#paleosols

[geolensgist]

During the Paleocene Epoch (66-56 million years ago), the climate warmed significantly. Warmer climates cause the formation of lots of soil, which can be seen here in these paleosols (ancient soil turned to rock) from a long ago rainforest in what is now an arid grassland in eastern Colorado.

Paint Mines Interpretive Park, Colorado

July 2022

[alphynix]

What do you make of the suspected Devonian erniettomorph fossils? I think it's cool that something from that era could've survived past the end-Ediacaran extinction (and IIRC one of them may have even been able to go on land apparently?), but then again, with how thorough (for lack of a better word) that extinction was, I'm not sure how they could've survived.

It’s possible a few relict ediacaran lineages did hang on for longer than we thought, but unfortunately the potential fossils we do have are pretty unclear – and even more unfortunately the one claiming they’re evidence of late-surviving ediacarans is Greg Retallack.

Retallack is a world expert on fossil soils, but he also sometimes seems to see them in places he shouldn’t. He’s been obsessed with “reinterpreting” the ediacaran biota since the 90s, claiming the sediment they’re preserved in is terrestrial rather than marine, and classifying them all as lichens, fungi, and slime molds.

His hypotheses about them aren’t supported by most other paleontologists, and anything with his name on it involving ediacarans needs to be viewed very very skeptically.

[blugry8midawg]

Paleoclimate, proxies, paleosols, and precipitation

Precipitation reconstructions are essential for predicting impacts of future climate change and preparing for potential changes in terrestrial environmental conditions, such as shifting amounts of regional rainfall, which in turn impact water resource availability and crop growth patterns. Reliable proxy records of paleoprecipitation, especially from past warm periods, are a valuable tool for assessing and modeling future soil and plant moisture and local water availability. However, current terrestrial proxies are limited in their applications, and as a result, a wide range of paleoenvironments are underrepresented in the geologic record.

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from Paleoclimate, proxies, paleosols, and precipitation

[freakingchickenz]

PALEOSOLS ON MARS?!