Annie Reynolds (@anniereynolds.bsky.social)

Retired Australian teacher discovers the oldest fossil of its kind in southern hemisphere – and a new species Robert Beattie, 82, has found specimens of a 151m-year-old midge that challenge what we know about how the insects evolved * Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here As a boy, holidaying with his family in the New South Wales coastal town of Gerringong, Robert Beattie found a shell in a rock. It turned out to be hundreds of millions of years old – a Permian fossil, common to the Sydney basin. “I couldn’t believe it,” Beattie recalls. “I’ve been interested in fossils ever since.” That childhood discovery, made in 1948, sparked a lifelong passion for palaeontology, one that that has taken him to dig sites across Australia’s eastern states, seen him present his findings internationally – and discover a fossil that changes what we know about how insects evolved. Continue reading... https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/nov/09/retired-australian-teacher-discovers-new-fossil-species-oldest-in-southern-hemisphere?CMP=aus_bsky