[Rockhounds] Ancient Critter Preserved in Fool’s Gold

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Feast your eyes on a newly discovered species of extinct life, fortuitously
fossilized in a mineral that turned the ancient arthropods gold.

Well, gold in color. The fossilized remains belong to an extinct arthropod
dubbed *Lomankus edgecombei*, which died about 450 million years ago and
became fossilized in iron pyrite—fool’s gold, a different and admittedly
less precious metal than its lustrous yellow counterpart. The unique fossil
specimens are described in a paper published
<https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(24)01367-8> today
in *Current Biology*.

“As well as having their beautiful and striking golden colour, these
fossils are spectacularly preserved,” said Luke Parry, a paleobiologist at
the University of Oxford and lead author of the study, in a university
release <https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1062520?>. “They look as
if they could just get up and scuttle away.”

The team of paleontologists found the *Lomankus* specimens near Rome, New
York, in a fossil-rich area known as Beecher’s Bed. *Lomankus *was an
arthropod, distantly related to modern horseshoe crabs and spiders.

https://gizmodo.com/ancient-critter-preserved-in-fools-gold-flaunts-a-great-appendage-2000517642