Helen FieldsScience Writer

Last week I reported on some strange rocks from South Australia that may preserve the oldest animal fossils. Or may not. Ok, nobody knows. But they look kind of like animals. Read about it here.

I like that the function of the journal article was basically to throw the idea out there, see if any other geologists come across anything interesting. There’s plenty of rock of the right age exposed on the planet; you just have to tell geologists to look for it, and other samples of these animals (or whatever they are) could turn up.

In the I know everybody category, the lead author’s name sounded vaguely familiar. Before I called him I looked at his website, and indeed – he went to Carleton College at roughly the same time as me. We have four friends in common on Facebook. Fifteen years ago, I might even have been able to pick him out of a lineup. Today, his name just sounded vaguely familiar.