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Palaeontology: How lichens point the way to dinosaur fossils
In the barren expanses of the Canadian Badlands, where the sun bathes the rocks in bright colours, inconspicuous organisms could soon become valuable aids to palaeontology: lichens. Researchers have discovered that these colourful communities specifically colonise fossil bones and could thus serve as natural signposts.
The province of Alberta in western Canada has long been considered a treasure trove of prehistoric remains. As early as 1884, geologist Joseph Burr Tyrrell made a sensational discovery here: in the Red Deer River Valley, he stumbled upon the skull of a carnivorous dinosaur, later known as Albertosaurus sarcophagus. Just a few years later, a second discovery was made by Thomas C. Weston, also from the Geological Survey of Canada. What began as a coal exploration project led to one of the most significant chapters in palaeontology.
The badlands of Alberta, now home to the UNESCO World Heritage Site Dinosaur Provincial Park, are a window into the Cretaceous period. Around 70 million years ago, the region was covered by swampy forests and river landscapes where dinosaurs lived in large numbers. Their remains, covered by sediment and fossilised over millions of years, are now among the most spectacular fossils in the world.
But despite modern technology, the search for new finds often remains laborious. Palaeontologists still wander through the gorges with a trained eye, checking whether a protruding rock could be a fossil. An old-fashioned but effective method helps with this: the so-called lick test. Since bones are more porous than rock, they stick to the tongue – a simple but proven tool in the field.
Now there is a new, but at the same time completely natural aid: bright orange lichens. A team led by Brian Pickles from the University of Reading reports in the journal Current Biology that lichens of the species Rusavskia elegans and Xanthomendoza trachyphylla preferentially colonise fossil bones in the Badlands. Up to 50 per cent of the bone surface is covered by them, while the surrounding rock is hardly covered at all.
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This phenomenon is nothing new to local experts. ‘When you come across a bone deposit, you often see the orange lichen first, not the bones themselves,’ explains Caleb Brown from the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology. What many researchers have been observing for years has now been scientifically confirmed.
But why do lichens like to grow on ancient bones? The answer lies in the chemistry of fossils. Their calcareous, slightly alkaline composition provides ideal conditions for the symbiotic organisms, which consist of fungi and algae. The porous surface of the fossils also seems to be particularly attractive to them, as it provides them with a foothold and allows them to absorb nutrients.
What at first sounds like a curious observation could revolutionise the search for fossils. This is because the orange lichens reflect sunlight in a clearly recognisable spectrum, which can be identified from the air. Colour data captured by drones enabled the research team to identify potential sites from a height of up to 30 metres. While bare bones are almost indistinguishable from the rock, the lichens glow in striking patterns.
In future, the combination of biology and technology could open up new horizons. Drones equipped with cameras and spectral sensors could search large areas in a short time, especially in terrain that is difficult to access. This approach has already been tested on expeditions in Mongolia and the Mojave Desert, where satellite and drone data were used to identify promising formations.
However, the method is not suitable everywhere. Only in regions where these types of lichen occur and where the fossils are exposed long enough can they leave their characteristic signature. But in Alberta’s badlands, the future of fossil hunting may indeed lie in a simple but fascinating principle:
new life reveals old life.
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