Fossil Identification for Rockhounding Dummies

Half a dozen different kinds of fossils

There's a saying that we usually attribute to singer/songwriter Joan Osborne, although it's a safe bet she didn't coin the phrase. We just like hearing her say, "Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease"¹ more than other people. Whatever the case, we've been seeing lots of cures at least as bad as, and sometimes worse, than the disease; and the place we've been seeing them is Sciencing.com. It seems that Leaf Group has decided to unleash a "cleanup crew" on some of their content. Unfortunately, the rewrites seem likely to be as undistinguished as what Fiona Tapp did to the post, "How to Identify Shell Fossils."

We already took eHowian Karen S. Garvin to task for her version of the same post earlier this year, in which we noted that the word "Shell" in the title is so ambiguous as to make the question impossible to answer in the 300-500 words allotted to DMS writers. Ambiguous or not, Garvin did a lousy job... and Tapp failed to improve on it. Here's her first gaffe:

"One of the most common samples of fossils include different types of fossilized shell, these are also called ammonites, which are fossils of coiled up shells."

We aren't even sure what that sentence is supposed to mean. Staffers who know a little about paleontology think that the OQ wanted to know how to identify mollusks and (maybe) brachiopods, so Tapp's brief foray into ammonites isn't particularly helpful. What comes next is even less useful. After a quick attempt to explain how something Fiona calls "sea fossils" are formed, she launches into an attempt to explain fossil identification. This includes such useful thoughts as,

1. "Fossils... are formed on a rock."
2. "...try to match up the unique markings on the shell with glossaries found online on natural history museum websites to try to work out what type of animal left the marking."
3. "Brachiopods are non-coiled shell fossils and can be black, white, brown or grey²."
4. "...echinoids... gastropods... Look closely at your fossil and try to work out which one of these classifications fits best."

Wow: now those are helpful bits of advice. We notice she didn't mention any of several other phyla and classes that produce shelly remains; including corals, pelecypods, bryozoa, echinoderms... No, all she did was reword some of Garvin's more puzzling prose (e.g., "Patterns on the shell... can be useful in identifying species," which reappeared in number 2 above). No, we're pretty sure that Tapp's version is even more useless than Garvin's had been. No wonder our staffer tapped Fiona's bushwa to be our Dumbass of the Day. After all, what can you say about someone whose bio says she's "[A] a former... masters degree holder"? Did the university claw the degree back? We don't blame them...

¹ The line is in Osborne's song, "Dracula Moon."
² It appears that Fiona lives in Canada...

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