I Thought He Only Studied Lancelets!

That is the name of his blog anyway. Apparently, though, Martin also studies fossils. National Geographic has the story – and this is the clever part – apparently he didn’t even have to go out into the field:

But Brazeau suspected that in the right circumstances, some bones could withstand time.
So he took a closer look at the well-preserved Ptomacanthus specimen that had been in the literature for 30 years. “Sure enough,” he said, “the specimen had its braincase preserved.”

I’m getting ahead of myself, though, so let me back up.

Fossils and Food Chains

I don’t know how I missed this yesterday. National Geographic has an article on an interesting fossil, dating to about 290 MYA (basically, the beginning of the Permian) , that provides some interesting information on food chains.