Conversation

One of my favorite things in the world is that paleontologists have an incredible sense of humor when coming up with descriptors for things in the fossil record.

For instance, "zombie taxon," or a fossil that washes out of one layer of geologic formation into a much younger one, thus appearing as if it rose from the dead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_taxon

Or "Elvis taxon", for a taxon that seems to reappear in the fossil record after an extinction, but is in fact a new taxon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_taxon