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Hello dear fellow forum members. I just read the brilliant, though hardly fossil related, book "The Overstory" by Richard Powers, and it deeply moved me. It put in words my fears and grieve for the biodiversity lost each day. For me, collecting fossils, learning about them and about the extinct diversity there was has paradoxically always been kind of solace. A biologist friend once asked me how collecting parts of dead animals could comfort me, and I had to think about it. Now I believe its a way to appreciate diversity without having to fear its loss. Learning about, say, whales always leaves me kind of melancholy. While learning about rudists is easy. One may regret to never see a live one, but it does not hurt. It even seems as if the diversity was growing due to new discoveries. The number of species in my collection is growing, while each day we loose countless living species. I wondered how you, who appreciate natures wonders as much as I do feel about the sixth mass extinction we are driving right now. Best Regards, J

I've recently been looking over the geologic formations in Illinois and I found one that's a bit interesting - it's a Cambrian period outcrop but it seems to be a bit small, only found in parts of Ogle and Lee County, Illinois. http://ebeltz.net/firstfam/1stfam.html https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1202269 https://ilstratwiki.web.illinois.edu/index.php/Cambrian_System I haven't heard of a lot of fossils coming from this area so I'm wondering if anyone's been fossil hunting in that region of Illinois before and how common are Cambrian Fossils from Illinois's Ogle and Lee Counties?

Why do we see so many examples of intelligent animals today, such as crows, elephants, whales and pigs, but none in previous biospheres? Why didn't the Cretaceous evolve such a level of intelligence? Or the Permian?

A new normal: Study explains universal pattern in fossil record, Santa Fe Institute, June 26, 2019 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190626160341.htm http://www.terradaily.com/reports/A_new_normal_Study_explains_universal_pattern_in_fossil_record_999.html https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-06/sfi-ann061919.php The paper is: Rominger, A.J., Fuentes, M.A. and Marquet, P.A., 2019. Nonequilibrium evolution of volatility in origination and extinction explains fat-tailed fluctuations in Phanerozoic biodiversity. Science Advances, 5(6), p.eaat0122. (open access paper) https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/6/eaat0122.abstract Yours, Paul H.

I read a book called In the Blink of an Eye not long ago where the author claimed that the development of the eye is what led to the expansion of biodiversity. I've also heard the development of hard parts, changes in environment, and genetic causes. I honestly don't have a feeling on this one. Do you?

From the article... "Studies based on the apparently flawed method have suggested Earth's biodiversity remained relatively stable - close to maximum carrying capacity - and hinted many signs of species becoming rapidly extinct are merely reflections on the poor quality of the fossil record at that time." Estimates of biodiversity and extinct rates has been based on a fudge factor that is now being questioned for its validity. This means that the results of the analysis in many papers is in question, based on use a fualty factor for normalizing the results. This challenge based on simulation data, so it is not hard empirical evidence. The debate on how to tally these numbers continues... http://phys.org/news/2016-10-flawed-analysis-years-evolutionary.html