Record of changes
Corrections
This collection was assembled and described by an amateur collector between 2013 and 2014. When the site was rebuilt in 2026 every entry was checked against published sources. A number of names, ages and classifications turned out to be wrong, and have been corrected.
They are listed here rather than quietly fixed. A catalogue that hides its revision history is worth less than one that shows it, and anyone who used the old pages deserves to know what changed. The original text remains in the site's database export.
- Name
Proteus → Proetus
Twelve trilobites were labelled Proteus. That name belongs to a cave-dwelling salamander and to a genus of bacteria. The Silurian trilobite is Proetus.
- Name
Themnopora → Thamnopora
A misspelling of the branching tabulate coral Thamnopora.
- Name
Graptolithinia → Graptolithina
The class of graptolites is Graptolithina. Graptolithinia is not a valid name, and the links pointing to it went nowhere.
- Identification
Favosites is not a brain coral
Three specimens were titled Favosites (“Brain Coral”) and described as a modern reef coral that lives for over a century in warm shallow water. Favosites is an extinct Palaeozoic tabulate coral, commonly called honeycomb coral. Brain corals are modern scleractinians such as Diploria and are not related. The description has been rewritten.
- Classification
The spiny brachiopod is a productid, not a siphonotretid
The Permian spiny brachiopod was catalogued as class Lingulata, order Siphonotretida. Siphonotretids are Cambrian to Ordovician phosphatic-shelled brachiopods. A spiny Permian brachiopod from the Sydney Basin is a productid — class Strophomenata, order Productida.
- Classification
Penniretepora moved out of Coral
It was filed under Coral. It is a bryozoan, which is a different phylum.
- Age
Yass fossils are Late Silurian, not Early to Mid Silurian
Entries gave “Early to Mid Silurian 436–420 million years” or “Silurian to Early Devonian 436–390 million years”. The fossiliferous Yass succession is Late Silurian, Ludlow to Přídolí, about 427 to 419 million years ago.
- Age
Carboniferous specimens were given a 175-million-year range
Three entries read “525 – 350 million years ago”. 525 million years ago is the Cambrian. The Woolooma Formation is Early Carboniferous (Viséan), about 347 to 331 million years ago. The same entries also read “Late Early Carboniferous” and “Early Late Carboniferous”, which contradict one another.
- Age
Hexagonaria in a Silurian fauna
Two colonial corals were identified as Hexagonaria, a genus that is essentially Devonian, but placed in the Late Silurian Yass fauna. Both are now listed as colonial Rugosa, with the discrepancy noted rather than hidden.
- Biology
Graptolite skeletons are collagen, not chitin
The graptolite entries described the skeleton as chitin. Graptolite periderm is a collagenous protein.
- Biology
Not all graptolites floated
The entries described graptolites as planktonic. That is true of the graptoloids; the dendroid graptolites lived attached to the sea floor.
- Restoration
Nine missing photographs put back on the geology page
The geology article illustrated itself with photographs hosted on the old Joomla version of immersionimagery.com. That site was replaced and the addresses stopped resolving, so those illustrations had been missing from the live page for some time — a cross-section, the Tongarra Coal Measures at Austinmer, a Triassic alluvial fan, the volcanic field map, rock falls and denudation, siltstone layering and two Gerringong photographs. All were found in the archived Joomla files on the server and are now stored and served with this site rather than borrowed from another one.
- Structure
Categories are now taxonomic
The old groupings — Animal Phylum, Plant Phylum, Marine Life, Land Based, Shell-like Structures, Invertebrate — mixed habitat, body plan and rank. Specimens are now grouped by phylum and class, alongside the existing arrangement by period. The old category and tag addresses still work.