BEAUTIFUL SOUL: GRIFFEN

SEA OTTER: WEST COAST MOMENT

KOALA: BABY JOEY

Koala, Phasscolarctos cinereus, are truly adorable marsupials native to Australia. These cuddly "teddy bears" are not bears at all. Koalas belong to a group of mammals known as marsupials. 

Fossil remains of Koala-like animals have been found dating back 25 million years. Some of the relatives of modern koalas were much larger, including the Giant Koala, Phascolarctos stirtoni. 

It should likely have been named the Robust Koala, instead of Giant, but this big boy was larger than modern koalas by about a third. Phascolarctos yorkensis, from the Miocene, was twice the size of the modern koalas we know today. Both our modern koalas and their larger relatives co-existed during the Pleistocene, sharing trees and enjoying the tasty vegetation surrounding them.

TRACKING THEROPODS

Toe to Toe with a Theropod — In the outcrops around Clarens, South Africa.

We get a bird's eye view (or Theropod's eye view) of life back in the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. Both here and at Elliott we see dinosaur remains tracks and dino eggs!

PETRIFIED WOOD

Petrified wood is amazing to behold in person. The original tree or branch is sometimes subjected to such a high degree of replacement that it is impossible to tell from the original at first glance. But fossilized it is. All of the original cells are replaced one by one with minerals, often a silicate such as quartz, leaving the original cell structure intact.



And while there is often amazing preservation of the big woody bits, the telltale leaves that help us identify that wood to species are often lost. If this is the case, we add our best guess at the genus and add xlon. So, Palmoxylon is the indeterminate wood of a palm, though we may never know which palm. If you have an interest in botany and fossils, you may want to consider making a career of it. The study of fossil wood is called palaeoxylology. And a palaeoxylologist is someone who studies fossil wood.