• Question: What would your favourite fossil be?

    Asked by Sheepish mango 🐏🥭 to Maria on 10 Nov 2019. This question was also asked by TOMMYboy.
    • Photo: Maria McNamara

      Maria McNamara answered on 10 Nov 2019:

      I have lots of favorite fossils! My favorite fossils that I’ve worked on include fossil snake skin preserved in 3D, and dinosaur dandruff!

      I have some pretty fun fossils in my lab at the moment: things like a dinosaur footprint, fossil fish, fossil leaves and fossil insects with colours and colour patterns. I’m doing a new public exhibit at the moment called Fossil Crime Scene and I’m bringing loads of fabulous Irish fossils to public science fairs and schools. My favourite Irish fossils are probably crinoids – relatives of star fish but with long stalks which they used to attach themselves to the sea floor. 300 million years ago they formed huge reefs that built up from the sea floor from the debris of their skeletons and the mud that these structures trapped. Lots of these so-called ‘mud mounds’ can be seen around the Irish landscape today – they still can stand proud of the surrounding landscape – for instance the Rock of Cashel is located on top of one!.

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