one of the talks today was about the end-Permian extinction (the biggest mass extinction by FAR) and while the extinction itself is super interesting it made me curious about the stages of reef recovery in the Triassic. here’s a paper i’m reading (not finished with yet) about it: https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/51/11/1011/627616/Prolonged-and-gradual-recovery-of-metazoan-algal

this year’s mincup winner was rhodochrosite, a reddish manganese carbonate commonly found near silver veins. i was looking up more about it and discovered it’s actually been found as a biomineral formed by some fungi! i’m super into both fungi and minerals, so i’m looking into this a bit more. here’s a cool paper i found: https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/24/23/17093