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Dinosaurs are dead, but there’s still life inside their bones


One of the tricks you learn hunting dinosaurs in Canada is to look for orange. Dinosaur bones are dull browns, tans, and greys. But in the middle of the drab sandstones of the badlands – a dry landscape where wind and water have worn away much of the rock – you’ll sometimes catch a flash of fluorescent orange. Walk over and you may well find a dinosaur bone weathering out. The orange is lichen, growing on the bone. The bone gives the lichen a stable foothold in the eroding landscape, it’s porous, storing moisture during droughts, and full of minerals…

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