Scientists from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland are arguing that the massive and mysterious tubelike fossils known as "prototaxites" deserve their own life form classification because, basically, they're too weird to belong to any other. @Futurism has more, including why prototaxites have long been a head-scratcher and a point of contention for scientists who to this day cannot figure out their nature:
Also, I forgot to mention this great Common Descent episode about decomposers:
https://commondescentpodcast.com/2025/03/15/episode-213-decomposers/
newest episode of Common Descent is about saber teeth!
They cover everything from Smilodon to Nimravids to Gorgonopsians to fanged deer (although not Hoplitomeryx)! Even Uintatherium gets a mention. Covers recent research on why Smilodon's canines would have been visible when the mouth was closed, while Homotherium's canines would have been concealed when the mouth was closed.
https://commondescentpodcast.com/2025/03/29/episode-214-saber-teeth/
From our "What-the-heck-was-that-thing" files...
This Bizarre Fossil Isn’t a Plant, Animal, or Fungus—Turns Out It’s a Whole New Form of Life
This strange organism is in a class all its own.
Prototaxites, an extinct organism from the Devonian period, has been thought to be a fungus since its first fossil was unearthed.
Analysis of one Prototaxites species showed that its physical and chemical characteristics were not only different from those of any existing fungus—the didn’t match any existing organism at all.
Prototaxites is now thought to belong to an extinct group of eukaryotes, but what exactly that group was remains a mystery.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a64294567/prototaxite-fossil-family/
Tons of crinoid stem sections & brachiopods in brown chert pebble from the Citronelle formation, Southeast Louisiana. #FossilFriday #Fossils
Ever since their discovery more than 165 years ago, massive fossilized structures left by an organism known as Prototaxites approximately 400 years ago have proven impossible to categorize.
Researchers in the UK suggest in a report (yet to be peer reviewed) that Protaxites are a type of organism with no modern equivalent
https://www.sciencealert.com/mysterious-giants-may-be-a-whole-new-kind-of-life-that-no-longer-exists
Prototaxites was an extinct lineage of multicellular terrestrial eukaryotes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.14.643340v1.full
#stem #science #paleontology #dinosaurs #fossils #biology #cool #Mongolia
"Giant claw unearthed in Mongolia belongs to a new species of two-fingered dinosaur" and there's nothing in this headline that doesn't make 10-yr old subby tingle
The diet of #TyrannosaurusRex consisted of Hadrosaurs, Triceratops, and other large #dinosaurs. Surprisingly though this also included other Tyrannosaurus rexes indicating cannibalism! See the bite marks in these #Fossils. 
#Science #PaleoSky Source: doi.org/10.1371/jour...
Workers uncover 'weird' dinosaur in the Gobi Desert. What do we know?
By Charmayne Allison and Sohani Goonetillake
Scientists say the Duonychus is like a "giant feathered sloth" with "big, sharp and nasty claws".
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-26/weird-dinosaur-unearthed-in-gobi-desert/105097288
I only just found out that #RichardFortey has died via the Economist podcast. I enjoyed his books and TV programmes.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/mar/13/richard-fortey-obituary
"Palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum who was also a bestselling science writer and accomplished TV presenter"
Fossil of ancient crustacean gathering reveals new insights into their lives
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2025/march/fossil-ancient-crustacean-gathering-reveals-new-insights-into-their-lives.html
Gregarious behaviour in #Carboniferous cyclidan #crustaceans https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2024.0734
"With legs emerging from underneath rounded shells, #cyclidans looked not unlike an underwater beetle. Earliest species were a few mm in size and form #fossils that look like a tiny bunch of grapes. Over millions of years they evolved larger species, and by the #Triassic they were about as wide as a human hand"
You Can Make Amber Fossils in 24 Hours, Instead of Millions of Years - Paleontologists hope that an amber-like material, made with living tree resin, will shed ... - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/science/amber-fossils-synthetic.html #scientificreports(journal) #your-feed-science #paleontology #research #fossils #amber
'Hell Ant' Found Fossilized In Amber While Feeding On Its Prey #fossils #insects #invertebrates
https://allthatsinteresting.com/amber-fossil-hell-ant
7- Once you have the scan, you can make replicas of your fossils by 3D printing them! Here a fossil predentary, along with the 3D scan.
Thank you to the presenters for doing such a good job, the organizers for putting this together, and the participants for making it all possible! This was an amazing way to end the Paleo 2025 symposium, and we can't wait to see you all next year!
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5- High-tech photogrammetry setup! This allows us to get images of the fossil from 360 degrees. This setup, along with the app to create the scans, was significantly cheaper than my car.
6- Participants break out to scan their own fossils
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2- As a Pachyrhinosaurus looks on
3- The structured light scanner along with a hadrosaur jaw, set up for scanning. This scanner cost more than my car!
4- Jackson Sweder demonstrating the scanner. Truly, living in the future is amazing.
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To cap off an amazing weekend, Dr. Emily Bamforth and Jackson Sweder from the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum along with Atharva Roy presented on 3D scanning and printing of fossils! We learnt how 3D scans are made and used to advance the field of palaeontology. We saw demonstrations of the structured light scanner and then created our own low-cost, easy photogrammetry scans using an app on our smartphones!
1- The presenters!
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#palaeontology #paleontology #fossils #alberta #ab #yyc
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