#geologyjohnson

[geologyjohnson]

Work in progress on a goniatite painting. What other critters should I add?

[geologyjohnson]

Digital painting I made of the Earth as it would have looked around 1.6 billion years ago. The single super continent is called "Nuna".

[geologyjohnson]

Geology For World Builders

New video! After several requests I'm making some videos explaining basics of #geology for #worldbuilders such as #fantasy and #scifi writers and their ilk. Check it out and share it below. #Worldbuilding

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9gpQqL8dHM

[geologyjohnson]

Weird Precambrian Microfossils

Here is one of the weird fossils I've been working on since getting back to Belgium. It's about 60 microns long, or 0.06 millimetres and 1.4 billion years old and no one in the lab has seen anything like it before. The texture is not just a surface pattern, the light areas are pits, the dark areas are raised tubes. There are multiple layers of tissue and structures that look like pore that could open and close. These features indicate the fossil is probably from a eukaryotic organism - those with complex nucleated cells. I don't think this level of detail has ever been preserved in a fossil this old before. Additionally, you normally need to look at rocks less than a billion years old to find fossils with this level of complexity.

This fossil is significant because it lived at a time when we did not think life this complex existed yet. This is a period of time called "The Boring Billion" where the Earths environment and biology were thought to have entered a period of stasis - e.g. nothing changed for a billion years. My work will join a growing body of research that shows this interval was anything but boring, and was actually a pivotal period in the development of our planet and the life that inhabits it.

[geologyjohnson]

#ThinsectionThursday early #Jurassic tempestites where #crinoids have been converted from calcite to glauconite. The conversion has even preserved the micron scale detail of the stereom. Each image about 5 mm wide. #geology #paleontology #echinoderm

[geologyjohnson]

A small 2 cm #ammonite from the #Jurassic of #Morocco with a nice internal cross section. Also an improved version of the ammonite from yorkshire I photographed the other day.

[geologyjohnson]

Undescribed Proterozoic Fossil

Fossil Friday Part of an undescribed mid Proterozoic critter preserved as an carbon compression on a deep water mudstone. You can see nice features like the regular spaces with dots in the middle. Image 1cm wide

[geologyjohnson]

One of my proterozoic mudstone samples. The red arrow points to an organic walled Acritarch with 3D preservation, the green arrow points to an unusual net-like texture that is common in these samples