Interesting, perhaps there is some Hacker News voodoo magic that links to the original somehow. Maybe it looks for "This story was originally published in <link>" and follows that?
So I see the Atlantic is to blame for the clickbait headline, unsurprising. I guess their deal is "we can publish your story but we will change the headline to something people will click on."
But enough ranting about clickbait, I realize I'm detracting from the conversation and I hope I didn't sound too hostile. Thank you for posting this article, it's really fascinating to contemplate ancient geologies.