#fossilisation

[curiosityistheleastofmyproblems]

Paraceratherium Skull

‘The near hornless beast’

Preparator Otto Falkenbach with P. transouralicum skull (AMNH 18650), American Museum of Natural History

One of the largest mammals in history.

It’s estimated to have weighed roughy 17 tons with the height of 16 feet.

A herbivore diet including foliage.

Fossils were first discovered in Pakistan and Kazakhstan in 1846

[cheminer-poesie-cressant]

poésie en pierre

calque que la mort propose à la pierre de passage, que le temps artiste s’amuse à lire, à surligner, à transposer traits par traits sur la roche qui reçoit et conserve les premières ébauches, les premiers dessins ; un temps sculpteur de la mort des êtres, une mort plus longue que les autres, plus éternelle, tout entière aux mains des pierres

© Pierre Cressant

(dimanche 26 février 2012)

[kalyxhistory]

A petrified fish. Over the years I collected several fossils and I'm currently thinking about making a little audio-blog or podcast about the topic. One day, my late dad brought home this massive stone slab, and boy was I excited when he revealed what hid under the wrapping paper. It was the first fossil I had ever seen in my entire life and by the time I had been obsessed with dinosaurs, and this fish almost was one, at least for my tiny little few-years-old self 😉 #pagan #heathen #asatru #asatro #paganism #petrified #petrification #pagansofinstagram #fossilhunting #fossilization #paleontology #archaeology #fish #fossilisation #stone #fossiladdict #sea #ocean #geology #fossilhunter #jurassicworld #witchythings #paleo #fossilien #paläontologie #dinosaurs #history #archäologie #livinghistory #turnedtostone https://www.instagram.com/p/ByA_6mNimHB/?igshid=w6rdpjvnp3nv

[cheminer-poesie-cressant]

mémoire de pierre

c’est la pierre qui se souvient du passage de la nature, la pierre fossile qui retient la libellule, le poisson, la feuille de platane ou bien encore l’oiseau ; la mort piégée en son corps de roche, la roche cercueil, tombale par nature ; la mort qui s’immortalise, qui ne se retire pas, dans l’enrochement d’une vie possible ; une mort si visible qu’elle a finit par donner de la vie à son image

© Pierre Cressant

(dimanche 26 février 2012) 

[1lluminae-files]

Oh god i turn 20 in a week

[moneyhealthfinance-blog]

Fossil’s digital push to avoid fossilisation in the time of the smartwatch There was a recent startling claim from market analyst Canalys that reckons that Apple is now shipping more of its Watch product than the whole of the Swiss watch industry combined.

[prehistoric-colours-blog1]

The pigment melanin is responsble for producing brown, black and red colours in feathers, hair and skin. Different colours are produced by different types of melanin. In feathers blacks and browns are made by eumelanin, lighter browns and ginger colouration is produced by phaeomelanin. Melanin is contained within sub-cellular structures called melanosomes, eumelanin is contained within long sausage shaped eumelanosomes, phaeomelanin is contained within round ball shaped phaeomelanosomes. This means that we can use the shape of melanosomes preserved in the fossil record to tell what colour the feathers were. 

These melanosomes are long and thin so we can tell that they are eumelanosomes and produce black colouration. This image has been false coloured so that individual melanosomes are easier to pick out.

Recent work by our collegue Dr. McNamara has shown that colour producing structures known as melanosomes do not survive the fossilisation process completely intact. Modern feathers were heated at high pressures to simulate conditions experienced during burial and fossilisation. During the experiment the melanosomes within these feathers changed size and shape. This is important as we use the shape of melanosomes in fossils to work out what colour they produced. We have to know the original shape of a fossilised melanosome so that we can work out what colour they were before they were fossilised.

[theolduvaigorge]

How to Become a Fossil After You Die

by Dan Nosowitz

“Think of how many people have seen the most famous dinosaur and hominid fossils on display in the world’s natural history museums. It’s in the millions. These ordinary creatures that died, usually in some ordinary way, are now some of the most famous organisms in the history of the world, the subject of fascination hundreds of thousands of years later. It’s amazing. We should all have a chance at that kind of fame.

But what are the chances an individual human will become a fossil and end up as celebrated as Leonardo the partially mummified Brachylophosaur? “Pretty minimal,” laughed Mark Norell, the chair of the paleontology department at the American Museum of Natural History. There are things you can do, especially in your last breathing moments, to goose your chances of become a fossil, but, he says, there’s no way to guarantee that your fossilized bones will be discovered in 100,000 years. 

“We have a fossil record, and it goes back billions of years, but nevertheless it only represents a miniscule fraction, like point-zero-zero-zero-etcetera percent, of both individuals and species that have ever lived on the planet, because most things just don't preserve,” says Norell. “It's a very rare event to become a fossil.”So before we can get to tips and tricks for becoming a fossil, we have to do some basic work and figure out what, precisely, a fossil even is, and where they come from.“Fossils are basically any indication of ancient life,” says Norell. “That can be body fossils, bone fossils, fossil seashells, and even things like tracks.”

There are a few different ways fossils can be preserved for the 10,000 years or so it takes to be considered a fossil (before that, material is considered remains, or evidence, or something other than a fossil. It’s kind of a loose definition). The most important part: the body has to be buried suddenly, which is rare. Rapid burial can happen due to natural effects, including volcanic eruptions, which bury things in ash, or dying near a flooding stream, which rapidly covers the body in sediment” (read more).

(Source: Atlas Obscura)