University News
Three hundred million years after it died, a jellyfish is still telling tales.
January 22, 2016
At least Stephanie Rosbach thinks it is a jellyfish. The University of New Haven senior from Hallsville, Mo., has been studying the creature, on loan from the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh, since June 2015.
The fossil, which she and her mentor, Carmela Cuomo, professor and head of the marine biology program at UNH, named Bob, is from the Bear Gulch limestone found in Montana. Once it lived in a salty marine bay. Layers of sediment preserved it.
They believe Bob is a Rhizostome jellyfish not unlike those today that have eight highly branched oral arms lined with mini-mouth orifices capable of sucking.
Bob is brown with, Rosbach discovered, some red, black and dark brown spots. Rosbach theorizes the spots were caused by various materials Bob was exposed to. Her examination of Bob is limited to photographic and X-ray imagery since the museum will not allow her to do cross sections or otherwise damage the fossil.
One of the techniques Rosbach used was to bring Bob to Yale’s West Campus to use a photographic machine that can digitally analyze the creature from all angles using light. "It brings out things like the spots on the surface," she says. "I am looking at Bob’s chemical composition to see what his relationship is to modern animals."
Her work so far has resulted in a presentation she and Cuomo made this fall at the Geological Society of America at a conference in Baltimore, Maryland. The two are also working on a scientific paper.
Rosbach, who had never been to a real beach or out in a big boat until she arrived at UNH, says her work with the fossil has changed her future. A marine sciences/environmental biology double major, Rosbach plans to attend graduate school to earn a Ph.D. in paleontology.
The University of New Haven is a private, top-tier comprehensive institution recognized as a national leader in experiential education. Founded in 1920 the university enrolls approximately 1,800 graduate students and more than 4,600 undergraduates.
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