Why Geologists Love Pond Scum

If you’ve ever wondered how geologists know so much about ancient beaches and shallow oceans — from the paleoenvironment to the animals roaming around, the seasonality of the weather, and even the time of day when the ancient scene was preserved — they owe it all to the sand particles bound together by microbes, forming…

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Ancient Tidal Flats Were Busier Than We Thought

New trace fossil discoveries from the half-billion-year-old Cambrian tidal flats of Wisconsin at a site called Blackberry Hill continue to paint the picture of some of the earliest animals to set foot on land and what they might have been eating. The mollusk trail Climactichnites blackberriensis (Cb) presumably stopping to eat a scyphozoan (jellyfish) that…

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