Dean Kjerland
ArcheoPaleo
217 So. Water St., Suite 101
Northfield, MN 55057
507-645-1380

Contact Us

What we do

ArcheoPaleo is my private paleontology research lab including my collection of local fossils. It is now in place in a new 1890's-style brick building downtown on the river in historic Northfield, Minnesota, USA.  I call the space Archeo (archean) Paleo (paleozoic) and am working on several projects related to the local lower Paleozoic rocks.

Enjoy the website! ArcheoPaleo.com is a work in progress. If you come to Northfield please stop by the building, I'm usually close by.  I am interested in doing collaborative research on a couple of my current paleontology topics. Also, I am doing a little teaching, and have some educational product ideas related to paleontology and geology.

Biography

I'm finally back to my research after 2 years designing and completing the building. Before that, this is what I'd been doing in paleontology:

• Devonian and Ordovician macrofossils
• 'phosphatic' microfossils and scolecodonts
• electric-pulse disaggregation technology
• anomalous geological structure; suspected impact-shocked quartz
• well logs, stratigraphic mapping and roadside geology
• youth and lifelong learning classes and field trips

See my complete Bio page for more.
 

Classes/Field Trips

 What's This Fossil Doing In My Backyard? 500 million years ago much of the continent was a tropical sea ecosystem.  For the next 100 million years, ancient seas retreated and advanced and its life forms rapidly diversified in response to changing environments including mass extinctions. My lectures, field trips and lab classes lead your exploration of the fossils which record this important time, the local exposures of sedimentary rock which were once the ancient sea floor, and the processes of fossilization which led to the chance preservation of the animals which inhabited these ancient seas.  Throughout we will focus on the fossils of the Upper Mississippi Valley which is our backyard.