Fossil Site Discovery Tells of Australia's 'Origin Story'

 

Elle Ruhanen

Mr. Ippolito

Honors Core Chemistry

1/8/22

Hunt, Katie. “Fossil Site Discovery Tells of Australia's 'Origin Story'.” CNN, Cable News Network, 7 Jan. 2022, www.cnn.com/2022/01/07/asia/australia-fossil-site-scn/index.html.

http://www.cnn.com/2022/01/07/asia/australia-fossil-site-scn/index.html

The deserts of Australia can be described as very dry, and hot, but with newly discovered fossils, the origin of Australia might be different. In New South Wales, Matthew McCurry and a group of paleontologists at the Australian Museum Research Institute, found well preserved spiders, cicadas, plants and fish that date back to about 11-16 million years ago, during the Miocene Epoch time period of the earth. The Miocene Epoch (Epoch is the beginning of a distinctive period in history) was a period of great evolution for plants and animals, marking the development of many continents and landforms that would eventually make up our modern day world. The fossils helped scientists discover the once abundant and lively rainforest ecosystems. McCurry states, "The Miocene was the point in time when most of the modern Australian environments were established, and so this fossil site is really Australia's origin story.". Also, during the Miocene, there was reduced precipitation that caused rainforests around the world to shrink, giving us the dry landscapes we have today. This was discovered through the analysis of fossilized leaves in Gulgong, Australia. All of these fossils were incredibly well preserved, allowing scientists to see individual cells and organelles, with the assistance of a microscope. Overall, by finding these fossils we can create an understanding of what the origin or Australia looked like.

This article is very relevant, because it can help us begin to picture the origin of the world, and what it used to look like. By applying these ideas, we might be able to discover more about the origin of our world. 

Although I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article, there were some strengths, and unfortunately weaknesses. One of my favorite things about this article was the visuals that helped show what the fossils looked like. For some readers that do not know what fossils look like or just rely on images for more context, having pictures can be very helpful.​​ This article also included direct quotes from the original study, which adds a lot more information, and adds a sense of credibility to the article. While there are a lot of positives, there are some weaknesses as well; the article uses a lot of terms that the average person might not know, like Miocene Epoch, and melanosomes. This can cause a lot of confusion for the reader, a solution to this would be adding some explanations, when using scientific terms to ger rid of any and all misinterpretations.