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3-D Fossils Found in Canada 36

Posted by michael on Friday July 16, 2004 @07:14PM from the rocky-road dept.

smooth wombat writes "The BBC has a story with pictures of fossils found in Canada which are three dimensional. Even more interesting is that scientists consider the creatures, called rangemorphs, to be neither animal nor vegetable. In a related matter, geologists added the Ediacaran Period, in which these fossils lived, to their official history of Earth, the first new period to be added in 120 years."

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3-D Fossils Found in Canada

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- - Re:Maybe someone can read the story? (Score:1)
    
    by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) ( 613870 ) writes:
    
    Read a story introduced by the title "3-D Fossils Found in Canada"? I'm as likely to read that as a story titled "New Pentium PC does arithmetic".
    - Re:Maybe someone can read the story? (Score:2)
      
      by Rob Riggs ( 6418 ) writes:
      
      I'm as likely to read that as a story titled "New Pentium PC does arithmetic".
      Yes, but is it correct arithmetic?
- Re:Maybe someone can tell me what the story... (Score:4, Insightful)
  
  by bandy ( 99800 ) writes: <andrew.beals+slashdot@gmail.com> on Friday July 16, 2004 @07:29PM (#9722765) Homepage Journal
  
  If I had to take a swag, I'd say that the significance is that they're fossils of soft-bodied critters [um, or "thingies"] that were found in 3D, as most are squashed flat by the process that fossilized them.
  
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  - Re:Maybe someone can tell me what the story... (Score:4, Informative)
    
    by Chuck1318 ( 795796 ) writes: on Friday July 16, 2004 @07:34PM (#9722798)
    
    Also important is the fine detail preserved in the fossils, down to 30 micrometers. [aaas.org]
    
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  - Re:Maybe someone can tell me what the story... (Score:2)
    
    by Angry Toad ( 314562 ) writes:
    
    This is directly related to my thesis work, so I'll pretend to know what I'm talking about.
    
    The main significance is that they're stunningly well-preserved examples of a fauna which predates the Cambrian Explosion - this might increase the chances that sensible attributions to extant animal phyla can ultimately be made.
    
    One hears a lot of nonsense about the Ediacarans, but there's a substantial body of opinion that they're nothing more than Cnidarians - and possibly Cnidarian-like Ctenophore ancesto
    - Re:Maybe someone can tell me what the story... (Score:1)
      
      by freqres ( 638820 ) writes:
      
      Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Right on. WTF?
- Re:Maybe someone can tell me what the story... (Score:1)
  
  by GuyMannDude ( 574364 ) writes:
  
  Scientists are excited because this is a rare instance of a beautiful lifeform that has been petrified in media other than hot grits.
  
  GMD
  - - Re:Maybe someone can tell me what the story... (Score:1)
      
      by rburgess3 ( 682428 ) writes:
      
      No no no:
      {X : x E N} Mathematicians do it over the integers.
      
      {X : x E R} Mathematicians do it infinitely, and to prove it, they do it diagonally!
- Re:Maybe someone can tell me what the story... (Score:3, Insightful)
  
  by Madcapjack ( 635982 ) writes:
  
  ...really is about rather than the pop-science version. After all, fossils have been 3D since the dawn of time - well, almost anyway.
  I've personally never encountered anything that had fewer than three spatial dimensions. But I'm sure what was meant was that the fossil was informative in all three dimensions.
  There is no God
  There is a God, but I don't know Her.
  - - Re:Maybe someone can tell me what the story... (Score:1)
      
      by Retric ( 704075 ) writes:
      
      I've personally never encountered anything that had fewer than three spatial dimensions.
      
      No? How about your shadow there on the floor? How many dimensions does it have?
      
      Shadow are still in 3d don't forget it start's at your body and ends on the floor. And even if your only going to talk about that part of the shadow that hit's the floor it's still 3d as the floor is not flat. Nor is it of 0 depth. Not to mention shadows also have color or alleast variations in intensity as the boundary at the ed
- Re:Maybe someone can tell me what the story... (Score:2, Informative)
  
  by bandy ( 99800 ) writes:
  
  New Scientist [newscientist.com] has an article about this very subject.
- Re:Maybe someone can tell me what the story... (Score:3, Informative)
  
  by WalksOnDirt ( 704461 ) writes:
  
  A somewhat more informative article is
  here [newscientist.com]
  - Re:Maybe someone can tell me what the story... (Score:1)
    
    by PhraudulentOne ( 217867 ) writes:
    
    Looks like a cedar branch to me. Old cedar.
Amazing fossils, but not because they're 3d (Score:1)

by thomastheo1 ( 694150 ) writes:

Think of common fossils like trilobytes or ammonites. They are preserved in 3D. Of course, they have exosceleton/shell.
Prior fossils (Score:4, Funny)

by metamatic ( 202216 ) writes: on Friday July 16, 2004 @09:02PM (#9723334) Homepage Journal

No wonder all those dinosaurs died out, if they were 2-dimensional. I mean, how would they eat 3D plants?

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neither animal nor vegetable (Score:1, Funny)

by Anonymous Coward writes:

Maybe it's a fruit?
- Re:neither animal nor vegetable (Score:1)
  
  by Wandering Wombat ( 531833 ) writes:
  
  Well, you see, it gets cold in Canada... and oh so lonely... and maple syrup trees are just so warm and inviting...
- Re:Blasphamy! (Score:2)
  
  by g0bshiTe ( 596213 ) writes:
  
  The earth is only 6000 years old, not 6.5 billion.
  Wanna buy a bridge? Convienently located in Manhattan.
  This is blasphamy, and the fossil record is no proof of evolution. All a fossil proves is that somthing existed at one time, but no longer does.
  Noah musta had one hell of a time building the Ark, between running from T-Rex and hiding from Raptors.
  
  Free your mind, open it to thought and ideas. You may not agree with them, I don't agree with religon, yet there is truth to some of the stories, morals.
  J
Pokemon! (Score:1)

by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 ) writes:

YAY! Finally! We can take it to some random guy in some random company and revive it, where it will be used to battle other common animals and have a type advantage :D
Seeing them (Score:3, Funny)

by Anonymous Coward writes: on Saturday July 17, 2004 @04:16PM (#9726401)

Do you need special glasses to see them?

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- Re:Seeing them (Score:3, Funny)
  
  by iggymanz ( 596061 ) writes:
  
  yes, but there are side effects to wearing the special glasses. Besides headaches, everything will look monochrome, and billboards will only have "OBEY" and "MARRY AND REPRODUCE" written on them. Your money will read "THIS IS YOUR GOD" Some people will look like hideous space aliens, and will speak into their watches about you, "he can SEE!".
  - Re:Seeing them (Score:1)
    
    by OldSchool ( 725426 ) writes:
    
    Ah yes. They Live.
  - Re:Seeing them (Score:1)
    
    by freqres ( 638820 ) writes:
    
    And Roddy Piper will go around kickin the shit out of people to get them to wear the shades.
Of course (Score:2)

by momerath2003 ( 606823 ) * writes:

Well, if it's not an animal or vegetable, then it must be a mineral!

(Besides, it is a fossil)
Ediacarans.... (Score:2)

by psyconaut ( 228947 ) writes:

..coming to a drive-in near you in glorious Three-Dee(tm)!

-psy
Langton was right! (Score:3, Insightful)

by Randym ( 25779 ) writes: on Monday July 19, 2004 @01:30AM (#9735718)

The finds show that the organisms were assembled in fractal patterns from frond-like building blocks. They were unable to move and had no reproductive organs, perhaps reproducing by dropping off new fronds .
Does Chris Langton know about this? It appears that his cellular automata self-reproduction structures may have been right on the money!
Useful tool: http://www.complex.iastate.edu/information/downloa d/Trend/examples/langton.html [iastate.edu]

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