Background

When first created, this website was intended to provide Aurora (Lee Creek) devotees with an opportunity to find out what was happening at this popular and important fossil locale and to share information. It has subsequently expanded to encompass many aspects of fossil and living sharks and rays.

Original Mission

ELASMO.COM's purpose has been and continues to be the sharing of information. In its infancy, this was largely limited to the Lee Creek fauna. This limited scope has expanded over time. Today, the website provides a broad overview of the Western North Atantic's selachian fauna from the Cretaceous to Present. A great deal of information is published on fossil sharks and rays, but little is commonly available. ELASMO.COM attempts to bridge this gap by sharing information (original and recycled) with its readers.

Oh yeah, what is Lee Creek? It's the term used to refer to certain Miocene to Pleistocene marine sediments in eastern North Carolina. The abundant fossils provide us with a view of the area's earlier inhabitants -- the Lee Creek fauna.

Expanded Mission

In February 1998, the website outgrew the space available on the two servers supporting it. A new domain was created, ELASMO.COM to provide room for growth and allow the scope of the site to broaden. Lee Creek would remain the site's anchor, but more topics could be supported, including other fossil faunas and rays (the author's primary interest).

As with most websites, this one provides outside links, but continues to stress new and original content. There are 300 or so pages and hundreds of original illustrations & images contained in the site.

Browser Support

Rather than incorporate the latest web technologies, the website has been designed to be viewable by the broadest range of users with an emphasis on download time. In July '96 it was written for Netscape 1.0 and in February '98, the bar was raised to Netscape 2.0. In 1999, a conversion was undertaken to move the site to JavaScript 1.1 (Netscape 3.0 and frames).

Technology moved on, and in early 2001, ELASMO.COM moved to JavaScript 1.2 and CSS. Because this technology is supported by NS & IE 4.0+ (NS 6.0 & IE 5.5 are available) this upgrade of the website should prove problematic to few visitors — at least those unfortunate enough to be tied to a Bill Gates platform. Without the ability to test the code on a MAC, I must rely on user feedback to accommodate the 'better' platform. Incorporating CSS was done with Applephiles in mind.

During 2005, the website wanted to include more images without impacting the bandwidth for those still relying on dial-up access. To this end, images and text needed to be dynamically positioned and/or replaced. To accomplish this, code could no longer be provided that would be renderable by NS 4.0 (my favorite browser) -- it is no longer supported. As of April 2006, the pages have been tested in IE 6.0, NS 7 & 8 and Firefox 1.5. Firefox has a bug that does not allow the dynamic changing of text data, and will fail on pages of this design.

Unlike many sites, ELASMO.COM deems hardware less flexible and continued to consider VGA users (600 x 480) as the supported standard for screen/window sizing. In April 2006, the first larger page (700 x 480) was added for a slide-show.

Objectives

• News. To serve as a bulletin board to share mine and related fossil news.
• Information. To provide information to assist the collector or other interested persons in the identification of fossils, particularly selachian material, from the Atlantic Coastal plain.
• Shared forum. To provide a forum for writers to share their opinions on this and related subjects.

History & Acknowledgements

In an attempt to familiarize myself with .HTML, this website was originally put together from scratch over a long weekend when Bertha was bearing down on my favorite site and many of my friends. You'd think that my thoughts would have been of their safety, but no, I was thinking of the teeth being exposed at the mine and not being there. I'd like to thank the person(s) who wrote, edited and/or posted A Beginner's Guide to HTML and the Dida HTML Editor 1.4 (long-dead online links), together they made for a fun weekend. Last but not least, a personal thanks to Becky Hyne -- if you've been there, you'll know why. - - - - Jim Bourdon July 15, 1996

Since writing this acknowledgement, this site has expanded far beyond its original scope. Various people from the scientific and amateur community have provided articles, allowed their e-mail correspondences to be included, provided news, helped with identifications, etc. Some of these people include: Steve Alter, Lutz Andres, Jose Gabriel Apolin, Shelly Applegate, B.J. Blake, Ron Blakey, Kris Bloome, David Bohaska, John Bruner, Tom Caggiano, Wayne Callahan, Henri Cappetta, Jeff Carpenter, Richard Chandler, Alberto Luis Cione, Howie Cohn, Leonard Compagno, Bill Counterman, Steve Cunningham, Gilles Cuny, Roberta Dann, Marcel De Jong, Pieter De Schutter, David Dockery, Jess Duran, Ron & Sharron Edwards, Mike Everhart, Mike Folmer, George Fonger, Pat Graffam, Kim Greene, Dick Grier, Gary Grimsley, Bill Harris, Mark Harris, Bill Heim, Jacques Herman, Joy Herrington, Candace Holliday, Dirk Hovestadt, Maria Hovestadt-Euler, Gordon Hubbell, Becky & Frank Hyne, Rick Johnson, René Kindlimann, Spencer Lucas, Rome G. Lytton, Earl Manning, Rick Martin, Mike McCloskey, Henry Mollet, Fabrice Moreau, John Morrissey, Abdelmajid Noubhani, Curtis Ormond, George Phillips, Bob Purdy, Al Robb, Ellie Rouse, Dave Sanderson, Daryl Serafin, Kenshu Shimada, Mikael Siverson, Ed Swiatovy, Tanaka Takeshi, Charlie Underwood, Rene van der Vliet, Greg Walden, Stig Walsh, David Ward, Rob Weems, David Wells, Robert Wiest, Keith Wright, Hideo Yabe and Pat & Ken Young. My apologizes to those I've omitted, I'm sure there are more than one.