#fossil record

[allwillbecomeclear]

Shark News!! Fossil of an ancient shark that swam in the age of dinosaurs solves centuries-long mystery

🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈

[amnhnyc]

Happy Trilobite Tuesday! Some of the fossil record’s most fascinating Lower Cambrian trilobites have been found in Nevada’s Montezuma Mountain Range. Specimens like this half-billion-year-old, 2.4-in- (6-cm-) long Nevadella illustrate how advanced the trilobite form was even very early in their swim through the Paleozoic seas

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

how much of the fossil record do you think has been lost because of oil drilling / production?

How much? Hmmm, this is basically impossible to quantify, we would first need to know how large the fossil record was in the first place.

Human activity has certainly lead to the loss of many fossils, on the other hand such human activities also made paleontology only possible in the first place. It is no accident that this field established itself during the Industrial revolution, when quarrying and mining intensified. Human had known and wondered about fossils for a long time, but only a constant stream of new discoveries enabled Victorian scientists to reveal the first pages of the fossil record.

So although an incredible amount of fossils is lost each year thanks to mining, only these fresh exposures of deeper layers often times enable us to peak into these lost worlds.

On the other hand human activity seems insignificant compared to the fossils we lost to natural causes. The eastern US has for example far less dinosaur fossils because the glaciers of the last ice age scraped of all the Mesozoic rocks, grinding them into sand and gravel.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"Evolution is a fact, not a theory. It really happened, and the fossil record and the molecular biology all confirm it. And yet, in this country, the United States, which is the leading scientific country in the world, we have people who are not only ignorant of science, but who are actively hostile to it and to the scientific method. And that is a serious problem, because science is not just a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking. It's a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility." -- Carl Sagan

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Aaron Morse Fossil Record, 2025 Acrylic, watercolor and collage on paper 33 1/4 x 24 1/4 x 1 1/2 inches

* * * *

“Yahweh to Urset

I pray that you are kept safe throughout this day, that you live as wholly as you can, that you see things that you have not seen before and that more of them are beautiful than not, more of them delightful than not. I pray that you hold easily in your hands the balance of the earth and sky, that you laugh and cry, know freedom and restraint, some joy and some sorrow, pleasure and pain, much of life and a little of death. I pray that you are grateful for the gift of your being, and I pray that you celebrate your life in the proper way, with grace and humility, wonder and contentment, in the strong, deep current of your spirit’s voice. I pray that you are happily in love with the dawn and that you are more deeply in love in the dusk.”

― N. Scott Momaday, The Death of Sitting Bear: New and Selected Poems

[taphonomenon]

Happy nameday to two of the most famous dinosaurs ever!

120 years ago both of the dinos Tyrannosaurus rex and Albertosaurus sarcophagus were named in the same journal article! Both of these dinos helped shed light onto the diversity of North American Theropod dinosaurs at the time, only a few species of which were known then.

Pictured here is an illustration of the T. rex FMNH PR 2801, better known as Sue.

Next is a reconstruction of Albertosaurus eating a Struthiomimus.

Finally is a sketch of the holotype material for Albertosaurus sarcophagus

[faithandarisadventures]

A Deadly Day Royal Tyrrell Museum Drumheller, AB June 23, 2026

[lightning-wyvern]

DID YOU GUYS KNOW THE IGUANODON DOESNT TECHNICALLY EXIST?? IT WAS RENAMED IN 2012 BY GREGORY SAINT PAUL!!! ITS CALLED MANTELLODON CARPENTERI NOW!! MANTELLISAURS?? MANTELLISAURUS??