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I found a seashell in the middle of the desert
101–110 of 127 posts
Re: I found a seashell in the middle of the desert
#102The analysis is nice, flashy, and wrong. Several weak assumptions here leading to hallucinate an obviously wrong result. Taxonomy IS a science. Just use the wide corpse of knowledge that has been built for the last 229 years, where the class Gastropoda was created. First wrong assumption. This is a seashell. This probably is a seashell, yes. But fresh water snails have also shells; and savannas can have a lot of lago…
More points for though 1) The model use incomplete data. The data used to train the model is based in 7800 species alive. After wikipedia, Gastropoda have more than 75000 species alive, plus 15000 fossil species known. (We can assume safely that this is a snail, but remember that some cephalopods also have coiled shells). 2) The model use spurious data. All clams and Tusk shells must be removed (because we want to cl…
And to end this, 6) the model ignores all knowledge about the species and its habitat
Sphincterochila candidissima is a western Mediterranean species. It lives from Spain to Libia. The fossil is from Saudi Arabia.
Re: I found a seashell in the middle of the desert
#103One thing that will have thrown the author off the trail is that he is holding a fossil of the organic parts of the snail and that is essentially a cast of the animal, not the shell. They are known as Steinkerns (stonecore). The insides get replaced by minerals, which harden, the shell dissolves, then the only fossil remaining is a mould of the inside of what used to be the shell. So on a fundamental level, the headl…
Splitting hairs in bad faith is not constructive to the points being made here.
Re: I found a seashell in the middle of the desert
#104Why would you write a lot of software to find the closest match (which doesn't even seem that good) if you could also ask a subject expert? I guess you could even just post a photo to some subreddit with people who could tell you what it is... Also: "it shouldn't be here; the nearest coastline is Dammam's, 500 km away." - are people really that ignorant about plate tectonics and sea fossils in mountains?
I think that sentence was more to show why it had to be a fossil in the first place and not just an ordinary seashell you'd pick up on the beach.
Re: I found a seashell in the middle of the desert
#105One thing that will have thrown the author off the trail is that he is holding a fossil of the organic parts of the snail and that is essentially a cast of the animal, not the shell. They are known as Steinkerns (stonecore). The insides get replaced by minerals, which harden, the shell dissolves, then the only fossil remaining is a mould of the inside of what used to be the shell. So on a fundamental level, the headl…
Splitting hairs in bad faith is not constructive to the points being made here.
True, but I actually had no idea that it was the soft parts rather than the hard parts that had been fossilized. (I haven’t verified it yet.) Either way, it didn’t read like a bad faith interpretation/comment.
Re: I found a seashell in the middle of the desert
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s obvious you’re not an expert at the topic because we can all read the original article and then read your posts in this thread…
I’m really not sure what you mean. Did you actually read the article? There is nothing in there that confirms this is a fossil. One moment the author says “I found a fully solid rock that eerily resembles a seashell” and the next minute they treat it as though it is a fossil but their analysis shows that the shell the piece of rock most resembles is from a completely different geological period.
Who cares? What if it isn't? What are the consequences? It's still an interesting post.
Re: I found a seashell in the middle of the desert
#107"He swam at my feet,
Powerful arms in broad strokes
Sweeping the sand.
So I asked this man,
What seas do you swim?
And to this he answered,
'I have seen shells and the like
On this desert floor,
So I swim this land's memory
Thus honouring its past,'
Is the journey far, queried I.
'I cannot say,' he replied,
'For I shall drown long before
I am done.'"
― Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates
Re: I found a seashell in the middle of the desert
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Splitting hairs in bad faith is not constructive to the points being made here.
True, but I actually had no idea that it was the soft parts rather than the hard parts that had been fossilized. (I haven’t verified it yet.) Either way, it didn’t read like a bad faith interpretation/comment.
It wasn't written to be one. If the author went to the trouble of making a 3D space filled with many shells, knowing the actual shell was most likely a different shape would be something they would probably want to know, so the position of their fossil could be placed more accurately in the graphed space.
Re: I found a seashell in the middle of the desert
#109"If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone." John McPhee from the wonderful Annals of the former world
I really love that book and also couldn’t help but think about it while reading this.
Re: I found a seashell in the middle of the desert
#110St. Stephens cathedral in Vienna was built with sandstone that contains seashells. It's hundreds of kilometers away from the shore, but ~15 million years ago the area where it stands now was a seabed. The stones are not from the exact location where it was built, but from close by. The quarry where the stones came from hundreds of years ago is still active, and you can find tons of fossils there. It's practically imp…
Almost any surface on earth was once under the water. You can find sea shells and various sea deposits high on some 8000m peaks or 1000kms inland.
Everybody who cares at least slightly knows this, and I am pretty sure author knows this too, he could have spared us the initial hyperbole. Analysis itself is good but not everything needs to read like dramatic novel.