#fossilization

[navusare]

sacred geometry ꩜

| earth day |

piece from a project i shared some months ago… felt fitting for earth day

[mineralsrocksandfossiltalks]

Monday Musings: Why are there so many perfectly preserved soft-bodied animals found in the Cambrian?

There are a number of ways to get the perfect preservations needed to fossilize soft parts but none of them are particularly common. On the other hand, most of them require water and there was quite a lot of it 518 million years ago.

Phosphatization occurs when large quantities of phosphate are present, either in sea water or from the tissues of a decaying organism. In some cases, microbes that fed on the tissue control the phosphatization. Many soft tissues are preserved this way in the Burgess Shale. The phosphate comes from the tissue itself and when pH is low and oxygen is absent, it becomes the primary method of fossilization.

Silicification is one of the most common ways to fossilize something because silicates is the most common rock forming minerals in the crust. Silica often replaces other minerals that have dissolved out such as calcite shells. This is usually seen to preserve things like trilobites. It doesn't often fossilize soft tissue.

Another form of preservation found at least in the Burgess Shale is carbonaceous film. This occurs when something is buried under several layers of sediment and diagenetically altered (in this case by heat and pressure brought on by compaction) and the animal lacks a hard skeleton or shell.

When we look at quarry locations on a paleo map,

and examine the rocks, we see that they lived and died in the right place at the right time (if the taphonomic and preservation bias don't lead us astray).

The Burgess Shale beds were deposited at the base of a cliff of calcareous reefs below the depth agitated by waves during storms. The most widely accepted hypothesis for burial is that part if the reef became detached, slumped and transported rock and debris several kilometers and quickly burying anything in its path.

On the other hand, the Maotianshan Shale was probably buried periodically under turbidity currents, basically an underwater mass wasting event. This is why we don't build our homes on old landslide deposits kids.

The Sirius Passet lagerstatte of Greenland was yet a different environment close to the boundary of an oxygen minimum zone according to geochemical analysis. It is thought that the original preservation was phosphatization that was later altered to silica by low grade metamorphism during the Devonian Period mountain-building events.

Finally, we have the Sinsk Biota of Siberia which inhabited an open marine basin where storms created back currents that sent many animals off into the oxygen depleted depths below. Anoxic conditions prevent growth of microbes that would normally decay flesh allowing soft tissues to preserve.

Now, it is also important to note that oftentimes, parts labeled soft tissue are not necessarily as soft as you believe. Take keratin for example which makes up nails, hair, feathers and sheaths over horns. It's not really that soft in some cases but it is softer than bone which makes it harder to preserve.

Whether we mean keratin or chitin (a natural polymer used to strengthen fungi and invertebrates) or internal organs which really are soft tissues, the Cambrian lagerstatten really are something else.

[thewormsarecoming]

whalefall

But death is not death, not really,

When a whale falls to the bottom of the ocean it becomes its own ecosystem, 

celebrated by organisms that feed from it.

And when you die, the earth will envelop you and forever it will remember the imprint of your body, immortalising your memory into the very earth itself.

New life will blossom from your corpse as you sink into the earth,

And you will become apart of a story longer than anyone remembers,

Imbedded beneath the earth.

[thethcministry]

[drondskaath]

Fossilization | Leprous Daylight | 8th September, 2023

Brazilian Death Doom Metal

Artwork by Rio Oka

[fly-the-pattern]

The dino benches are super cute. The angle is a little weird, though. And there's other seating if you're scared of dinosaurs. Looks like there's non-dino flat benches in the back on the right and a raised stone bench / retaining wall area on the left with grass and trees. I'm a little worried that there's no arm rests on any of the seating areas, though. It might be difficult for people with mobility issues to stand back up. Super cute for in front of a dino museum, though! And I totally want one.

[ladybugboots]

distant past

[pien-art]

together forever :)

what if we were little bugs holding hands encased in amber forever and ever :))))

prints available here :p

[soupdrinkinglincoln]

Very interesting advancement note that I’m obviously not the first to comment on but

The wording is ‘rescue’ a Ghast from the Nether, and bring it ‘safely home’. Which has always been the idea of, are Ghasts from the Nether? Was the Nether always like this; and are they so miserable because they were forced to adapt to a ruined fiery hellscape? Well, now we know that presumably when young especially, they’re liable to dry out. That if they’re rescued from being dried, they thrive in a more earthly environment. That they grow up happy when doing so. I do think that Ghasts may be from the Nether, but not from the current Nether. A much colder one, maybe more like the Overworld, maybe not. Probably a cavernous fungal paradise if I had to guess. But now they live in a world that’s been ruined by something, and turned into the human embodiment of hell, forced to spit fire just to no longer be filled with it when they’d much rather eat snow to cool down. Is it any wonder they cry?

[wachinyeya]

A company making wooden wind turbine blades has successfully tested a 50-meter-long prototype that’s set to debut soon in the Indian and European markets.

Last year, the German firm Voodin successfully demonstrated that their laminated-veneer timber blades could be fabricated, adapted, and installed at a lower cost than existing blades, while maintaining performance.

Now, Voodin has announced a partnership with the Indian wind company Senvion to supply its 4.2-megawatt turbines with these wooden blades for another trial run.

Wind power has accumulated more than a few demerit points for several shortfalls in the overall industry of this fossil-fuel alternative.

Some of these, such as the impact on bird life, are justified, but none more so than the fact that the turbine blades are impossible or nearly impossible to recycle, and that they need to be changed every 25 years.

Wind turbine blades are made from a mixture of glass and carbon fiber heated together with sticky epoxy resin, and these materials can’t be separated once combined, which means they go into landfills or are incinerated when they become too battered to safely operate.

GNN has reported that folks will occasionally find second-life value in these giant panels, for example in Denmark where they are turned into bike shelters. In another instance, they’re being used as pedestrian bridges.

But there are way more wind turbine blades being made every year than pedestrian bridges and bike shelters, making the overall environmental impact of wind power not all green.

“At the end of their lifecycle, most blades are buried in the ground or incinerated. This means that—at this pace—we will end up with 50 million tonnes of blade material waste by 2050,” Voodin Blade Technology’s CEO. Mr. Siekmann said recently. “With our solution, we want to help green energy truly become as green as possible.”

The last 15 years have seen rapid growth in another industry called mass timber. This state-of-the-art manufacturing technique sees panels of lumber heat-pressed, cross-laminated, and glued into a finished product that’s being used to make skyscrapers, airports, and more.

At the end of the day though, mass timber products are still wood, and can be recycled in a variety of ways.

“The blades are not only an innovative technological advancement but a significant leap toward sustainable wind production,” said Siekmann, adding that this isn’t a case of pay more to waste less; the blades cost around 20% less than carbon fiber.

Additionally, the added flexibility of wooden blades should allow for taller towers and longer blades, potentially boosting the output of turbine by accessing higher wind speeds.

Now partnered with Voodin, Senvion will begin feasibility analysis in the next few months, before official testing begins around 2027.

[navusare]

traces of life

work for class - 60” x 40” (all pages together); gouache, colored pencil, fineliner pen on paper

[rock-and-rolly-polly]

Fossilized Coral Cabochon

I got it for day 15 of my advent calendar

[maquina-semiotica]

“ Oracle of Reversion”, Fossilization

[hbystuff]

Habitat - 32 colours

[srlgemstone]

Potamon sp. Crab Fossil; Pleistocene Epoch (2.58 - 0.012 MYA)