Category Archives: fossils

Scenic Saturday: Echoes of Mary Anning

On March 9th, 1847, the world lost a great scientist to breast cancer. She was poor, lacked formal education, and practiced a minority religion, but she had a keen eye and mind that helped see things that others couldn’t and … Continue reading

Categories: academic life, by Anne, fossils, Mesozoic, outcrops

Scenic Saturday: Lyme Regis

Two-hundred years ago, a young woman by the name of Mary Anning walked along this shore, using her keenly self-trained observation skills to spot fossils eroding out of these cliffs. The cliffs are the blue Lias, Jurassic mudstones filled with … Continue reading

Categories: by Anne, fossils, outcrops, photos

Written in Stone: the interview

To accompany our review of Written in Stone, a couple of weeks ago Anne and I sat down with its author, our good friend and fellow blogger Brian Switek, for what turned into a fascinating discussion of his book, the … Continue reading

Categories: fossils, public science, reviews

Book Review: Written in Stone by Brian Switek

Palaeoblogger extraordinaire Brian Switek has often expressed frustration at the fact that many recent popularisers of evolution have a habit of downplaying the importance of the fossil record in studies of evolution. However, when reading the opening chapters of Written … Continue reading

Categories: deep time, fossils, public science, reviews

Oregon’s fossil forests

Today is National Fossil Day, and half way through Earth Science Week. In honor of the occasion, I present a few notes and photos from a trip I took with my botanist mother to the John Day Fossil Beds in … Continue reading

Categories: by Anne, Cenozoic, fossils, outcrops