Earth may have had a ring during the Ordovician!

[Brocc21]

Not quite paleontology, but I think it's relevant enough to be interesting to you all. And if you follow Thomas Holtz on twitter you've probably already heard. But a team from Melbourne recently did a study on the possibility of Earth having a planetary ring during the Ordovician. Very cool!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X24004230#sec0013a

[Brocc21]

And a pretty picture from KWhalord on Twitter

[Faelrin]

I would have never guessed that Earth could have had something like that in its distant past. I wonder when it disappeared.

I accidentally scrolled far too down on the paper, and as I was scrolling up I saw that it mentioned that it could have contributed to the global cooling mass extinction event that marks the end of the Ordovician. Gonna need to read the whole paper to be more sure of the context.

[Halichoeres]

That's such a cool idea. Their argument strikes me as pretty compelling, but I'm in no way qualified to make that call.