ChatGPT

[Tank]

This is not a question I asked. But given Billy's expertise in this area I thought it would be interesting to get his comments on it.

"Why did Oil Companies hire Micropaleontologists?

"Micropaleontology is the study of tiny fossils, typically those less than one millimeter in size. Micropaleontologists use these fossils to interpret past environmental conditions, including temperature, salinity, and water depth, among other factors.
 
Oil companies are interested in micropaleontologists because these scientists can help them find oil and gas deposits. In particular, micropaleontologists can determine which rock formations are the most likely to contain oil and gas by examining the types of microfossils present in those rocks.

Microfossils are formed from the remains of planktonic organisms, like diatoms and foraminifera, which have a unique set of environmental requirements. By analyzing the types of microfossils found in a particular area, micropaleontologists can determine the conditions that existed when those fossils were formed. If those conditions are favorable for the formation of oil and gas, it may indicate the presence of hydrocarbons in the area.
One way that micropaleontologists help oil companies is by identifying the age of rocks where oil and gas may be found. They do this by studying the microfossils present in the rocks, which provide evidence of the age of the sediments. Oil companies use this information to pinpoint specific areas that are more likely to contain hydrocarbons.

Another way that micropaleontologists assist oil companies is by using their expertise to identify the source of hydrocarbons. This is done by examining the types of microfossils found in the oil and gas. Each oil field has its own unique set of microfossils, allowing micropaleontologists to determine the origin of the hydrocarbons.

In summary, oil companies hire micropaleontologists because they are experts in understanding past environmental conditions and can use that knowledge to help locate hydrocarbons. By using microfossils to identify the age and composition of rocks, and by analyzing the types of microfossils found in oil and gas, micropaleontologists are invaluable in the search for new oil and gas reserves."

What are your thought Billy?

[Asmodean]

Oil is dinosaur goo. Fossils are dinosaur... The opposite of goo.

Dinosaur being the common denominator, The Asmo can indeed se a interaction between those two worlds.

[billy rubin]

woop

let me answer this tonight on something besidss thisctelephone

i were a micropalentoligist, doing systematics an d biostratigraphy.

[Tank]

I thought you would like this

[billy rubin]

yes. i love bugs.

all they said is true, but one of the big things they missed is biostratigraphy.

in most large rock formations, the same body of rock is not at the same age everywhere. look at a modern coastline-- you start with aeolian sand dunes up above the strand, the intertidal beach sand, and then moving offshore you run inot finer grained sands , silts and muds.

all these are the same age, and are continuous. now imagine that tbe ocean gets deeper because tbe glaciers armelting or the land is being uplifted. the ocean transgresses up and over the beach, and pretty soon deep water muds are sitting on top of older beach sands, and current beach sands sit over old sand dunes.

now transhress and rehress tbe oceans a dozen times and youll see that the rock types form long bands where the stone-- that clean white beach sand, for example-- is continuos over a large area but at different ages on different places. and the big swathe of siltstone, too, and everything else.

all due to rising sea and falling sea level.

the key with the fossils is they are all swimming around in the water, and can generally be found over a sea bottom of the same age everywhere. so 100 million yeats later, if you find one species of some little crustacean in six diiferent kinds of rocks, you can conclude the rocks are similar in age and were laid down at the same time.

this is useful in ancient mapping, which is useful in truing to put together the stryctural history of a layer of rocks. which helps you identify a trap that can contain hydrocarbons.

in the glf of mexico, the rock layers are generally sand shale sand shale sand shale sand shale etc forever. you cant tell em apart to see where you are. but when you pull a core and look st the fossil plankton you will identify certain species that you know are a certain age. then you look at other cores to see what species are there and then connect all tbe correct layers together and you can construct a cross section of the rocks thousands of feet deep.

given the cross sections, you can identify domes, and faults, and leaking places, all of which help you discover wjere the traps are to drill a wildcat and see whether you have pinpointed a field.

[billy rubin]

where i worked was in the silurian of sweden, latvia, lithuania, estonia, and podolia. and the wenlockian of england. i studied relationships of a single genus of ostracod- a.little bugger mostly 0.5 to 3mm long-- that occured there and was described in old english paleo literature from the 1840s and modern soviet stuff.

i was lucky enough to be able to work with the same wenlockian  fossils described in 1846 on loan from the british museum.

all tbe samples i had had been collected over the last 50 years, except for the wenlockian stuff. went to gotland for two weeks and dug out some more from the famous sites there.

ill see if i can dig up some pictures. unless you love bugs theyre incredibly boring.

ostracods have tbe largest penises per body dize of any animal, maybe 30 percent of their total mass.

[Icarus]

^ Lady ostracods may not like those giant tallywackers unless they have giant .....never mind.

[Dark Lightning]

Tallywackees? 

[billy rubin]

plus their spermatozoa are the largest in the animal kingdom, i was told

[billy rubin]

one of the things the AI neglected was that its unnecessary to use microfossils to actually detect oil and gas deposits, because if you core through a formation to get the fossils, you have or do not have oil bearing stone in the core itself. already.

the chatgpt seems to focusing on using fossils as clues to whether an area is good for prospecting, like animal spoor. but you already know that, by looking at the rock containing the fossils first. you dont need to use fossils to discern the ancient environment, because the rocks themselves ARE the ancient environment.

also, oil is often formed in anearobic dead zobes, then flows through permeable rock to ultimate reservoirs elsewhere. the AI seems to think that oil stays in one spot, as if a coral reef makes oil? not so.

the AI has an odd blindspot here. the primary use for fossils is in stratigraphic correlation, not in deciding whether a formation contains oil.

the piece is an odd collection of mostly true superficial generalities about paleo, while missing the unifying purpose

v strange

[Dark Lightning]

There is a person on a wood working website wrote a good piece on chatgpt. I'll see if I can find it and post it. The gist being that people will take the output, which is divorced from the patents and copyrights, and credit will not be given where credit is due.

[billy rubin]

im still bemused by chat paleo.

why did the AI decide that using fossils to determine details of ancient environments was genuine?

it was confusing paleobiology with biostratigraphy, both of which involve looking at fossils but have different goals entirely.

in ecology it is easy to determine environment by living organisms.  look at c. hart merriam's life zones of the western united states, or altitudinal zonation in mammals such as chipmunks or deer mice.

but oil is mobile, and migrates uphill, to the underside of domes, or against the impermeable walls of fault surfaces. and the carpet of anaerobic sludge that gets buried and metamorphosed into oil and gas ocvurs without respect to the environment that obtained when it or the ultimate oil bearing structure finally recieved the oil and gas.

very curious. its like it went looking for information that was similar-- specieas assemblage and ecology-- and then manufactured an answer that was mostly irrelevant but used a lot of the same words.

[Dark Lightning]

   Talks like Deepak Chopra!

[Tank]

[Asmodean]

plus their spermatozoa are the largest in the animal kingdom, i was told

My country has this along its main highway. It's a few meters tall, it is.