Stunning Fossil Site Reveals Life Rebounding After Major Extinction Event An artistic reconstruction of the Huayuan ecosystem. (Zeng et al., Nature, 2026) Science Alert has a story about the discovery of a new Cambrian lagerstatte in China. The site preserves an entire ecosystem in stunning detail. There are about 40 Cambrian sites worldwide that exhibiting exquisite preservation of rarely preserved, non-mineralized soft tissue. Add this newly discovered 512 million years old fossil site in Hunan, South China, named the Huayuan biota.

Stunning Fossil Site Reveals Life Rebounding After Major Extinction Event #fossils #paleontology #China #Cambrian #lagerstatte

Australia’s red rocks hold mysteriously detailed fossils. We finally know how they formed Chemical analysis could help predict locations of other ancient sites with impeccable fossils

McGraths Flat is an incredible fossil site in New South Wales that reveals Australia’s rich tropical past.

In a new study, scientists discover what caused the area’s exceptional fossilization—and where similar fossil sites might be unearthed.

#Paleontology #Lagerstatte

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New for @science.org

Mazon Monday #294: Montceau-les-Mines This is Mazon Monday post #294. What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com. A closed coal-washing plant in Montceau-les-Mines (Wikimedia Commons) Montceau-les-Mines is a commune located in the Saône-et-Loire department of the Bourgogne–Franche-Comté region in eastern France. It lies southwest of the city of Dijon and today has a population of just under 20,000 people. The town was officially established on June 24, 1856, from territory taken from several nearby villages — Blanzy, Saint-Vallier, Saint-Berain-sous-Sanvignes, and Sanvignes-les-Mines.

Mazon Monday #294: Montceau-les-Mines #fossils #paleontology #MazonCreek #MazonMonday #France #lagerstatte

Some 303-305 million years ago, during the Carboniferous Period, Central France...

A roughly kidney-shaped ironstone concretion, split lengthwise and opened to show the inner surfaces of both symmetrical halves. In the centre of each half is the pale brown outline of a fossilized, soft-bodied, segmented marine worm, contrasting with the darker brown matrix. The head, at the top of the concretion, faces inward and bears a pair of short diverging tentacles. In the centre of the head region on the left half of the split are paired jaw elements, preserved as tiny black structures; these appear only as impressions on the right half. Behind the head, the segmented body extends towards the lower portion of the concretion and curves smoothly up in a short loop. The tail bears a pair of bundle of long hair-like setae. Parapodia appear as short blunt projections from the sides of the body, and in places short setae can be seen at their tips. The outer rim of the split concretion shows an orange coloured weathering rind. This superb specimen is part of a large Mazon Creek collection held in the Invertebrate Palaeontology section of the Royal Ontario Museum.

#WormWednesday Exquisite "soft-bodied" #fossil preservation of Esconites zelus - a Late #Carboniferous (~305 MYA) eunicid #polychaete from the #MazonCreek #Lagerstatte, IL. Part & counterpart of sideritic concretion (~8 cm long) showing body outline w parapodia & setae, "head" tentacles & mandibles.

Images are a series of slide scans from 1997 during joint fieldwork with personnel from the @manitobamuseum.bsky.social. This first photo shows a shoreline view of a long line of cliffs (about 10 metres high) in well-bedded and joint-fractured pale grey dolostone. The cliffs are shaded beneath spruce trees and brush, but the foreground of a broad beach of water-rounded cobbles is in bright sun. Low waves break on the shore, which continues in the distance around a curving embayment.

Two persons dressed in field gear stand on a talus apron of angular blocks of buff-grey dolostone, looking left towards a sheer face of bedded and joint-fractured rock of the same composition. The cliff is about 10 metres in height. At the top of the image, spruce trees and aspens stand at the cliff edge against a blue sky. Where the cliff has collapsed to produce the talus apron, an uprooted spruce has fallen and lies at an angle above the two people.

A view from below the cliff face of thin-bedded grey-buff dolostone, showing a dangerous curving overhang produced by intense shoreline erosion. In the background, blue lake water gives way to shoreline trees, as the cliffs diminish in height under a bright hazy sky.

A view from beneath one of the many overhanging rock ledges of the shoreline cliffs. On the underside of the exposed buff-coloured bedding plane are darker brown fossil thalli of the probable ochrophyte alga, Winnipegia cuneata. The field of view is about 15 cm across.

For #Strataday I take you to the remote Cat Head Peninsula, Lake Winnipeg, #Manitoba 🇨🇦, source of the Cat Head-McBeth Pt #Lagerstatte & yesterday's Winnipegia post. Here, Late #Ordovician (~450 MYA) Cat Head Mbr (Red River Fm) dolostones outcrop in extensive wave-cut cliffs. More in alt text.

A small trapezoid-shaped slab of pale buff dolostone bearing several clusters of contrasting rust-coloured tapered fronds, radiating from short "stems".

Non-calcifying #algae are rare in the #fossilrecord, requiring unusual conditions for preservation. This is Winnipegia cuneata, a probable onchrophyte #alga from the Late #Ordovician (~450 MYA) Cat Head Mbr, Red River Fm - Cat Head-McBeth Point #Lagerstatte, Lake Winnipeg, #Manitoba 🇨🇦 #FossilFriday