Summary
Melting snow in the Italian Alps revealed a prehistoric ecosystem from the Permian period, predating dinosaurs by 280 million years.
The discovery, made by hiker Claudia Steffensen in 2023, includes well-preserved footprints of reptiles and amphibians, alongside traces of flora and invertebrates.
Paleontologists describe the find as unprecedented in quality and variety. The fossils, uncovered due to rising temperatures linked to climate change, highlight parallels between ancient environmental shifts and today’s climate crisis.
Researchers expect more discoveries as melting ice and erosion expose additional fossils.
It’s cool that, as we’re nearing our end, we’re at least learning more about the beginnings. Sort of has a poetic beauty to it.
I’m hoping that, in our hubris, we’ll re-create the environment that allows dinosaurs to rise again.
Birds inherit the Earth.
Even now and then it just catches me how absolutely insane it is how long the planet sustained complex life without any humans whatsoever. We’re an evolutionary accident. A footnote consequence of unlikely circumstance. Were it not for a number of unlikely destructive events this planet might have quite happily continued ad infinitum with only dinosaurs on it. Can you imagine that, if this whole universe had happened and this one random blue marble had dinosaurs on it and not a single minded being anywhere to appreciate the magnificent insanity of it all?
I believe there’s some thinking now that dinosaurs weren’t doing all that well, stagnating, so without a meteor and volcanic activity they still would have changed in some manner eventually. But perhaps not enough to let the mammals fill any niches.
What gets me is how long life was on Earth just as single cell forms, and then suddenly, recently, it took off to bigger things.
Removed by mod
At the time of the K-T extinction, we looked like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purgatorius
The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event,[a] also known as the K–T extinction,[b] was the mass extinction of three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth[2][3] approximately 66 million years ago. The event caused the extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs. Most other tetrapods weighing more than 25 kg (55 lb) also became extinct, with the exception of some ectothermic species such as sea turtles and crocodilians.[4]
Omnivores, insectivores, and carrion-eaters survived the extinction event, perhaps because of the increased availability of their food sources. Neither strictly herbivorous nor strictly carnivorous mammals seem to have survived. Rather, the surviving mammals and birds fed on insects, worms, and snails, which in turn fed on detritus (dead plant and animal matter)
Luckily, great-grandaddy squirrel-critter was a survivor and had a taste for insects:
It is thought to have been rat-sized (6 in (15 cm) long and 1.3 ounces (about 37 grams)) and a diurnal insectivore, which burrowed through small holes in the ground.
Some birds are pretty intelligent.
Yeah but on the other hand, big numbers on a screen.
What?! Pre-squid?! This is an outrage!
The Missing Ink
I will have you know that the world was created by The Great Squid in 7 days approximately 60 million years ago.
Give me time and I will tell you about how he had a squid gather up all the life in the sea two by two and put them in a big aquarium after the Great Squid punished the wicked by 40 days and 40 nights of no rain.
Get dunked.
The Great Flying Spaghetti Monster created the Universe and all that exists, out of boredom, after indulging into too much beer.
Findings like these is just the GFSM messing with our colective hubris of knowing-it-all.
Those “fossils” were placed over night as decor, now that the ice melted.
Amen, brother! 🙌
Really should have gone with 8 days.
7 would have been fine if you land dwellers hadn’t decided that you were allowed to make babies too. No one gave you permission.
Correction in your summary, they date back to 280 million years, before the dinosaurs. Not 280M more years. That would be very old.
