Fossil Fever: Molds and Casts Happy Hours
Fossils are rare finds, because the nature of most living organisms is eventual decay, not preservation. In fact, less than .01% of all creatures that ever lived have been preserved via fossilization!
One trick that allows nature to circumvent the decay process when it comes to fossilization is the creation of molds and casts. Molds and casts do not require the organism’s original structure to remain intact, and instead utilized the power of impression to create an accurate facsimile of the original material.
A mold is an impression left by sediment setting into formation around the deceased animal or plant. As the organism decays the hardened sediment stays in place, and forms a blueprint that paleontologists are able to study millions of years later!
Casts are created by mineralized sediment that fills in the mold cavity after the organism’s decay. Although not the original materials, these natural 3D sculptures help us make new discoveries and allow for greater scientific inquiry into the history of our little blue planet!
Although not the same as fossils, think about the way models of neurons are created for Eyewire. Imaging the original material allows us to compile these images into a dataset that our AI is able to convert into 3D models. Although the original material is gone, the digitized models allow for amazing discoveries to be made!
Although it is always cool to uncover historical originals, let’s also be thankful for the accurate impressions made by non-original materials. Now go forth and prove you can also make accurate non-original impressions during Accuracy Happy Hour! We’ll see you there!
Session 1 – 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM on 5/19
Session 2 – 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM on 5/20
Session 3 – 10:00 PM to midnight on 5/20
HQ will bestow typical Happy Hour bonuses for your work during each of those time frames, but there’s more than that to earn! Check your in-game notifications to see the full accuracy bonus breakdown.
Swag: Most accurate player completing at least 30 cubes wins a notebook, plus a sticker/magnet set! Second and third place will each also win a sticker/magnet set.
Mentors: You are still allowed to mentor people during these time windows. Please just use your best judgment as to whether someone is asking you for basic newbie help vs. trying to have you boost their accuracy on cube after cube.
Scythes: Please avoid scything during these time windows. Even though accuracy for this will be retroactively calculated, we would prefer to go with accuracy based on players’ raw tracing. By the time this challenge is scored, don’t worry, admins will have corrected consensus as needed.