Eating Fossils

My dad was a geologist. We would go fossil hunting all the time and lick rocks. I've tried explaining it to many people over the years and it sounds silly to them. With the 'end grain' of a fractured bone, the porosity of real bone sticks to your tongue unlike other rocks, it's pretty cool!

I presume this is / was trending as the paper won a 2023 Ig Nobel prize [ https://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2023 ]

"CHEMISTRY and GEOLOGY PRIZE [POLAND, UK]

Jan Zalasiewicz, for explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks.

REFERENCE: “Eating Fossils,” Jan Zalasiewicz, The Paleontological Association Newsletter, no. 96, November 2017. Eating fossils | The Palaeontological Association (palass.org)

WHO TOOK PART IN THE CEREMONY: Jan Zalasiewicz"

Skimmed it. Weird read. I'll come back for a proper read later. Intriguing.

Nummulites are (were? Thought they were extinct?) single celled : "A nummulite is a large lenticular fossil, characterised by its numerous coils,[1] subdivided by septa into chambers. They are the shells of the fossil and present-day marine protozoan Nummulites, a type of foraminiferan. Nummulites commonly vary in diameter from 1.3 cm (0.5 inches) to 5 cm (2 inches)[2] ... Fossils up to six inches wide are found in the Middle Eocene rocks of Turkey"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nummulite