True Fossils vs Pseudofossils (How to Recognize Pseudofossils) | GEO GIRL
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- čas přidán 22. 07. 2024
- Have you ever come across a rock that you thought might be a fossil but weren't sure? Have you ever wondered how to tell the difference between fossils and pseudofossils (or structures preserved in rocks that look like fossils but are really not)? In this video, I go through tons of examples of pseudofossils, their look-alike fossils, and how to tell the difference between the real vs fake fossils!
A realization I made while putting together this video is that although the pseudofossils do not actually represent ancient life, they are still pretty cool in their own right! Hope you enjoy :D
0:00 What are Fossils?
1:03 What are Pseudofossils?
3:00 Pseudofossil concretions
6:45 Fossils that look like concretions
9:33 Pseudofossil tafoni
12:06 Fossils that look like tafoni
15:52 Pseudofossil ring patterns
17:32 Fossils that look like these rings
19:05 Pseudofossil dendrites
20:38 Pseudofossil ‘bubbly’ minerals
24:32 Pseudofossil agates
25:53 Pseudofossil stalagtites
26:48 Pseudofossil tektites
27:47 Pseudofossil first life on Earth!
30:02 Why we care!
References: Prothero, D.R. (2013). Bringing Fossils to Life: An Introduction to Paleobiology. Third Edition. Columbia University Press: amzn.to/383FuYX
Shout out to Dr. Jenny Rashall and Dr. Merlynd Nestell for their contribution to my knowledge on the topic of fossils, pseudofossils, and paleo in general!
Earth Materials by Cornelis Klein and Anthony Philpotts: amzn.to/3z5sCxe (for info on crystal habits)
GEO GIRL Website: www.geogirlscience.com/ (visit my website to see all my courses, shop merch, learn more about me, & donate to support the channel if you'd like!)
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I really enjoyed this. Brought back memories of mineral lab. I majored in geology but got married never got back. You know the story. Looking forward to more of your videos now that I'm retired. You'll be my Geologist alongside Gutsick Gibbon a primatologist, and Forrest Valkai a biologist. It's such a joy to so easily advance ones knowledge today. I couldn't have imagined anything like this in 1976. Thank you for providing such a valuable resource for the public.
Thank you so much! I absolutely love Gutsick Gibbon, I am honored you have put my in a category with her ;D
Gutsick Gibbon is awesome 😎
Fascinating video! Thank you for all these pseudofossil examples! We have one shale plate with branchy impressions that I was really hoping was a fossil because we found it near other fossils, but the local paleontologist ruled it a "cool rock- not a fossil." Win some/ lose some. My son adds another similar video idea: how to identify genuine fossils versus man-made fakes (like those fake trilobite replicas that are sold as real).
Oh yes thats true! I forgot about all the 'fake' fossils out there! I hate when they do that
I guess the best way to know your trilobite is real is to find it in nature yourself. Thankfully we did get a few trilos (plus other animals) in that shale. The professor told us he has a drawer full of "not fossils" that locals bring in, including: interesting rocks, old wood, old shoe, sculpture parts.
Great summary Rachel! I’m always having folks bring me rocks, minerals and fossils for me to identify…and I enjoy doing so. There is also a category that often misleads people that I would simply categorize as “odd shaped rocks.” Rocks of any particular origin that thru erosive processes have been shaped into structures and morphologies that look like bone, wood, eggs etc. In my experience it is to owners of such pseudofossils that I most frequently have to give the disappointing news to.
That's true! Erosion can make some super odd shapes!
Thank you for explaining the difference between fossils and pseudofossils. I have heard of "fossil fuel" before. But thanks to your explanation, now I won't be fossil-fooled. 😉
Always love your videos. Maybe someday you'll publish a book full of your enthusiasm for geology. I'd certainly buy a copy.
I'm starting to see this channel grow faster and faster and I couldn't be happier.
Re: Concretions!! - Check out Santa Cruz, CA. "West Cliff" has some formed by deep liquid methane violently escaping up to a fine-mud surface and suddenly changing phase, leaving lava-lamp type concretions frozen into the softer mudstone. The waves erode the mudstone first and expose the concretions. The process is still ongoing out in the Monterey bay. Local Nat History Museum knows people with a better description than I have.
In my hometown, Leicester in the UK, one of the city's most recogiseable places and a popular meeting place, The Clock Tower, was built from oolitic limestone quarried in Lincolnshire. It's cool if you look at it closely, as you can see all of the many ooids. The Clock Tower is actually a Victorian 'stench pipe', a vent to carry-away the sewer's methane and H2S gas.
Hello Rachel 🌷!
Any video with both Stromatoporoids & Stromatolites is best ever!
🙏🙏🙏 👏👏👏👏
YaY! I have to say, when I first got this video topic suggested to me, I thought it would be kinda boring, but when I actually started the research for it and saw just how many amazing pseudofossils are out there I became really excited about it! Now I can't wait to put it out ;D
Thanks Rachel, interesting video. I’ve enjoyed picking up strange looking rocks my entire life. Got one that looks like a tooth from a some long extinct vertebrate or it’s a volcanic bomb, strange shape and heavy so likely the latter. It’s still an interesting rock.
With so many moves in my life, I have lost or left behind too many rocks (and paperback books). I still have way too much stuff, but never too many rocks
Another brilliant explanation, amazing video! There seem to be limitations - Some structures may be biologically ambiguous, so is then impossible to know the difference? Exceptional cases where non-biological processes mimic biological forms precisely?
I always like going on the leg curl machine at my local gym, because next to it there's a super cool belemnite guard preserved in cross-section in the travertine floor tile! 😍
Thank you, Rachel. As always, highly informative and well presented!
Your ability to pronounce these words is super impressive. I have never heard anyone speak many of them out loud. Ooid is 😂 to me.
Well I know that first one is definitely not a fossil, because I've seen exactly that deep inside mines. Up close, in context, it's pretty obvious it's mineralization. A little background on rock types, minerals, context combined with just a bit of common sense can be helpful, even to a layman. Just what something looks like can be misleading. Physical context is just one aspect that has to be considered. Just like with 'meteor-wrongs' it's always a good idea to be skeptical.
@14:48 For identifying fossil bone, back in the 1970's a paleontologist taught that bone can be identified by putting your tongue on the unprocessed suspected fossil bone. Your tongue will have a weird adhering-to-the-rock feeling that doesn't happen with non-bone. This has worked for me, but I don't have enough experience to say it always works with all the geologic variation of rocks and fossils.
In my opinion the Eocene tree remains of Axel Heiberg Island are one of the most fascinating evidence of past ecosystems. I used the word remains and not fossils because those trees and their parts are still wood and not mineralized.
I know where there's a partially petrified log that's still partially woody, in the Cretaceous Burro Canyon Formation of Western Colorado. It's ~112 million years old (Aptian/Albian), but only recently exposed to the air.
Thank you very much for providing this interesting content! BTW in 27:50 I was already glad that he dindn't think of it as an elephant molar.😅
I expected a Crime Drama of Evil Sudo-Geologists Faking Big Buck Fossils...lol. But this was even better. My local Rock Shop has some of these.. really cool. Thanks.
A 20 x 20 x 4 cm sized, black slab of chrysanthemum stone that I found in the Johnsbach creek/river (Austria), fooled me quite nicely for years. 🤭
I even arduously grinded and polished it. No regrets tho, it looks amazing either way...
It looks like CURVED "worm families", each individual with two neat white "shells", each (cough) "colony" sprouting from a common, er, bud. And I didn't expect to be the origin of this VERY biological looking charade to be EFFING MAGNETITE/CALZITE CRYSTALS. 🥴
Then one day I read about chrysanthemum stone and saw a picture, when looking up rocks/crystals for sale, and I even read that a nearby church is partially built of it, AND I HAD VISITED IT ONCE, but I did not recognize "my" stone back then...! All variants I ever saw are "black on white", like, 90% white, with thin black lines, while my slab is like 90% black and only with a few white crystals!! 😅
A few years back our city built a quarried limestone wall along a bike path. Some of the limestone blocks had dendritic black structures very similar to your examples. I had no idea what they were-I took pictures.
Two months ago I was in the same area to look for these “fossils” again and I couldn’t find them. They were all gone. That’s when I strongly suspected they were not actual fossils.
If I find the photos again, I’ll post them
somewhere and send you a link (or email if you have an email address in your bio somewhere-I’d understand if you didn’t though). I want to find the photos anyway so I can rephotograph the exact section of rock that had them
This is a really interesting topic! I just saw a video yesterday showing some rock formations with traces of Ediacaran biota. They clearly looked like imprints of living things but I couldn't help wondering if sometimes such early life may be hard to recognize because of the lack of similarity with living things and I was imagining some may argue that some fossils are in fact just abiotic formations...Anyway this presentation was really helpful for someone discussing what is a fossil and what is not and I was thinking it would be helpful if someone could tell me how to distinguish them...Can you read my mind?😆
I'd never heard of " Liesegang rings" until now. Thank you. 🙂
Hi Geogirl. Fantastic classes and very very clear. Congrats! One thing on this video, Your picture at bottom right claimed as a tafoni (in the one you compare with fossils, slight 6 I think) looks more like a degassed volcanic welded tuff derived from a more acidic explosive magma-ignimbrite than that you showed as the darker more oxidized scoria (which is more basaltic, probably, and affected by thermal oxidation). This "bubbles" are three dimensional and migth be connected between them generating thorough porosity. They do not look like meteorization products that are superficial, but affect all the rock. They are usually called pomes or pumiceous volcanic material and are very light because of their high porosity.
great one, thank you!
Great geo girl excellent
Oh, I somehow missed the fading out music. Anyway now I know a new word: Tafoni. I saw thows in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains in Germany
28:00 It looks like a giant fingerprint, which makes me wonder if your geology department has Roger of Mud Fossil U on your do not engage with list?
thanks again GEO GIRL,5X5 Datil NM USA ,ROCK ON
Lol, how did you not drop "well actually I am a geologist" and then give him a 32 minute conversation on how these mistakes can happen 😅
Lol maybe that is what I would do today, but back then I was not as confident in myself haha ;)
23:00 So, unlike some other fields of science, geologists use the, *_I calls it as I sees it,_* approach to naming things.
Looks like a tree?
Latin for tree.
Looks like hair?
Latin for hair. 😅
Eozoön, the double o is pronounced double short o sound, like in cooperation (that was written coöperation decades ago). Also ooids have this kind of double vowel pronunciation. Indeed, originally even zoo had it, like in most European countries, following the Greek word's pronunciation.
Thank you for this explanation! ;D
@@GEOGIRL You are most welcome. You sometimes complain on words you see written but haven't heard. That's been my problem with English for half a century: it's not my first language but I had read a lot. Now the Internet provides audio and is a great help.
7:13 never heard waveyness used within an academic context 😂
Thanks good info..
They're fossils. Fossils of minerals .. Some of them "grow" like organism.
As clear here in this footage, there's no practical method for the public to tell one from the other, other than applying "seeing is believing"! Having as many fossils as possible is the best way. In that sense, the presentation of selected items is very useful.
By the way, coprolites are given special status despite "inorganic (nearly)"! Quite close to minerals! Given trace fossils, mineralized feces deserve attention, as occasionally containing bones (fragmented though) or scales etc. which can tell unequivocal diet/feeding system of authors!
Fossils from lacustrine bed are usually flattened, but for some reason some coprolites are preserved less so occasionally. Curious.
Another great honourable mention you could have included was the Allan Hills 84001 meteorite, which included chain structures resembling living organisms interpreted as microfossils. This interpretation was ultimately rejected upon closer scrutiny.
Moqui is also spelled Moki, so you are pronouncing it correctly: Moe-kee. Using standard English pronunciation, with stress on the second syllable, tafoni I believe is pronounced ta-FONE-ee. And micrite: I have a bone to pick over the usual pronunciation of this word (mick-RITE), because it's a portmanteau word, from 'microcrystalline calcite:' MIKE-roe, not MICK-roe. Therefore, I think micrite should be pronounced MIKE-rite, not MICK-rite, but I've only heard one other geologist pronounce it this way in the last 20 years.
A lot of these minerals sound like the gods of middle-earth or something.
At a small enough scale, it's hard to tell the difference between organic diatoms and inorganic fractal shapes.
I think ALH 84001 has to be the most famous pseudofossil, since it led to the president of the United States to declare that there might be life on Mars.
Hey Rachel, sorry to be that guy, but scoria isn't found in lava flows, it's ejected into the air, where the gas bubbles are brought up to all sides of the rock. The equivalent in lava flows is called a'a (pron. 'Ah-Ah'), except the surfaces not exposed to the air don't have the bubble holes.
Yes, you are absolutely correct! I had a picture of scoria but my story was about vesicular basalt (or in my case maybe something more felsic since it was a lightish pink color), but yea the lava flow story was about vesicular basalt that forms at the top of lava flows, my bad! ;)
great video. Please do more hydrology videos
One other common pseudo fossil that would have been worth mentioning is cone-in-cone formations - maybe a future video?
I've found so many burrows, never any footprints though. I'd be over the moon if I found some
DR. GEOGIRL!
What about the Spherulitic rocks??
Neat
oolds - from Doctor Who Oods? (as if they've been on Earth so long that their globes are in the fossil record)
Danke!
Moss agate. This is fun.
😎
StalaCtites hang from the Ceiling, stalaGmites grow from the Ground.
😍
Biomineralization and evolving machines before humans.
Regarding misidentified fossils. I recently saw a lost soul; I think it was mud fossil university. If you thought flat earthers had lost the plot; not even close to this guy. Thinks the devils tower is a fossil tree. Just one more reason channels like yours are so important today.
I've watched some stuff from that guy and it's incredible how he's so confident and also so completely and utterly wrong.
Good luck finding a non-vertebrate bone, really.
Also I'm pretty sure that there are now true fossil hair, as well as feathers. Don't ask me about the details but that's how we know proto-mammals had hair.
Yep, but most of the feathers and hair evidence we have are impressions (or in some cases preserved in amber), so it typically looks very different than the minerals that look 'hairy' :)
@@GEOGIRL - Fair enough. It just sounded like you were denying there were such true fossil hairs.
animal skin/hair is right about when it starts to become ‘archeology’ not ‘paeleontology’ and what you’re really hoping to find the tools used on the animal ! (or some sort of ‘ritual context’ if youre lucky! ;) )
go on
🤔 Martian blueberries look like deer poo
those belemnitetes look a lot like orthoceras
Yep, orthoceras nautiloid fossils look very similar to belemnite fossils, I think they have to be pretty well preserved to tell the difference because I think the main difference is that belemnites had elaborate suture lines (where their internal chambers intersected their shells) whereas orthoceras nautiloids had straight suture lines :)
horse crab like creatures that could become panspermic before modern technology.
Isn't ooid rather pronounced "o-oid"?
Just as an FYI, it's "stalagmites" & "stalactites".
Ok where does aluminum silicate lay at its a body part its skin aluminum silicate that footprints are in its cemented footprints they call it fossil or rock fossil but its been layed cementing mudfossils so are or is it fossils
Great video as always! I know I sound like a crazy person, but I have spent a lot of time closely looking at shaligrams and they really can't contain fossils (though they are currently labeled as such). I regularly come across instances of impossibilities in their structures. They really open a can of worms with regard to what actually is a fossil, since they strongly point to the entire classification of ammonites as not being fossils (which I have also came across extensive evidence for, in searching from that angle). It is a case like the dendrites where the whole class interpreted it to be a fossil, but one in which the teacher did not know otherwise so the misinterpretation has stuck. I wouldn't be surprised if many things labeled fossils end up going the way of the eozoon canadense.
Shaligrams are *that* conclusive that the ammonite structures *cannot* be fossils in truth that they will definitely one day bring the scientific community to re-evaluate all things categorized as fossils. Sort of like an ironing out process of going over it all again and getting the wrinkles out of the fabric of society's collective consciousness. Their isolation to a small region of the world in combination with their sacredness to Hinduism has kept them largely from close inspection. People certainly believe they are fossils but they have not really questioned that interpretation and sort of take it as an assumption and seem not to notice the impossibilities that regularly are present in their nuances. They are similar to the eozoon canadense which is believed to have formed in high temperature, but rather than a high temperature they formed in a high pressure environment, one capable of producing eddies and current flows that physically shaped and etched the stones. This is truly the only way that they can have the full spectrum of features present on shaligrams. They are all unique and some look more possible to be fossils than others, but it is the ones that have the greatest anomalies that really distinguish their nature. They are quite exceptional. :)
Liesegang = Lee-ze-gang being a German surname.
Since you deal with invertebrate fossils, Rachel, what do you think of the "Fossils" found on the ALH84001 meteorite ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001 )? Also have you dealt much with Glosopteris fossils?
Fascinating info. Thanks for the link.
Oh your beautiful by the way and smart
The yt closed captioning is completely stumped by your vocabulary. lol
hahaha oh no, that tends to happen a lot 🤣
So the rock from Mars could have been easily a rock formation and not actually life?
Just FYI on pronunciation - zoön (o followed by o-umlaut) is pronounced as two separate "o"s. Somewhat obscure factoid, the diaeresis is used in English to indicate a separate syllable rather than forming a diphthong. So "zoe-on", rather than "zoon". Looking up diaeresis in a dictionary or on google will give longer explanations. Regards.
I went back and skipped evolution and made flying fish.
Your really cute
Fake os, AKA ooids. Then fake ooids, aka ooidoids.
Concretions those are tendon balls under the alluminuim silicate aka skin why are they called concreations not tendon balls
It's a diffusion limited aggregate en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion-limited_aggregation