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1998

In 1998 our Geology Wing came into its own as we completed a basic exhibit on every period and epoch, and many locality exhibits went up. Also new was the Virtual Paleobotany Lab and the refurbishing of many of our old pages.

December 1998
  • December 31: Wonder of wonders; we now have an exhibit on Mistaken Point, a Canadian locality with Vendian fossils.
  • December 30: Seemingly from out of nowhere comes a short exhibit on the remarkable Precambrian soft-bodied fossils from the Ediacara Hills of Australia.
  • December 29: We've continued to make additions, corrections, and nifty little modifications across our Geology Wing. We've added a page on Silurian stratigraphy, and many exhibits now have a Tectonics page.
  • December 28: Our Topical Index now lists our exhibits on fossil localities both geographically and chronologically.
  • December 24: We've added a small exhibit on the Ordovician algae from Lake Winnipeg, Canada.
  • December 23: We've modified our Geologic Time Machine.
  • December 21: Our home page has a new look.
  • December 15: The Virtual Paleobotany Laboratory is now available on the WWW.
November 1998
  • November 26: Some phylogenetic terms are difficult to understand; to help, we've added a page illustrating the differences between monophyly, paraphyly, and polyphyly, created by Darren Abbey.
  • November 21: Our venerable Exhibits Entrance page has a fresh new look.
  • November 8: We are now using Apache, v.1.3.3 to serve up our web content. We hope it is faster. If you notice any difference (good or bad), please let us know.
October 1998
  • October 17: Our exhibit on the Pliocene has been expanded a bit. Watch for additions to this exhibit in the next few months!
  • October 15: We've added a short introduction to our exhibit about the La Venta Fauna from the Miocene of Colombia.
September 1998
  • September 27: We've made a start on the final volume of the Glossary, namely the one covering Life Histories.
  • September 9: We've added a description of the Papers of Annie Alexander, the benefactress of UCMP. These documents are part of the UCMP Archival Collections and are available to historians and other interested parties.
August 1998
  • August 12: You can find more pictures of ciliates in our exhibit on that group. We've also cleaned up some of the older images, and reduced the image sizes for faster loading.
  • August 8: We have created a new page on Alveolates while refurbishing our page on eukaryote systematics.
  • Augsut 6: We're keeping track of our server statistics with an updated software package.
  • August 4: UCMP gradual student and current systems administrator, Allen Collins, has revamped his home page in anticipation of post-doctoral endeavors.
  • August 3: We've retouched our page on the three domains of life.
July 1998
  • July 27: The Padian Lab finally has a set of web pages. Check them out here.
June 1998
  • June 7: Read about finely preserved fossils of the earliest dinosaurs from the famous Ischigualasto Formation of Argentina.
  • June 6: We have updated our page on Navigating the Geology Wing.
  • June 5: Time once again to reformat our Geologic Time Machine; we think you'll find the new format much easier to use.
  • June 4: Check out the new Guestbook or sign it.
  • June 2: Some very sad news. Daniel I. Axelrod, well-known for his work on Tertiary floras of western North America, died today at the age of 88. He will be sorely missed.
  • June 1: We've added to our Catalogs Listings, with a new page for indexing Archived Data.
May 1998
  • May 31: Museum Scientist Mark Goodwin has updated his home page.
  • May 27: Read about discoveries of Cretaceous dinosaurs in California, including duck-billed dinosaurs and armored dinos.
  • May 24: We've added several pages of information to our new exhibit on the Ordovician, including the stratigraphy and paleoclimate.
  • May 21: Check out our revitalized page on Joggins, Nova Scotia, and the fossils found there.
  • May 19: A campus-wide outtage took us off-line for almost an entire day.
  • May 13: The Thyreophora are the armored dinosaurs, including Stegosaurus, perhaps the most popular dinosaur of all (other than T. rex, of course).
  • May 11: Our Dinobuzz pages have a new look; watch for more exciting enhancements!
  • May 10: At long last, we have added a partial page on the Permian (more to come soon!), as well as pages on the Triassic, and the beginnings of a spectacular new exhibit on the Carboniferous. Come tromp through a prehistoric coal swamp!
  • May 8: The movie Deep Impact opened today and included a little tribute to our website and paleontology at UC Berkeley. This is only fitting, since Alvarez is here! He and others at UCB proposed the asteroid impact hypothesis for the extinction of the dinosaurs.
  • May 4: Everybody loves polymerid trilobites, and our polymerid fossil gallery has now been expanded a little and refurbished a lot.
April 1998
  • April 23: Gee, can't wait to catch a glimpse of the revised Museum Staff, Student, and Associate Directory? You are not alone.
  • April 18: We've put up basic pages on the Ordovician and Silurian with links to on-line information. Watch for full exhibits on these exciting periods soon!
  • April 11: A little pepper spices up our exhibit on paleoherbs.
  • April 1: Surprise! We fixed the archives for the mailing lists that we administer here at UCMP: NHCOLL-L, MicroPal, Mollusca, and Paleonet.
March 1998
  • March 17: Two new additions to our coverage of green algae: the Chlorophyceae and Pleurastrophyceae.
  • March 14: We have thoroughly revised our information on chromistan systematics to reflect the many new findings in recent years. We have also added a small page on the Sagenista, a basal chromist group.
  • March 13: We all had a lot of fun at our meeting entitled, Integrative Paleontology and the Future, February 28, 1998. We also presented a nice cross-section of the diverse work in progress by UCMP researchers. Peruse the ABSTRACTS of the posters we presented if you're curious about what professional paleontologists really spend their time doing.
  • March 2: There may only be one living species of the Ginkgoales today, but in the Mesozoic and Tertiary, they were important forest trees worldwide.
February 1998
  • February 21: The Bitter Springs Formation in central Australia is the source of the oldest known eukaryotic fossils: over 850 million years old!
  • February 14: We have compacted together some information on peat mosses for our first exhibit on mosses.
  • February 2: Those beautiful sponges have been redone! Soak up the new information on all types of sponges, including the Archaeocyatha, the Calcarea, the Chaetetids, the Demospongia, the Hexactinellida, the "Sphinctozoans", and the "Stromatoporoids".
  • February 1: Sixty-five million years after the Cretaceous Period ended, we finally got around to putting up its exhibit on our server. We apologize for the inconvenience.
January 1998
  • January 26: Not only are chytrids "first among fungus", but they are also our first exhibit on a true fungal group.
  • January 4: Come visit our expanded archosaur exhibit, with new images and now pages on their morphology and fossil record.
  • January 3: In theory, all catalog searches from within the Geology Wing should be working again.
  • January 1: To kick off our fifth year on the web, we have made changes to our collections pages, integrating information about our holdings and providing links to related pages.

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