Carboniferous
laelaps | April 15, 2010Top of the encrusted surface of a brachiopod shell, showing the "war" between an edrioasteroid (star-shaped organism at center) and a fast-growing bryozoan colony. From Sprinkle and Rodgers 2010.
Back in the early days of paleontology, when the meaning and origin of fossils was still in doubt, some naturalists believed that the shells, shark teeth, and other petrified curiosities were attempts by the rock to imitate life. Fossils were not true vestiges of history, it was believed, but instead the product of some "plastic virtue" suffused throughout the non-living Creation. As naturalists…
laelaps | March 24, 2010Megarachne, (changed to Mesothelae for broadcast) restored as an enormous spider in the series Before the Dinosaurs: Walking With Monsters.
Imagine that you are are standing in a massive junkyard with the remains of cars strewn all about you. A few are relatively complete, but most of the heap is made up of bits and pieces of models from the entire history of automotive innovation. If you were to reach down and pick up one of the scraps, would you be able to tell the make and model of the car it came from?
The challenges a paleontologist faces in reconstructing the life of the past are not…
greengabbro | February 1, 2008Let's get one thing out of the way right now: The question of whether or not a new geologic epoch has "really started" is precisely as stupid as the question of whether or not Pluto is "really" a planet. The definitions of geologic eons, eras, and epochs are not objective truths about the history of the planet that are simply waiting for us in the rock. The geologic time scale is made up by geologists, for geologists as a matter of convenience. So Greg Laden is making a category error when he dismisses both the Anthropocene and the Holocene as scientifically invalid - the worst thing you can…