A new study warns that teeny tiny fossils may, in many cases, turn out to be only pseudofossils—shaped like the remains of dead critters, but really just lumps of stuff that happen to have those shapes. This warning echoes the lesson people draw from the Ig Nobel Prize-winning work of Chonosuke Okamura, who published extensive […]
Tag: Fossils
A rectal foreign body in a 65 million year-old Danish sea urchin
Since David B. Busch and James R. Starling, won the 1995 Ig Nobel Literature prize for their deeply penetrating 1986 research report, “Rectal foreign bodies: Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World’s Literature” the body of literature on the subject and the number of cases has increased considerably. By 2012, no less than […]
A Flying Lizard (extinct) and a Famous Cartoonist (extant)
In answer to the question “How many monofenestratan pterosaurs are named after famous cartoonists?”, Improbable hazards a guess that the answer is :“One”. Being : Cuspicephalus scarfi which is named (say its describers David Martill and Steve Etches of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Portsmouth, UK) “After artist/cartoonist Gerald […]
A Solid Approach to Old Dung
Coprolites, which are not manufactured to meet to meet any regulated industry standard, can be examined in a standard way: “A Standardized Method for the Description and the Study of Coprolites,” F. Jouy-Avantin, A. Debenath, A.-M. Moigne, and H. Mone, Journal of Archaeological Science, vol. 30, no 3, March 2003, pp. 367-72. (Thanks to Tom […]
Problematica: tentative, partial solution
The PLoS One community blog writes, about some of the famously curious Burgess Shale fossils: A number of the strangest fossils from the Shale are so difficult to classify using current animal classification, they were given designation Problematica until more information is uncovered. One such new fossil that helps move some members of Problematica into […]
Bishop Steno, the canonized fossil hunter
“In 1659 he decided not to accept anything simply written in a book, instead resolving to do research himself,” says Wikipedia about the now-late Bishop Steno, and goes on to give other bits of his history: