Andrea Corpolongo, Ph.D.
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archeanandrea.bsky.social
Andrea Corpolongo, Ph.D.
@archeanandrea.bsky.social
1.1K followers 990 following 470 posts
I study Archean fossils to understand the coevolution of Earth and life and inform the search for life on other planets + philosophy of science. She/her. medium.com/@corpolongo
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archeanandrea.bsky.social
Brood XIV is emerging in Cincinnati!

I saw hundreds of cicadas at the park yesterday evening, but they aren't singing yet. They only started to emerge in the last couple days (at least near me) and they need at least four days for their exoskeleton to fully harden before they seek out a mate.
May 19, 2025 at 1:38 PM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
My upstairs neighbors have a little surprise garden.
Several small seedlings growing in a pile of dead plant material that has collected in the space between the rear windshield and trunk of a car.
May 18, 2025 at 4:39 AM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
With alt text
The image is text that reads: Kathleen Vander Kaaden at NASA Science Mission Directorate sent this memo out today: “As NASA continues to review and ensure compliance with presidential actions, we are requesting that you please pause all meetings and activities of Planetary Science Analysis/Assessment Groups. This includes ExMAG, LEAG, MAPSIT, MEPAG, MExAG, OPAG, OWWG, SBAG, VEXAG, the cross-AG EDIA Working Group, and any other groups or activities that have been developed by the AGs. Please make your communities aware of this request. If you are no longer the chair of one of these AGs or AG-associated groups, please let me know so I can ensure the appropriate folks receive this information.”
February 1, 2025 at 12:52 AM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
I just noticed that the original post doesn't have alt text. Here is the image from the original post with alt text.
The image is text that reads: Kathleen Vander Kaaden at NASA Science Mission Directorate sent this memo out today: “As NASA continues to review and ensure compliance with presidential actions, we are requesting that you please pause all meetings and activities of Planetary Science Analysis/Assessment Groups. This includes ExMAG, LEAG, MAPSIT, MEPAG, MExAG, OPAG, OWWG, SBAG, VEXAG, the cross-AG EDIA Working Group, and any other groups or activities that have been developed by the AGs. Please make your communities aware of this request. If you are no longer the chair of one of these AGs or AG-associated groups, please let me know so I can ensure the appropriate folks receive this information.”
February 1, 2025 at 12:51 AM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
This photo shows the outcrop in South Africa where I collected the sample that contained the microfossil in the first image. The sample came from an iron-rich black chert bed in the upper Gamohaan Formation. The Kuruman Iron Formation begins about 15 meters stratigraphically above the bed.
A photograph showing two fist-sized gray to black angular rocks sitting on top of a sample bag amidst several other similar rocks with sparse, very dry, dead-looking grass growing between them. The rocks are coated in dusty red-brown soil.
January 24, 2025 at 8:03 PM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
This is a scan of the thin section in which I found the microfossil in the first image. The layer that contained the microfossil is highlighted by a red box.
A scanned image of a thin slice of rock affixed to a piece of glass. The rock slice features alternating dark and light layers that vary in color from white (actually these are transparent and colorless, but they look white in the image) to light gray, pale brown, dark brown, and black. The layer in the red box is one of the thicker layers. It features light gray to dark brown material.
January 24, 2025 at 8:03 PM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
Happy #FossilFriday! This photomicrograph features a filamentous microfossil (red box) preserved within a black chert bed found in the 2.5 billion-year-old Gamohaan Formation in the Transvaal Supergroup in South Africa.
A photomicrograph of two sections of filamentous microfossil preserved in chert. The sections of microfossil look like tubes that have been sliced open length-wise. The tubes are approximately 25 microns wide, according to the scale bar in the image. The walls of the microfossils are about 5 microns wide, and the microfossils are hollow within. The microfossils are darker than the matrix material, with brown to black coloration, but they are only faintly visible against the colorless matrix. They occur amongst other black, brown, and colorless features, which include amorphous fossilized organic matter and mineral grains.
January 24, 2025 at 8:03 PM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
This email just hit my inbox.
The email, which was sent by hq-nasa-inc@nasa.gov, reads: Dear agency employees, We are taking steps to close all agency DEIA offices and end all DEIA-related contracts in accordance with President Trump’s executive orders titled Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing and Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions. These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination. We are aware of efforts by some in government to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language. If you are aware of a change in any contract description or personnel position description since November 5, 2024 to obscure the connection between the contract and DEIA or similar ideologies, please report all facts and circumstances to DEIAtruth@opm.gov within 10 days. There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information. However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences. Thank you for your attention to this important matter. Janet Petro
January 22, 2025 at 9:54 PM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
Happy #FossilFriday! Here is a glorious stromatolite I collected from the Wilkins Peak Member of the Eocene Green River Formation. I absolutely did not expect to find adorable little columns hiding beneath that blistered surface. It's one of my favorite samples simply because of the fun surprise!
My hand pointing to an outcrop of carbonate rock. The rock is light tan, about 6 inches long and 2 inches high, with a blistered surface texture. There is a scale card above the rock. Below the rock there is a sample bag labeled with the sample code: WR1-22-3, the sample location: 41 degrees 53 minutes 39 seconds north and 109 degrees 15 minutes 51 seconds west, and the date of collection: 6/6/22 A piece of the outcrop from the first image. It is sitting on a black lab bench. There is a red line digitally drawn vertically across the center of the rock. This line indicates the location of the cross section that is shown in the third image. Scale bar = 1 centimeter The image shows a spectacular little stromatolite. It consists of three columns that formed on a base of sediment. Each column is about a half centimeter across at its base and widens about 1.5 centimeters at its top. Each has submillimeter layers in colors that range from dark brown to pale gray. The columns are overlain by a little less than a centimeter of additional submillimeter microbial layers that are pale tan and pale gray.
December 6, 2024 at 10:15 PM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
Ostracods grazing on decomposing leaves in some sediments I collected from a sulfur spring. This is why we can't have nice biofilms.
November 25, 2024 at 12:20 AM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
1.85 billion years ago, a massive meteorite struck near what is now Sudbury, Ontario. The resulting tsunami sent this stromatolite over 600 km across the ocean and deposited it near what is now Thunder Bay. So, that was a bad day for those microbes.

#FossilFriday ⚒️
A cross section of part of a gray and light brown domal stromatolite. My foot (women's size 9.5, in a hiking boot) is next to the stromatolite for scale. The dome is about twice as high as my foot is long.
November 22, 2024 at 3:56 PM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
It's a little hard to live in Ohio right now, but I always find joy in the paleontology on display at the Cincinnati airport.
⚒️🧪
A fossilized stag moose skeleton displayed on a platform. It's antlers are enormous! In the background you see a relatively empty airport terminal. The informative sign posted by the stag-moose. Text reads: Stag-Moose (Cervaices scotti) Lived 30,000 to 11,000 years ago, Cast Present in North America during the end of the last "ice age." The first description of this species was made from a fossil collected at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky by William Clark in 1807. Scientists studying the bones of this large member of the deer family recognized features of two different species in the same animal. The skull and face of the stag-moose resembled those of a modern elk, but it also had broad antlers like those of a moose. The animal's large, robust body was also moose-like. The stag-moose probably preferred habitats much like the modern moose, living in wetlands and spruce forests and consuming a variety of vegetation.
November 11, 2024 at 11:53 AM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
As this continues, my 15yo has learned to skin and is now quartering a deer in the backyard.
A person, focused on their work, skinning a deer leg in the light a head lamp. The deer is only partly skinned so far.
November 11, 2024 at 2:08 AM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
This #FossilFriday is a close-up view of some morphologically complex microbialites that occur in the 2.5 billion year old Gamohaan Formation (South Africa).

These microbial structures are primarily preserved in calcite and don't generally include microfossils.

A LOT more info in the ALT text.
Image: A fist-sized gray and white rock. About a third of the rock consists of a layer of dark gray features that appear as curved lines draping off of a narrow central support. The curved lines are separated by white concave up lenses of coarsely crystalline rock that are relatively resistant to erosion. Additional Info: The dark gray features are rich with fossilized organic matter. They are microbial structures that preserve the morphology of microbial communities that lived at the upper limit of the undisturbed zone of a Neoarchean carbonate shelf about 100 million years before oxygen started to accumulate in the atmosphere. The white lenses of rock are composed of bladed calcite that filled voids within microbial structures after the biological features had already begun to lithify. This image has 11 panels, A through K. A is a scan of a thin section that was prepared from a rock that was collected from the same facies as the rock in the first image. It features black microbial structures preserved in a matrix of white calcite. Panels B-K are photomicrographs of features indicated in panel A. They show morphological details of the black microbial structures in the thin section, including filmy layers held up by support structures composed of fluffy masses as well as contorted layered features. This is a figure from my dissertation, which can be accessed here: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1721145153623216 This is a four-paneled figure that shows morphologically-complex microbial structures called cones and pinnacles that occur in some perennially ice covered lakes in Antarctica. The microbial structures, especially the pinnacles, have been studied as possible modern analogs to the fossilized microbial structures featured in the previous two images. The image is Figure 1 from Greco et al. (2024), Genome-resolved metagenomics reveals diverse taxa and metabolic complexity in Antarctic lake microbial structures, which can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1111/1462-2920.16663. It's open source! The caption of the figure reads, "The microbial structures of Lake Untersee (A) Pinnacle and Cone microbial structures forming adjacently (B) Pinnacle microbial structures (C) Cross-section of a cone structure showing individual sedimentary layers with an upper layer consisting of a few highly purple pigmented lamina and lower unpigmented laminae of beige colour and rich in sedimentary clay (D) Cross-section of a pinnacle structure. Photography by Dale T Andersen." The layers visible in the pinnacle cross section have some morphological resemblance to the draping layers of the microbialites in the previous image.
November 8, 2024 at 8:09 PM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
Maynard G. Dragon's first look at his forever home on November 27, 2020. (Yes, I got him on a black Friday sale in a completely covid-empty store. Next time I will look for a rescue beardie.)
An apprehensive baby bearded dragon in a plastic cup. The cup is sitting on its side so that the bearded dragon can leave when he is ready. The tub is sitting on rocks and leaves, with some aloe and other plants in the background.
November 5, 2024 at 8:11 PM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
Heads up! (To the five of you that actually engage with my skeets.) I changed my profile pic, but I'm still me!
My previous profile pic showing me, a lade with frizzy brown hair and intense eyebrows, sitting in front of a microscope, looking at neither the microscope nor the viewer. You can't tell from the picture, but I'm looking at a computer monitor that is showing the digital view of what is under the scope.
October 27, 2024 at 2:22 PM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
This #FossilFriday I'm all about fenestrate microbialites. These are microbially mediated structures (aka rocks that microbes helped to form) with white, window-like (hence fenestrate) features. This particular outcrop is a 2.5 billion-year-old example from the Gamohaan Formation in South Africa.
A brown, grey, and white rockface in bright sunlight. The rock is primarily reddish-brown partially dolomitized calcite. The gray features on the surface, which occur in uneven wavy and tented layers, are due to the presence of fossilized organic matter from the microbial structures that led to the rock's formation 2.5 billion years ago. The bright white features, which look like irregularly-shaped patches within a network of brown rock features, are large-grained calcite that filled in voids between the original mineralized microbial structures. These white patches are the reason this type of microbialite is called fenestrate. The rock also has some irregularly-shaped dark nodules that stick out from its surface. These are partially-silicified ancient microbial structures, which are more resistant to weathering than the rest of the rock.
October 25, 2024 at 2:07 PM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
My husband recently got 2 1 gal water sealed fermentation jars for making sauerkraut and they make the most absolutely delightful little blorp sounds when gas escapes. This is how I know I married the right person.
A vessel that looks like a fat vase with an extra wide lip that acts as a water reservoir. It is packed full of coarsely shredded red cabbage and the reservoir is full of purplish pink liquid. There is a lid that looks like an upside down bowl sitting within the liquid in the reservoir. Vague details of my apartment (a shadowy bookshelf and a picture frame hanging on the wall across the room) are visible in the background.
October 16, 2024 at 1:35 PM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
I just learned it's #EarthScienceWeek (via @ksircombe.bsky.social's posts). Earthsciweek.org says it is minerals day, so here are some gorgeous calcite rhombs, both in situ and in hand, from the Gamohaan Formation in South Africa. #Geosciences ⚒️
A close up image of a rock face with angular cleavage, characteristic of calcite. The rock is white, with some gray and black coating. A poorly focused picture of a hand out flat, holding 6 individual calcite rhombs. The rhombs are 1 to a few inches across.
October 14, 2024 at 2:26 PM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
The Green River Formation (famed for flat fish fossils in shale) is even cooler than you think! This giant stromatolite occurs in the Laney Member of the formation in NW Colorado.

It's not the biggest stromatolite I've ever stood next to, only the biggest lacustrine stromatolite 😉

#FossilFriday
A rounded, layered sedimentary rock in different shades of off-white to brown. I, a middle-aged lady with brown hair, am standing next to the rock with my trusty hiking stick. The top of my head is just over halfway to the top of the rock. The rock is also much wider than I am tall, but part of its width is obscured by trees in the picture. I'm about 5'6" in my hiking boots.
October 11, 2024 at 1:33 PM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
I turn 44 today. For my birthday, I would like today to be entirely free of large-scale tragedies for everyone.

If that's not possible, I'll accept pictures of cool reptiles.

Here is a picture of my coolest reptile, Maynard G. Dragon, for inspiration.
A bearded dragon laying on a yellow leopard-print bedsheet with a globe pillow in the background.
October 7, 2024 at 2:10 PM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
This #FossilFriday, say hello to "crinklies"!

The fine dark lines on this rock face are 3.2 billion-year-old fossilized microbial mats. Nicknamed "crinklies" for their shallow dips and peaks, which indicate they followed (and stabilized) the topography of the sandy beaches where they once grew.
A close-up image of a pale gray sedimentary rock. The rock face has multiple, approximately horizontal, crinkled, dark gray lines across it that are about the same thickness as pencil lines. The lines are variably separated by millimeters to centimeters of unlined sediment. My hand is visible on the left side of the photo for scale.
October 4, 2024 at 6:17 PM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
Stuff you see in the rock pile outside the University of Cincinnati Department of Geosciences. #FossilFriday
A brown/gray rock within a rock pile on an old wooden pallet. A hand is pointed towards the rock, which is a little larger than palm sized. The rock contains several (maybe dozens are visible?) fossilized crinoid stem plates, which look kind of like washers. There is a prominent stack of washer-like crinoid stem plates near the tip of the hand's pointer finger. The diameter of the stack is about the same as that of the finger. Zooming into the image makes it possible to see that there are many smaller fossilized crinoid stem plates. Some are only a few mm in diameter.
September 20, 2024 at 5:54 PM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
My new antlion is enjoying its first mealworm meal! The antlion is nameless thus far. I'm taking suggestions. My kid suggested Leo, but I'm not sold on it.
September 20, 2024 at 12:01 AM
archeanandrea.bsky.social
I don't want to live in a world in which toilets are female coded.
A sign printed on copy paper and taped to the door of a public toilet stall. The sign reads: This toilet clogs easily. She doesn't have enough water pressure to handle a lot of TP. Please make sure you hold down her handle when flushing, so that a total flush occurs. Whoever made the sign took the time to trim the paper so that it has a relatively even margin rather than leave it as a standard piece of printer paper with excess white space at the top or bottom.
September 16, 2024 at 10:38 PM