this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2026
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Archaeology

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Archaeology or archeology[a] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes.

Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.

The discipline involves surveying, excavation, and eventually analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Read more...

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[โ€“] cryptTurtle@piefed.social 43 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Wiki has a breakdown of the debate and how it's evolved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites

Neat stuff

[โ€“] calliope@retrolemmy.com 13 points 4 days ago (2 children)

This has absolutely blown my mind!

This looks exactly like the kind of whose ancestors would, over millions of years, eventually mutate to become a tree.

The polished fossil in the Wikipedia article looks a shocking amount like wood!

[โ€“] Naz@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago

Dude; I think you're absolutely correct.

It looks like a proto-tree

Also: Trees aren't a uniform genus, but this goes to show, on any planet that has photosynthesis, trees will eventually evolve spontaneously

there were "trees" before actual trees evolved. in the carbiniferous, mostly from lycophytes,

[โ€“] Phoenix3875@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

One of the linked papers thinks it's actually horizontal rather vertical, as people have guessed originally.