No, it doesn't look much like this to the naked eye. Even in very dark sky areas, the Milky Way looks a lot fainter than this and the colors are basically invisible. Here's a photographer simulating what it would look like, and that matches my experience.

On the other hand, time lapse night sky photos never do a good job capturing just how many stars there are far from the cities. It's wild, and everyone needs to experience it.

Yes! Other commenters are talking about shallow sea fossils. Shallow sea fossils are very common, probably the most common fossils out there. But fossils of deep sea animals are pretty rare.

This is for two reasons. First, the ocean floor is constantly getting subducted beneath the continents, destroying any fossils that it contains. This especially true for extreme deep sea trenches like the Mariana Trench, which are connected directly to subduction zones. Second, the pressure in the deep sea is not conducive to preserving mineral remains. Most fossils are made of calcite or apatite, and both degrade under pressure.

However, we have found some deep sea animal fossils! Like these sea stars found in the alps, or this ichthyosaur that probably filled a similar niche as sperm whales.

No recent revisions to that wiki article, no Google hits for that line, nothing even similar on other pages about irukandji syndrome. They made it up as a (moderately funny) joke, or it's a reference I don't get.

Thanks! Neat, that Funicello paper lists the Cascades as having (within error) the same volcanic output per 100 km arc length as southern Chile. Also surprisingly, all the arcs listed have roughly the same volcanic output within one order of magnitude.

Maybe worth pointing out that the Nazca Plate, which is the tectonic plate subducting under nearly the entire Pacific margin of South America, is also the fastest moving plate on the planet. Map here. Does this have anything to do with the subsequent amount of volcanic activity in the Andes? In my head it makes sense that more subducting material=more partial melting=more eruptions, but I don't know for sure.