basin. Some bacteria look like they were desiccated and rewashed out. Deposited in a tidally influenced setting, it is concluded - lagoonal, estuarine - this explains the strange faunal variation from one locality to the next. A couple of supratidal areas? Areas of fluctuating salinity - why they were preserved - get hard part remains like trilobites + nonmineralized organisms (including appendages).
Trilobites are preserved as internal molds of once-calcitic skeletons. Other soft bodied creatures are whole body fossils - have been phosphatized (fluorapatite). So, Cambrian (& Pennsylvanian) lagerstätten are preserved because of thin phosphatic deposition (7-10 days to three weeks after death). Can get phosphatization if salinity fluctuations knock out bacterial biodegraders and scavengers. Saltwater creatures decay slowly in freshwater and vice versa. Saltwater creatures decay quickly in saltwater and vice versa.
Chengjiang creatures - some are Proterozoic holdovers (like spiral bluegreen bacteria). The overall composition of creatures at Chengjiang (we have a census of >3000 specimens) - arthropods dominate the biota. The next most abundant group (~30% of the biota) is bacteria & algae remains, talhough it is difficult to quantify broken thalli and clumps of organisms. Everything else (including “typical” Cambrian creatures) is <3% of the Chengjiang biota. Arthropods dominated the living Chengjiang communities, just like today. Arthropods today are 90-95% of all animals on Earth, in terms of number of species. New arthropods are constantly being described from Chengjiang. Most organisms (including hard-part fossils) are not abundant.
Nonmineralized creatures (97% of biota) - they stand almost no chance of being preserved under normal conditions. So, 97% of a Cambrian community doesn't normally get preserved.
Holdover from the Proterozoic - there is one type of frond-like/seapen-like fossil similar to Charniodiscus (paleontology.edwardtbabinski.us/vendian/ediacaran_fossil.jpg). If it is related to Charniodiscus, it is clear that there were Ediacaran holdovers. The Chengjiang frond-like fossil was found near the top of the Chengjiang zone - one specimen was found lying atop a trilobite sclerite.
Sponges are common - clearly holdovers from the Proterozoic. Proterozoic sponges are known.
One mollusc specimen - the earliest mollusc on Earth.
Nonmineralized animals - worms (priapulids with everted heads & have sediment-filled guts), arthropods. Arthropods include large bivalved things, naraoiids ("soft-bodied trilobites" - a bit strange; have walking appendages, gills, gut tract, attachment points for muscles for legs), earliest chelicerate (possibly) - a primitive scorpion? No definitive chelicerates are known before in the Cambrian. In the Burgess Shale, there is one chelicerate, but it is a bit problematic - that one lacks chelicerae. The Chengjiang has a chelicerae-bearing arthropod. Chengjiang also has an early chordate, according to some (Yunnanozoon - palaeo-electronica.org/2000_1/fossils/images/fig_6a.jpg) - it is an early protochordate according to some researchers, but a hemichordate according to others. There are also strange things - Eldonia pineapple rings - strange (www.fossilmuseum.net/Fossil_Sites/Chengjiang/Eldonia-eumo...). Also anomalocaridids - large, with ferocious mouth parts - 3 meters long. (lejournal.cnrs.fr/sites/default/files/styles/lightbox-hd/...)
Chengjiang tells us that the Cambrian Explosion was very rapid - more rapid than previously thought. Major body plans appeared early. There was considerable body plan experimentation (most went extinct). Predation was an important factor. Complex nervous systems developed early.
Sea pen interpretation - the problem is we never see soft parts. We never see a single tentacle from these, despite fossil hydroids having them in the Mazon Creek Lagerstätte. Ediacaran holdovers in the Chengjiang are in the bases of tempestites, not in the shales.
The Chengjiang stuff is all obviously transported (parautochthonous). We don’t know whether they were alive or dead when transported.
There are laterally adjacent fluvial deposits. Some sandstones near the top of these sections are channels.
Often a kneejerk reaction: lagerstätten imply anoxic basins. But, this doesn’t work at Chengjiang.
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