Source: Poster News
Mention fossils, you may think that it is very far away from us, today (April 28) Guiyang airport toilet sink is full of fossil topics on Weibo hot search, triggering heated discussion among netizens.
The origin of the matter is that when Chen Shangbin, director of the Department of Geology of China University of Mining and Technology, was on a business trip today, he found a pattern similar to fossil remains on the toilet of Guiyang Airport, and casually photographed the circle of friends. According to the identification of Dr. Qian Maiping, an expert in stratigraphic paleontology, these sink plates are 390 million years old owl shell fossils.
Subsequently, @Rainmonkey World released the Weibo "Follow-up on the Fossil Table Slab of Guiyang Airport Toilet", and after Dr. Qian asked Academician Shen for advice and exchanges, Dr. Qian Maiping corrected his identification as a shigang pseudo-shell shell, a five-room shellfish, a branch line shell family, and a pseudo-housing shell shell genus, which is about 439 million years ago.
The secretary general of the Geological Society of Jiangsu Province said that the age of fossil formation is very far away from us, but in real life it is actually very close to us. The fossil slabs in the toilets of Guiyang Airport are produced in the Yunnan-Guichuan area, and many in the building materials industry use them as decorative motherboards. Netizens have commented: "May Day out of the way archaeology", "thought the hot search is a joke, the result is true", "also thought that this is artificial ordinary marble, added patterns only, so magical"...
Some netizens released their own photos and asked if they were also fossils:
In fact, fossils are all around us
In fact, in 2020, there were also fossils in the floor tiles of Huai'an Municipal Hall, which triggered the onlookers of netizens!
According to reports, a Mr. Wang said that when he was meeting in the Huai'an Municipal Government in Jiangsu Province, he found a nearly 40-centimeter-long conch fossil slice on the floor tiles of the Municipal Government Conference Center, which immediately triggered netizens to watch!
According to Mr. Wang, he is a well-known fossil researcher and fossil science blogger "fossil cat". On December 6, during a meeting of the Huai'an Municipal Government, Mr. Wang found a fossil slice of a conch nearly 40 centimeters long on the floor tiles of the hall on the first floor of the conference room.
Mr. Wang said that this conch fossil is 20 million years old and belongs to the Cenozoic fossil. He also introduced that the country is doing environmental protection, China's stone is basically imported, the day he saw this piece of floor tiles, from the building materials, is a very cheap stone, more than a hundred square, if from the perspective of fossils is still very "valuable".
Ancient "fish fossils" have also been found in Longhu Lake, Handan, Hebei. In Hebei, some people found "fish fossils" in Longhu Park. According to the experts of the municipal geology team who went to the scene, the fossil was an Ordovician "horn fossil". According to Professor Kong, hornstones were the most widely distributed cephalopods in the Ordovician ocean. Because of its hard shell, which resembles the horns of a cow or a sheep, geologists have given it a figurative name, "Horn stone." This fossil is widely produced in the Ordovician Majiagou Formation formation, and has been found in the mountainous areas of Cixian County, Fengfeng, Wu'an, Xiangxian and other places.
Experts: Fossils found in building materials are not uncommon
The reporter interviewed experts from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and experts said that it is possible to find fossils from building materials, and it is not uncommon. If you have a good understanding of paleontology, you may be able to "find" fossils from the floor tiles of shopping malls and hotels around you.
Experts told reporters that there are fossils on the bricks in some hotels. In the building materials market, there are some yellow stone brick building materials imported from the Mediterranean region, which contain single-celled protozoa such as money worms, and some even find many on a stone brick.
Look at these, these are the fossils around you:
(Ancient marine life fossil floor photographed on a road in Zhangjiajie City)
(Guilin street tiles on the strange pattern expert: 300 million or 400 million years ago fossils)
Fossils are a precious treasure left to mankind by nature
Fossils are a valuable treasure left by nature to human beings, so that future generations can understand the laws of biology and their own evolution. Fossils are living organisms preserved in rocks, and although they have lost their living life, they still contain the secrets of the origin and evolution of life. Every major advance in human understanding of living things and their own evolution is mostly associated with the discovery of new fossils.
(Trilobite fossil infographic)
Fossils are stones turned into the remains or relics of creatures living in the distant past. From the fossils, you can see the appearance of ancient animals and plants, so that you can infer the living conditions and living environment of ancient animals and plants, you can infer the age and changes of the formation of the buried fossils, you can see the changes of organisms from ancient times to the present, and so on. Fossils are so important, how can we protect them?
First of all, it is necessary to widely publicize fossil knowledge and improve people's awareness of conservation. Many fossils may seem unimportant, but they often provide important information. For example, rocks that preserve bones and hard fossils, fossil footprints of animals, fossils of crawling traces, and fossils of feces have research value. Secondly, fossils are often broken and scattered, and are usually mixed with mud and gravel, which is difficult for ordinary people to handle, so it generally needs professionals to collect. Third, in some important fossil production areas, it is necessary to establish protected areas, and indiscriminate digging and indiscriminate mining are strictly prohibited. For example, in the early Cretaceous strata of western Liaoning, China, there are many extremely precious feathered dinosaur fossils, pterosaur fossils, bird fossils, etc., which can be called priceless treasures and attract many people to excavate. Therefore, the relevant state departments have set up protected areas in the local area to prevent illegal mining and destruction. Fourth, it is necessary to publicize national and local laws and regulations on the protection of fossils, such as rare fish, reptiles, mammals, birds, ancient humans and other vertebrate fossils, as well as dinosaur eggs and other egg fossils are protected by the state, and pirates will be punished by law, and smuggling is not allowed to be sold abroad.
(Zhao Man, editor of the poster news of the public network, comprehensively arranged in Sina Weibo, Purple Cow News, Xinhua Net, etc.)
Editor-in-charge: Wang Leshuang
Audit: Xin Ran
This article is from [Poster News] and represents the views of the author only. The National Party Media Information Public Platform provides information release and dissemination services.