{"id":503,"date":"2025-06-17T08:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T08:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.braceducation.org\/?p=503"},"modified":"2025-06-17T15:33:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T15:33:14","slug":"fossils-past-preservers-and-future-forecasters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.braceducation.org\/index.php\/2025\/06\/17\/fossils-past-preservers-and-future-forecasters\/","title":{"rendered":"Fossils: Past Preservers and Future Forecasters"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Why do some ancient animals become fossils while others disappear without a trace? Size and chemical makeup play a part in who is preserved for millions of years\u2014and who is lost to time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Captivating remnants of ancient times, fossils offer a window into Earth\u2019s history and the evolution of life.\u00a0They document the past, providing clues about extinct species, vanished environments and the processes that shaped our planet.\u00a0From dinosaur bones<\/a> to prehistoric plant impressions,\u00a0fossils are a source of fascination and wonder, inspiring scientific exploration and a deeper understanding of our world.<\/p>\n

Less well-known, perhaps, is that fossils can also tell us about our future. By studying the fossil record, we can see how past ecosystems and species adapted to different conditions, helping us anticipate potential upcoming changes in biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics.<\/p>\n

In short, fossils are the perfect blend of mystery and reality.<\/p>\n

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From dinosaur bones to ancient plant impressions, fossils are a source of wonder, inspiring scientific exploration and a deeper understanding of our natural world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Why did some ancient animals fossilize while others vanished?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Fossils are more than just bones; some of the most remarkable finds include traces of soft tissues like guts, muscles and even brains. These rare fossils offer vivid glimpses into the past, but scientists have long puzzled over why such preservation happens only for certain animals and organs but not others.<\/p>\n

To dig into this mystery, a team of scientists from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland turned to the lab.\u00a0They conducted state-of-the-art decay experiments, allowing a range of animals including planarians (worms), shrimp, snails and starfish to decompose under precisely controlled conditions.<\/p>\n

As the bodies broke down, the researchers used microsensors to monitor the surrounding chemical environment, particularly the balance between oxygen-rich (oxidizing) and oxygen-poor (reducing) conditions. The results were striking: the researchers discovered that larger animals and those with a higher protein content tend to create reducing (oxygen-poor) conditions more rapidly. These conditions are crucial for fossilization because they slow decay and trigger chemical reactions such as mineralization, which is tissue replacement by more durable materials.<\/p>\n

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Large arthropods (arachnids, crustaceans and insects) are more likely to be preserved than small planarians or other aquatic worms. Trilobites\u2014extinct Paleozoic marine arthropods\u2014such as this one, are quite common in the fossil record due to their hard, calcified exoskeletons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This means that, in nature, two animals buried side by side could have vastly different fates as fossils, simply because of differences in body chemistry or size.\u00a0One might vanish entirely, while the other could be immortalized in stone. Animals like large arthropods (arachnids, crustaceans and insects) are more likely to be preserved than small planarians or other aquatic worms.\u00a0This could explain why fossil communities dating from the Cambrian<\/a> and Ordovician<\/a> Periods (around 500 million years ago) are dominated by arthropods, state the University of Lausanne scientists, who published their paper in the journal Nature Communications<\/em><\/a> in April 2025.<\/p>\n

These findings not only help explain the patchy nature of the fossil record but also offer valuable insights into the chemical processes that shape what ancient life we can reconstruct today. Pinpointing the factors that drive soft-tissue fossilization brings us closer to understanding how fossils form\u2014and why we only see fragments of the past.<\/p>\n

Fossils as time machines: ancient animals<\/strong><\/h3>\n

1) Fossil tracks reveal when reptiles appeared on Earth. <\/strong>When researchers from Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia,<\/a> recently identified the fossilized tracks of an amniote\u2014the group that includes birds, mammals and reptiles\u2014with clawed feet (most probably a reptile) from the Carboniferous Period,<\/a> about 350 million years ago, they realized that they had found the oldest evidence in the world of reptilelike animals walking around on land. The report of this amazing find, published in the journal Nature<\/em><\/a> in May 2025, pushes this group\u2019s evolution back by 35 to 40 million years earlier than the records in the Northern Hemisphere. This discovery indicates that such animals originated in the ancient, southern supercontinent of Gondwanaland,<\/a> of which Australia was a central part.<\/p>\n

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The most diverse group of Australian reptiles are the lizards. There are 617 species commonly known as dragon lizards, flap-footed lizards (also called snake-lizards or legless lizards), geckos, goannas and skinks. There are more skinks in Australia than in any other country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The crystal-clear fossil tracks, discovered in Australia\u2019s Mansfield District of northern Victoria, were made by an animal that the scientists think would have been small and stumpy. At first, the researchers thought the tracks were from early amphibians, but one in the middle had a hooked claw coming off the digits, like a reptile; it\u2019s an amniote, which rewrites this part of evolutionary history.<\/p>\n

2) Marine fossils uncover a 506-million-year-old predator. <\/strong>Located within Canada\u2019s Kootenay<\/a> and Yoho National Parks,<\/a> the Burgess Shale preserves some of the best records on Earth of marine life during the Cambrian Period. In 1980, the Burgess Shale was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site due to its outstanding universal value. It is now part of the larger Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage site<\/a> in British Columbia.<\/a><\/p>\n

Recently, paleontologists at Winnipeg\u2019s Manitoba Museum and Toronto\u2019s Royal Ontario Museum discovered a remarkable 506-million-year-old predator from the Burgess Shale. Mosura fentoni<\/em><\/a>\u00a0was about the size of your index finger and had three eyes; spiny, jointed claws; a circular mouth lined with teeth; and a body with swimming flaps along its sides. These traits identify it as part of an extinct group known as the radiodonts,<\/em> which also include the famous\u00a0Anomalocaris canadensis,<\/em><\/a> a three-foot-long predator that shared the waters with\u00a0Mosura. <\/em>However,\u00a0Mosura\u00a0<\/em>also possessed a feature not seen in any other radiodont: an abdomen-like body region made up of multiple segments at its back end. This finding was announced in a paper published in the journal\u00a0Royal Society Open Science<\/em><\/a> in May 2025.<\/p>\n

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The Burgess Shale in Canada preserved fossils exceptionally well due to rapid burial in fine-grained mud and the alkalinity of the Cambrian oceans. Both hard and soft tissues endured, providing valuable insights into early animal life during the Cambrian Explosion, a rapid diversification of animal life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Mosura <\/em>had 16, tightly packed segments lined with gills at the rear end of its body. This converges evolutionarily with modern groups, like horseshoe crabs, insects and wood lice, which share a batch of segments bearing respiratory organs at the ends of their bodies. The reason for this intriguing adaptation remains uncertain, but the researchers postulate it may be related to behavioral characteristics that required more efficient respiration or a particular habitat preference.<\/p>\n

3) A saber-toothed fossil suggests a scramble for dominance. <\/strong>Two-hundred-and-fifty-two million years ago, Earth experienced a mass extinction so devastating that it\u2019s become known as \u201cthe Great Dying.\u201d<\/a> Massive volcanic eruptions triggered catastrophic climate change, killing off nine out of every 10 species and eventually setting the stage for the dinosaurs. But the Great Dying was a long goodbye; the extinction event took place over the course of up to a million years at the end of the Permian Period.<\/a> During that time, the fossil record shows drama and upheaval as species fought to get a foothold in their changing environments.<\/p>\n

One animal that exemplifies this instability was a tiger-sized, saber-toothed creature called Inostrancevia:<\/em><\/a> a new fossil discovery suggests that\u00a0Inostrancevia<\/em>\u00a0migrated 7,000 miles across the supercontinent Pangaea,<\/a> filling a gap in a faraway ecosystem that had lost its top predators, before going extinct itself.<\/p>\n

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South Africa\u2019s Karoo Basin covers about two-thirds of the country. It\u2019s characterized by a thick sequence of rocks ranging in age from Late Carboniferous to Early Jurassic. Located along the southern margin of Gondwana, the area is also known for its fossils of therapsid reptiles (the ancestors of mammals).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In a study that was published in the journal Current Biology<\/em><\/a> in June 2023, researchers from the Field Museum in Chicago explain that all the big, top predators in the late Permian in South Africa<\/a> went extinct well before the end-Permian mass extinction. This vacancy in the niche was occupied, for a brief period, by\u00a0Inostrancevia, <\/em>a creature that looked very much like a top predator. Inostrancevia <\/em>was a gorgonopsian, a group of protomammals that included the first saber-toothed predators on the planet. It was about the size of a tiger and likely had skin like an elephant or a rhino, but it was probably vaguely reptilian in appearance.<\/p>\n

Prior to the paper in Current Biology,<\/em>\u00a0Inostrancevia\u00a0<\/em>had only ever been found in Russia. But while examining the fossil record of South Africa\u2019s Karoo Basin, scientists identified the fossils of two, large, predatory animals that were different from those normally found in the region. It\u2019s not clear how they made it from what\u2019s now Russia, or how long it took them to cross Pangaea and arrive in what\u2019s now South Africa. But being far from home was just one element of what made the fossils special. When the ages and ranges of the other top predators normally found in the area, the Rubidgeine gorgonopsians, <\/em>were compared with the\u00a0Inostrancevia\u00a0<\/em>fossils, it was found that the local carnivores went extinct quite a bit before even the main extinction in the Karoo; by the time the extinction begins in other animals, they\u2019re gone.<\/p>\n

The arrival of Inostrancevia<\/em>\u00a0from 7,000 miles away and its subsequent extinction indicates that these top predators were \u201ccanaries in the coal mine\u201d for the larger extinction event to come. It shows that the shift in which groups of animals occupied apex predator roles occurred four times over less than 2 million years around the Permian-Triassic mass extinction,<\/a> which is unprecedented in the history of life on land. This underlines how extreme this crisis was, with even fundamental roles in ecosystems in extreme flux.<\/p>\n

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Tigers in Asia once roamed throughout most of the continent, but due to habitat loss, persecution and other factors, they now inhabit a small fraction of their historic range.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The vulnerability of these top predators matches what we see today. Apex predators in modern environments tend to show high extinction risk and be among the first species that are locally extirpated due to human activities, such as habitat destruction or hunting. Examples are wolves in Europe or tigers in Asia, species which are slow to reproduce, grow and that require large geographic areas to hunt prey and roam, and which are now absent from most of their historic ranges. We should expect that ancient apex predators would have had similar vulnerabilities and would be among the species that first go extinct during mass extinction events.<\/p>\n

In addition to shedding new light on the extinction event that helped lead to the rise of the dinosaurs, this study is important for what it can teach us about the ecological disasters the planet is currently experiencing. Without any modern analogs of what to expect with the sixth mass extinction<\/a> happening today, the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event is instructional.<\/p>\n

4) An Antarctica fossil exposes the earliest modern bird<\/strong>. <\/strong>Sixty-six million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period,<\/a> an asteroid impact near the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico triggered the extinction of all known nonbird dinosaurs. But for the early ancestors of today\u2019s waterfowl,<\/a> location mattered\u2014a lot. Antarctica<\/a> may have served as a refuge, protected by its distance from the turmoil taking place elsewhere on the planet. Fossil evidence suggests the place had a temperate climate with lush vegetation, possibly serving as an incubator for the earliest members of the group that now includes ducks and geese.<\/p>\n

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While geese aren\u2019t native to Antarctica, several species are found in the sub-Antarctic regions surrounding the continent. The upland goose is commonly seen in the Falkland Islands. Fossil records of ancient waterfowl in Antarctica include \u201cVegavis iaai,\u201d a bird that lived during the Cretaceous Period.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In February 2025, the fossil discovery of a nearly complete, 69-million-year-old skull that belongs to an extinct bird named Vegavis iaai<\/em> was described in a paper published in the journal\u00a0Nature<\/em>.<\/a> The skull belongs to the oldest-known modern bird, an early relative of ducks and geese that lived in Antarctica at around the same time\u00a0that Tyrannosaurus rex\u00a0<\/em>dominated North America.<\/p>\n

The skull exhibits a long, pointed beak and a brain shape unique among all known birds previously discovered from the Mesozoic Era,<\/a> when non-avian dinosaurs and a bizarre collection of early birds ruled the globe. Instead, these features place\u00a0Vegavis<\/em>\u00a0in the group that includes all modern (also known as crown) birds, representing the earliest evidence of a now widespread and successful evolutionary radiation across the planet.<\/p>\n

While this fossil skull shows beak bones and a brain shape that are consistent with modern birds\u2014specifically, waterfowl\u2014unlike most waterfowl today, the skull preserves traces of powerful jaw muscles useful for overcoming water resistance while diving to snap up fish. These skull features are consistent with clues from elsewhere in the skeleton, suggesting that\u00a0Vegavis<\/em> used its feet for underwater propulsion during pursuit of fish and other prey\u2014a feeding strategy unlike that of modern waterfowl and more like that of grebes and loons.<\/p>\n

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Argentina possesses a significant fossil record, found in locations like the Lecho Formation. The strata here date back to the Late Cretaceous Period. Dinosaur remains are among the fossils that have been recovered from this area.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Birds known from elsewhere on the planet at around the same time are barely recognizable by modern bird standards. Moreover, most of the handful of sites that preserve delicate bird fossils yield specimens that are so incomplete as to only give hints to their identity. Those few places with any substantial fossil records of Late Cretaceous birds, like Argentina and Madagascar,<\/a> reveal an aviary of bizarre, now-extinct species with teeth and long, bony tails, only distantly related to modern birds. Something very different seems to have been happening in Antarctica, in many ways the final frontier for humanity\u2019s understanding of life during the Age of the Dinosaurs.<\/p>\n

5) A fossil penguin discloses wing evolution. <\/strong>As outlined in the\u00a0Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand<\/em><\/a> in July 2024, researchers from New Zealand\u2019s<\/a> University of Otago and Japan\u2019s Okayama University of Science and Osaka University have found a new species of penguin which lived in Otago about 24 million years ago. Named Pakudyptes hakataramea,<\/em> the penguin was very small\u2014about the same size as a little blue penguin,<\/a> the smallest in the world\u2014with anatomical adaptations that allowed it to dive.<\/p>\n

An analysis of the three fossil bones that were found\u2014a femur, humerus and ulna\u2014in New Zealand\u2019s Hakataramea Valley, South Canterbury, fill a morphological gap between fossil and modern penguins. Surprisingly, while the shoulder joints of the wing of\u00a0Pakudyptes\u00a0<\/em>are very close to those of present-day penguins, the elbow joints are very similar to those of older types of fossil penguins. Pakudyptes\u00a0<\/em>is the first fossil penguin ever found with this combination, and scientists say it is the key to unlocking the evolution of penguin wings.<\/p>\n

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The little blue penguin (\u201ckorora\u201d in Maori) is the smallest species of penguin, reaching 13 to 15 inches in height. Considered to be the most primitive of all penguins, the little blue penguin is believed to have evolved in New Zealand and spread to South Australia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

6) Elephant fossils depict what could have been in Europe. <\/strong>Elephants are among the largest land mammals on Earth and are often referred to as \u201cecosystem engineers\u201d<\/a> because they sustainably alter their surroundings through digging, grazing and trampling. Europe, too, had an elephant: the straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus)<\/em><\/a> that lived on the continent for around 700,000 years. The species survived multiple ice ages before becoming extinct during the last one due to hunting pressures from humans.<\/p>\n

But throughout its existence, the straight-tusked elephant helped shape Europe\u2019s landscapes, maintaining open spaces and light woodlands. Many native plant species are still adapted to these conditions today. The German word waldelefant\u00a0<\/em>(forest elephant) originates from the assumption that this species primarily lived in the wooded regions of Europe. However, fossil evidence shows that\u00a0Palaeoloxodon antiquus<\/em> often inhabited open or semi-open habitats with mosaiclike vegetation like modern elephants.<\/p>\n

To reconstruct the way of life of straight-tusked elephants and their actual habitat\u2014known as the realized niche\u2014a research team from Germany\u2019s University of Bayreuth examined scientific literature and paleontological databases for fossil finds of\u00a0Palaeoloxodon antiquus<\/em> that could be assigned to specific Marine Isotope Stages,<\/a> periods in the Earth\u2019s history that reflect the climate, representing warm and cold stages.\u00a0The Bayreuth research team assigned fossil finds from across Europe to either a warm or cold stage and then used climate models from these periods to reconstruct the realized niche of straight-tusked elephants. In their paper published in the journal Frontiers of Biogeography<\/em><\/a> in April 2025, the researchers state that straight-tusked elephants would still be able to live in Europe today. The climate in Western and Central Europe would be particularly suitable, they say, except for mountainous regions such as the Alps and the Caucasus.<\/p>\n

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Elephants are often referred to as \u201cecosystem engineers.\u201d They push over trees, creating clearings that favor smaller grasses and plants; they eat and disperse seeds; and they make water holes by digging in the ground.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

7) Giant marine lizard fossils detail changing oceans. <\/strong>Paleontologists recently discovered a strange, new species of marine lizard with daggerlike teeth that lived near the end of the Age of the Dinosaurs. Their findings, published in the journal\u00a0<\/em>Cretaceous Research<\/em><\/a> in August 2024, show a dramatically different ocean ecosystem from that of today\u2019s. In the past, numerous, giant top predators ate large prey, unlike modern ecosystems where a few apex predators\u2014such as great white sharks, leopard seals and orcas\u2014dominate.<\/p>\n

Khinjaria acuta<\/em><\/a>\u00a0was a member of the family Mosasauridae,<\/em> or mosasaurs. Mosasaurs weren\u2019t dinosaurs but giant marine lizards, relatives of today\u2019s anacondas and Komodo dragons, which ruled the oceans 66 million years ago. Khinjaria\u00a0<\/em>had powerful jaws and long, sharp teeth to seize prey. The elongation of the animal\u2019s posterior part of the skull accommodating the jaw musculature suggests a fierce biting force. It was part of an extraordinarily diverse fauna of predators that inhabited the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Morocco just before the dinosaurs went extinct.<\/p>\n

The report of this discovery, led by researchers from England\u2019s University of Bath, is based on a skull and parts of the skeleton collected from a phosphate mine southeast of Casablanca, Morocco. The sheer diversity of top predators here is remarkable; multiple species of them were larger than a great white shark, but they all had different teeth, suggesting they hunted in different ways. Some mosasaurs had teeth to pierce prey, others to crush, cut or tear. In contrast is\u00a0Khinjaria,<\/em> with a short face full of huge, jagged teeth.<\/p>\n

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Great white sharks are primarily known for their powerful jaws, sharp teeth and hunting abilities, enabling them to prey on a wide variety of animals, including dolphins, sea lions, seals and even other sharks. In modern marine ecosystems, a few apex predators\u2014such as great white sharks\u2014dominate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Morocco\u2019s diverse marine reptiles lived just before an asteroid struck the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Dinosaurs were wiped out on land, and a handful of surviving species of birds, lizards and mammals diversified to take their place. Meanwhile, the same happened in the oceans. Mosasaurs, plesiosaurs and giant sea turtles disappeared, along with entire families of fish.<\/p>\n

The ecosystem that evolved after the impact was different. Modern marine communities don\u2019t have the incredible diversity of top predators that the Late Cretaceous had. We don\u2019t know whether there was something about marine reptiles that caused the ecosystem to be different, or the prey, or perhaps the environment. But we do know that it was an incredibly dangerous time to be a fish, sea turtle or even a marine reptile.<\/p>\n

8) Fossil teeth tell a Caribbean, croc-like tale. <\/strong>Imagine a crocodile built like a greyhound\u2014that\u2019s a sebecid. Standing tall, with some species reaching 20 feet in length, sebecids dominated South American landscapes<\/a> after the extinction of dinosaurs until about 11 million years ago. Or at least, that\u2019s what paleontologists thought, until they began finding strange, fossilized teeth in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n

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Teeth found on multiple islands in the Caribbean show that sebecids survived here after their extinction in South America. La Herradura Beach, pictured above, is part of a broader region in Cuba with a history of fossil discoveries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The initial confusion was warranted. Three decades ago, researchers uncovered two, 18-million-year-old teeth in Cuba. With a tapered shape and small, sharp serrations specialized for tearing into meat, they unmistakenly belonged to a predator at the top of the food chain. But for the longest time, scientists didn\u2019t think such large, land-based predators ever existed in the Caribbean. The mystery deepened when another tooth turned up in Puerto Rico, this one 29 million years old. The teeth alone weren\u2019t enough to identify a specific animal, and the matter went unresolved.<\/p>\n

But in early 2023, a research team from the University of Florida and the Florida Museum of Natural History unearthed another fossilized tooth in the Dominican Republic. This time, it was accompanied by two vertebrae. The fossils belonged to a sebecid; and the Caribbean\u2014far from never having large, terrestrial predators\u2014became a known refuge for the last sebecid populations at least 5 million years after they went extinct everywhere else.<\/p>\n

The sebecids\u2014the last surviving members of the Notosuchia,<\/em> a large and diverse group of extinct crocodilians\u2014acted like carnivorous dinosaurs, sprinting after prey on their four, long, agile limbs and tearing through flesh with their notorious teeth. Some species could reach 20 feet in length and had protective armor made of bony plates embedded in their skin. The mass extinction event 66 million years ago that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs nearly destroyed Notosuchians<\/em>, as well. In South America, only the sebecids endured; and with the dinosaurs gone, they quickly rose to be the apex predators.<\/p>\n

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The only endemic crocodile species in the Caribbean is the Cuban crocodile (\u201cCrocodylus rhombifer\u201d). Critically endangered, this reptile is found exclusively in Cuba, particularly in the Zapata Swamp and on Isla de la Juventud.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The open sea separating the Caribbean islands and mainland South America would have posed a serious challenge for a terrestrial sebecid to swim across. In finding the fossils, the research team also found possible evidence in support of the GAARlandia hypothesis.<\/a> This theory suggests that a pathway of temporary land bridges or a chain of islands once allowed land animals to travel from South America to the Caribbean.<\/p>\n

If, as scientists hypothesize, the serrated teeth discovered on the other Caribbean islands also belonged to a sebecid, the history of these giant reptiles extends beyond the Dominican Republic. They would have occupied and shaped the region\u2019s ecosystems for millions of years. Yet today, you\u2019d be hard-pressed to find evidence of the large terrestrial predators. In their absence, smaller, endemic predators like birds, snakes and crocodiles have evolved to fill the gap in the food chain.<\/p>\n

This revelation aligns with similar observations ecologists have described worldwide, say the authors of a paper published in the\u00a0Proceedings of the Royal Society B<\/em><\/a> in April 2025. Islands are known to act as \u201cmuseums of biodiversity,\u201d providing a haven that allows animals and plants to survive even after their related species have gone extinct on the mainland.<\/p>\n

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The Somerset Coast, a diverse and picturesque shoreline in England, stretches along the Bristol Channel. It\u2019s graced by sandy beaches, serene wetlands and moorlands brushed by purple heather and backed by some of the highest sea cliffs in England.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Fossils as landscapers: ancient plants<\/strong><\/h3>\n

1) Fossil forest in England changes how rivers flow. <\/strong>The oldest fossilized forest known on Earth\u2014dating from 390 million years ago\u2014has been found in the high sandstone cliffs along the Devon and Somerset Coast of Southwest England. Discovered and identified by researchers from England\u2019s University of Cambridge and Cardiff University in Wales, the fossilized forest is roughly 4 million years older than the previous record holder, which was found in New York State.<\/p>\n

The fossils were found near Minehead, on the south bank of the Bristol Channel. At first glance, the fossilized trees, known as\u00a0Calamophyton, <\/em>look like palm trees, but they are a prototype of the kinds of trees we are familiar with today. Rather than solid wood, their trunks were thin and hollow in the center. They also lacked leaves, and their branches were covered in hundreds of twiglike structures. These trees were also much shorter than their descendants: the largest were between 6.5 and 13 feet tall. As the trees grew, they shed their branches, dropping lots of vegetation litter, which supported invertebrates on the forest floor.<\/p>\n

Scientists had previously assumed this stretch of the English coast did not contain significant plant fossils, but in addition to its age, this particular find\u2014described in the Journal of the Geological Society<\/em><\/a> in July 2024\u2014also shows how early trees helped shape landscapes and stabilize coastlines and riverbanks hundreds of millions of years ago.<\/p>\n

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Undergrowth plays a crucial role in the forest ecosystem, providing food, habitat and shelter for various species. Ancient \u201cCalamophyton\u201d forests had no undergrowth, but there were lots of twigs dropped by densely packed trees, which had a big effect on the landscape.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The researchers say that compared to the forests of today, this one was weird. There wasn\u2019t any undergrowth to speak of, and grass hadn\u2019t yet appeared; but the twigs dropped by the densely packed trees had a big effect on the landscape. This period marked the first time that such close-knit plants were able to grow on land, and the sheer abundance of debris shed by the\u00a0Calamophyton\u00a0<\/em>trees built up layers of sediment. The sediment affected the way that the rivers flowed across the landscape, the first time that the course of rivers could be influenced in this way.<\/p>\n

The scientists conclude that the evidence contained in this fossilized forest preserves a key stage in Earth\u2019s development, when rivers started to operate in a fundamentally different way than they had before, becoming the great erosive force that they are today.<\/p>\n

2) Fossil discovery in Greenland means increased risk of sea-level catastrophe.<\/strong> The story of Greenland<\/a> keeps getting greener\u2014and scarier. A new study provides the first direct evidence that the center\u2014not just the edges\u2014of Greenland\u2019s ice sheet melted away in the recent geological past and the now-ice-covered island was then home to a green, tundra landscape.<\/p>\n

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The long-standing story that Greenland is an implacable fortress of ice\u2014frozen solid for millions of years\u2014was recently overturned.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Recently, scientists from the University of Vermont reexamined a few inches of sediment from the bottom of a two-mile-deep ice core extracted at the very center of Greenland in 1993 and held for 30 years in a Colorado storage facility. They were amazed to discover soil that contained fungi, insect parts, a poppy seed and willow wood\u2014all in pristine condition.<\/p>\n

While the fossils are beautiful, what they imply about the impact of human-caused climate change on the melting of the Greenland ice sheet<\/a> is alarming. The study, published in the\u00a0Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>in August 2024, confirms that Greenland\u2019s ice melted and the island greened during a prior warm period, likely within the last million years, suggesting that the giant ice sheet is more fragile than scientists had realized.<\/p>\n

If the ice covering the center of the island was once melted, then most of the rest of it had to be melted too\u2014and probably for many thousands of years, which is enough time for soil to form and an ecosystem to take root. This new study confirms that a lot of sea-level rise occurred at a time when causes of warming were not especially extreme, providing a warning of what damage is ahead if we continue to warm the climate.<\/p>\n

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If the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels is not radically reduced, the near complete melting of Greenland\u2019s ice over the next few centuries could lead to an alarming 23 feet of sea-level rise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Sea level today is rising more than an inch each decade. It\u2019s likely to be several feet higher by the end of this century, when today\u2019s children are grandparents. And if the release of greenhouse gases\u2014from burning fossil fuels\u2014is not radically reduced, the near-complete melting of Greenland\u2019s ice over the next centuries to a few millennia would lead to about 23 feet of sea-level rise.<\/p>\n

3) Fossils in Florida assess seagrass health. <\/strong>The seagrass is greener along Florida\u2019s Nature Coast; figuratively, that is. A new study<\/a> published in May 2025 shows that seagrass ecosystems along the northern half of Florida\u2019s Gulf Coast have remained relatively healthy and undisturbed for the last several thousand years.<\/p>\n

This is not the case for most other seagrass ecosystems across the world, nearly 30% of which have disappeared since 1879. An estimated 7% of seagrass beds were lost each year between 1990 and 2009. Those that remain are generally not faring well, and the discovery of a healthy refugium is a rare event.<\/p>\n

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The Nature Coast in Florida is a region along the western Gulf Coast, spanning eight counties (Citrus, Dixie, Hernando, Jefferson, Levy, Pasco, Taylor and Wakulla). It\u2019s known for its natural beauty and undeveloped areas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Figuring this out wasn\u2019t easy, though. The extraordinary changes humans have made to the planet have not only jeopardized the health of entire ecosystems, but we\u2019ve also made it nearly impossible for us to know what a healthy ecosystem should look like in the first place. We’ve also been altering our surroundings much longer than we\u2019ve been systematically observing them. Fortunately, we aren\u2019t the only ones keeping a record of the past. The Earth does a pretty good job of it, too.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the idea behind a relatively new branch of science called \u201cconservation paleobiology,\u201d which uses the most recent fossil record to reconstruct past ecosystems. For this method to work well, scientists need to analyze large numbers of fossils, but there are only a few types of organisms that are preserved in sufficient quantities. Seagrasses, which are entirely composed of soft tissues that rapidly decompose after death, are not one of them.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a hindrance to paleobiologists, however. Unlike modern grass lawns, which are ecologically barren and in which hardly anything lives but the grass itself, seagrass meadows are underwater oases for coastal marine organisms. This includes a variety of animals that produce hard shells, which are disproportionately represented in the fossil record. The shells of clams, oysters and other mollusks disintegrate so slowly that they stay around on the ocean floor from hundreds to millions of years.<\/p>\n

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The shells of clams, oysters and other mollusks disintegrate so slowly that they remain on the ocean floor for hundreds to millions of years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The fossils of mollusks and other marine organisms with tough exteriors are so tightly connected and dependent on their environments that they can be used as a surrogate for species that don\u2019t normally get preserved. If mollusks are doing well, it\u2019s likely that everything else is, too. So, to find out if seagrass communities along Florida\u2019s Nature Coast have recently degraded, the study\u2019s authors sampled 21 locations in six estuaries, from the mouth of the Steinhatchee River in the north to that of the Weeki Wache in the south. At each site, they used a long hose made from PVC pipe to suction up sections of the seafloor. The sediment samples were then sieved to extract all materials, which were dominated by dead debris accumulated over many centuries. Typically, for every live bivalve or snail, there were thousands of dead specimens.<\/p>\n

After years of counting and identifying the gathered materials, results showed that mollusk diversity\u2014and the health of seagrass meadows, by extension\u2014hasn\u2019t changed much over the last several millennia, including the most recent one in which humans have left their mark on even the most challenging and inhospitable environments.<\/p>\n

Only rarely do researchers find historical evidence that can make us optimistic about the current state of a local ecosystem. Most conservation paleobiology studies tell depressing stories about shrinking habitats, declining biodiversity and diminishing ecosystem services. For once, at least, this is not the case. What\u2019s thrilling is that this system is shown to still be in very good condition, which makes it even more important to protect it.<\/p>\n

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Fish, manatees and sea turtles eat seagrass, while countless other species make the meadows their home. Seagrass also provides very important nursery habitat. In Florida, more than 80% of the fish caught by commercial fisherman and recreational anglers spend some part of their lives in seagrass beds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Just 50 miles south of the study\u2019s sampling area, seagrass communities haven\u2019t been as lucky. Between 1950 and 1980, the city of Tampa\u2019s population increased from about 125,000 people to 270,000. During that same period, 46% of seagrass meadows in Tampa Bay disappeared. Aggressive nutrient reduction efforts in the region between 1999 and 2018 led to water quality improvements and the recovery of seagrass in Tampa Bay; however, recent assessments have again shown significant reductions in seagrass followed by modest recoveries. On the opposite coast, a survey from 1999 indicated as much as 60% of seagrass coverage has been lost in a 56-mile stretch of the Indian River Lagoon.<\/p>\n

These die-offs are primarily caused by nutrient pollution from inland farms and coastal cities. Plumes of single-celled microalgae and photosynthetic bacteria feast on excess nutrients and multiply in the water column, creating what are, in effect, marine clouds. This significantly reduces the amount of light that reaches the seafloor, which seagrasses don\u2019t tolerate well. The Nature Coast, which was designated an aquatic preserve in 2020, has largely avoided these challenges.<\/p>\n

Fossils as flashbacks and foretellers<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Fossils are a bottomless treasure trove of information about the past\u2014and significant signs of the future. If you want to know what went before and<\/em> what is likely to come after, you just need to open a museum drawer or look at what\u2019s under the microscope. For example, what had seemed to be no more than specks floating on the surface of a melted core sample of Greenland\u2019s ice, was, in fact, a window into a bygone tundra landscape.<\/p>\n

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Fossils spark imaginations, offer windows into the past and provide hands-on connections to ancient life. The mystery and scale of extinct creatures, such as dinosaurs\u2014coupled with the tangibility of animal and plant remains\u2014make fossils especially engaging for children. I hope you catch their magic, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

What else can simultaneously serve as a tangible link to our natural past\u2014and a crystal ball into our manufactured future?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s to finding your true places and natural habitats,<\/span><\/p>\n

Candy<\/p>\n

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