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Getting the Dirt On Ancient Life With Coprolites
the_newsbeagle writes "Paleoscatologist Karen Chin knows you can learn a lot about ancient ecosystems by studying coprolites — fossilized feces. She has studied dino droppings from herbivores, and identified the types of plants those dinosaurs ate. She has identified T. rex turds, and found evidence that prehistoric dung beetles made use of those king-sized dino patties. This profile of Chin goes through her greatest hits, then focuses on her latest work, which sheds light on the reemergence of life after the K-Pg extinction event that brought down the dinosaurs... but left some surprising creatures unscathed."
...and our distant descendants will gain the most accurate picture of us from our landfills, if we haven't already mined them out.
When one is dedicated, even research done on poop can yield amazing results !
On the other hand, when one lacks dedication, even with the most advance gadgets one still can't accomplish anything
Dr. Chin is of the former, and unfortunately, too many of the young uns are of the latter
There's another article on Karen Chin and the fossilized turds online, which complements TFA nicely
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/The-Poop-on-Dinosaurs-Menlo-Park-2950982.php
On the other hand, Dr. Karen Chin's site at Colorado U turns up with a picture of a bison
http://www.colorado.edu/geolsci/faculty/chin.html
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
s/dirt/poop/
What kind of editor would miss that opportunity?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's turtle poop all the way down.
rewriting history since 2109
"Y'all" is plural. "All y'all" is a greater/collective/encompassing plural.
Compare with "we" versus "we all" or "they" versus "they all".
FTFY.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
These here coproliths in fact can be polished and made to shine. I bet someone's already got a line of coprolitic jewelry.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Coproliths make a great gift for kids. They are cheap to get on eBay or whatever, and they are as educational as can be. And as fun as a turd can be !
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I wonder if she starts out any of her "coprolite 101" classes with "This is a coprolite, it's fossilized dung. You may think it's just old shit but it's my bread and butter."
(I knew a Parasitologist who started his first lecture of his course somewhat like that.)
Nate
Not sure if you are trying to correct improper usage, or have never lived where such usage exists. Either way, you are wrong despite being right.
And this is why discussion on the internet is hard.
I'm a native Southerner. My parents corrected me on the usage when I was a kid, pointing out that only ignorant Yankees and especially ignorant Yankee television writers use "y'all" for the singular.
And since I've already been modded Off-Topic, let me get back on topic by stating that I think the Golden Girls Cosmonaut Guy is probably nicer than the GNAA guy, and definitely gets more First Posts!
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
For extra entertainment value, try reading the above aloud, with various regional/national accents.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
A good deal of the steel we use in our modern civilization comes from ore produced by a singular event of some 2 billion years ago. The amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and ocean had increased to a level that all the Iron that had been in solution suddenly rusted out of sea water and settled out eventually becoming the worldwide distribution of ironstone deposits from that age.
In a few million years, our age will be marked by regions of very rusty deposits scattered about the continents. If you have seen the series on Discovery about what happens to human artifacts after Mankind is not maintaining them, it seems that steel structures are among the least able to survive for very long, at least in terms of geologic time. Some metal artifacts might survive by luck, but most of it will return to the rust that made the ironstones in the first place, but it won't be a orderly deposit. It will be localized where our population centers were, but the striking thing will be the unnatural concentration of Iron with anomalous associations of other metals not found together in natural deposits.