Lukas VFN 🇪🇺Is the middle #Cambrian #Brooksella a hexactinellid #sponge, trace #fossil or pseudofossil?
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-middle-cambrian-brooksella-hexactinellid-sponge.html paper: https://peerj.com/articles/14796/
There are numerous enigmatic Cambrian #fossils that need to be scrutinized to determine if they are really fossils to help #paleontologists refine biodiversity estimates for the Cambrian.
Is the middle Cambrian Brooksella a hexactinellid sponge, trace fossil or pseudofossil?
More than 100 years ago, Charles Doolittle Walcott from the Smithsonian Institution was asked to examine strange star-shaped fossils with lobes hailing from the ~ 514-million-year-old Conasauga Formation in Alabama. Walcott described these odd fossils as jellyfish that likely floated in the middle Cambrian seas of what is now the southeastern United States. Little did he know that the Cambrian fossil he named would cause more than 100 years of controversy.