Talk:Endolith

Tom Gold
Is it worth mentioning Tom Gold's The Deep Hot Biosphere here? (and his theory that hydrocarbon deposits are produced by ongoing endolithic action, and aren't fossil fuels at all)? I don't know how much of a crank the mainstream community thinks Gold is. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 14:47, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

extremophiles?
Are all endoliths really extremophiles. The name merely indicates that they live inside rocks. References I have found consider algae living within coral to be endoliths. I would like to remove the reference to extremophiles from this page (or at least qualify it: 'many endoliths are extremophiles'). I'm also putting as similar query on the extremophile page to remove the endolith link. Jmeppley 01:35, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

these are generally-accepted by mainstream scientists, right? should have some references. i know nothing about how a creature could survive off iron alone... - Omegatron 22:02, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

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How do they move about inside a rock? Do they live in cavities inside rocks or physically inside solid rock matter?--Sonjaaa 04:28, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

false redirection from "pulp stone"
There should not be a redirection from "pulp stone" to this article. Denticles as in pulp stones are a dental/medical topic and have nothing to do with endoliths. 91.18.170.54 (talk) 21:34, 17 November 2010 (UTC) see the german version "Dentikel".91.57.255.41 (talk) 15:30, 24 November 2010 (UTC)


 * There's now an article Pulp stones about the dental topic. I've added a hatnote to this one. But I can't see any reason for the redirect here, as "pulp stone" isn't mentioned in the article. If it's relevant, could someone please make some mention of it in the article? Pam  D  17:11, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Redirect from Pulp stone
As far as I can tell, none of the references in this article refer to "pulp stones". It appears to me from google searches that "pulp stone" is overwhelmingly used as a dental term, as in Pulp stone (tooth). Because of this, I am planning to move that article to Pulp stone, which will no longer redirect here. I am wondering if I should leave a hatnote linking here on Pulp stone - can anyone advise? Are there any sources referring to the endoliths discussed here as "pulp stones"? (Also, are there any objections to moving Pulp stone (tooth) to Pulp stone?) A2soup (talk) 09:03, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I'll try and check some dental sources tonight to give opinion here. Suspect pulp stone is more commonly used term as far as teeth go. Matthew Ferguson (talk) 13:22, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm looking to make the Pulp stone (tooth) --> Pulp stone move shortly - any reason to not do so? A2soup (talk) 06:57, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
 * , after a quick look at some textbooks on google books, pulp stone is the more commonly used term as far as teeth go. The term endolith is sometimes used as a synonym for this too however. Hope this helps. Matthew Ferguson (talk) 20:23, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I see that this medical dictionary defines "endolith" as "A calcified body found in the pulp chamber of a tooth". Wbm1058 (talk) 13:57, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

My Google search found the toothy meaning to be the clear primary topic. The other meaning I found was something used in groundwood mills. Wbm1058 (talk) 13:35, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Examples
Found myself here after watching a video from PBS Spacetime in which he mentioned that you can find Endoliths in all the parts of the tree of life. The article seems to imply the same (though it does not outright state it). Is there anyway that some examples from each part of the tree of life could be added? 73.201.125.85 (talk) 07:38, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Is the word construction correct?
"Endolith" seems to literally translate just to "interior rock." It does not even seem to suggest "something else" in the interior of a rock, but just a rock that is the interior of something. Compare to "endoskeleton," which does not refer to organisms living inside skeletons, but "internal skeleton." Whereas "endolithic" would mean something "of the interior of a rock." Still not necessarily living organisms, theoretically, it could be "endolithic water," or whatever. The context of biology would suggest implicitly an endolithic biota, but I wouldn't be surprised if within geology the same word was used referring to some sort of layering of rocks (analog to "endoplasm"), or even actual rocks found inside something like a cave. Also, aeroliths are not microbes living in aerial stones, but meteorites. Lith = stone/rock; lithic = something of such rock --45.234.133.202 (talk) 13:02, 31 January 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree. I'd prefer endolithic organism or endolithobiont. According to WP:TITLE:
 * "...[Wikipedia] generally prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable English-language sources)..."
 * This seems to suggest we should use endolith regardless of its ambiguity. However, the same page also says:
 * "Ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources."
 * Ypna (talk) 22:06, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Endolithic fungi and the mass extinction of Cretaceous dinosaurs
Eggs get infected all of the time. Unless one can show a pandemic of fungal infection at the time of the extinction, I shall rephrase the section to merely state that we found endolithic organisms in dinosaur eggs and remove the claim to the infection causing mass extinction.