The title sound like they have found an embryo in some sort of permafrost with DNA and everything else.
Words can have different meanings in different contexts.
In the context of dinosaurs “perfectly preserved” means that even fine details can be discerned in the fossils. And yes fossils are rocks. Someone who knows the minimal amount about dinos will know this, and even if it’s the first time you encounter the concept the article explains it nicely.
Titles are titles. They are short and thus they can’t provide a treatrise on the sum of all human knowledge. You need common sense to parse them.
The problem is that common sense also depends on context. In this case the target audience is not paleontologists, so the headline should be adjusted.
I have seen another commenter say that the articles shared on social media often include an artist rendition. Those would definitely be clickbait.
> fossils are rocks
Not always, especially in paleontology. Any kind of preservation counts, e.g. amber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil
That meaning's become confounded with the sense of "fossilised" as in "mineralised", but the original etymology referred to anything dug from the ground, hence coal as a fossil (that is, dug-from-the-Earth) fuel, a nomenclature later passed on to petroleum and natural gas.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/fossil
(I'd only discovered this myself recently.)
(Etymology is fun.)
It’s basically like those articles that say “scientist proves existence of higher dimensions” where everyone who tends to read scientific literature figures they mean “has solved some physics equation using 4 dimensions instead of 3” but the majority who see it only through popsci articles and groups think the scientist has found physical evidence of another universe.
Sure. It would be much better to put it as "perfectly preserved fossil" or something like that.
I understand that for people who read articles about “perfectly preserved” dinosaurs often this instantly means "fine details can be discerned in the fossils", but for the majority of people who saw the title while scrolling the news feed - this means much more.
Many social media platforms allow the picture to be included in post. This article wouldn't be clickbait on one of those. This is only a problem on platforms like HN.
Then we have a much bigger problem than the headline.