“It’s been a privilege to be able to observe this phenomenon.”
There are weird space rocks, there are very weird space rocks, and then there is Phaethon.
Suddenly, they were no longer portents of doom, and we could predict the heavens.
Looking at fossilized Diplodocus scales revealed a melanosome mystery.

Seems like a normal toad, and then the babies emerge.
It shuffled into the IUCN’s “Extinct” category along with 5 other species in a 2025 update.