Category Archives: fossils

Scenic Saturday: Lyme Regis

Posted on September 24, 2011 by Anne Jefferson

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 →

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Categories: by Anne, fossils, outcrops, photos

Written in Stone: the interview

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Chris Rowan

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

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Chris Rowan

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

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Anne Jefferson

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

Snowball Earth no problem for sponges

Posted on August 18, 2010 by Chris Rowan

Evidence from numerous sources seems to be converging to suggest that sponges – the first animals – emerged much earlier than the beginning of the Cambrian, and apparently sailed through severe climatic events in the Cryogenian without much trouble at all. Continue reading →

Categories: fossils, geology, paper reviews, past worlds, Proterozoic

How do we know Gabon’s ‘multicellular’ fossils are 2.1 billion years old?

Posted on July 2, 2010 by Chris Rowan

The fossil record prior to 550 million years ago is so patchy that every discovery is going to cause some fanfare. That is certainly case with these odd looking things, which have been proclaimed in Nature as the oldest mulitcellular … Continue reading →

Categories: fossils, geology, paper reviews, past worlds, Proterozoic

Neoproterozoic signs of life

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Chris Rowan

Whilst the the dawn of the Cambrian clearly marked the diversification of mobile, active animals and biomineralisers, the story of their first origins appear to have begun much earlier.
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Categories: fossils, geology, paper reviews, past worlds, Proterozoic

Coal and the fossil record of climate change in the Canadian High Arctic

Posted on January 31, 2010 by Anne Jefferson

Spectacular fossilized forests in the Canadian High Arctic provide clues to life on a warmer earth. Unless we mine their coal in order to heat our planet back to the Eocene.
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