If there's one thing that brings the militant atheist in me to the fore it's the uncomfortable mix of religion and politics. Well, okay there are a few more than one thing, but I do try to keep that particular side of me tucked away. Sometimes, though, it's like the Hulk. Someone mentions a new US bill asking that Intelligent Design be given equal educational billing to evolution and my skin turns bright green, most of my clothes rip off and my trousers turn purple.
So everyone ran off screaming when I saw there are six bills along these lines being put before US state legislature already this year. And worse. Two prominent bodies of the willfully ignorant are ganging together; forming a giant angry mob. Pitchforks and spittle-flecked, rage-filled faces pointed at things they don't want to believe in. 'Scientific controversies', they say. Deniers of both evolution and global warming have teamed up to pressure their government. To demand that the way they see things be considered as valid as the way the overwhelming majority of people who have made a career of studying these certain things see them. Well, it's not valid. They're wrong. Demonstrably wrong. And that should not be passed on to future generations in school classrooms. You can't give an equal platform for these alternative views. You can't teach schoolchildren an alternative opinion to reality. There isn't just one alternative to reality, anyway. There are an infinite number - make one up.
Of course there are some scientifically qualified people in the world who hold views that would seem to support Intelligent Design. There are a great many of people in the world and I'd be very surprised if there weren't a few scientists who choose to believe otherwise. But the point is there are only a very few. Usually it doesn't take much digging to find an ulterior motive for their thinking, too. I have yet to hear of a biologist or geologist who doubts evolution and isn't religious. Most religious people tend to have no problem believing in evolution and most I've discussed it with see IT and old-fashioned Creationism as harmful to the integrity of their faith. This isn't some paradigm shift being championed by a handful of foresighted geniuses. These people want a return to an old way of thinking, a step back from knowledge.
Climate change has a little more grey to it. There's certainly a sliding scale of opinion on the level of humanity's contribution to the present temperature rise, but there's no doubt it is rising. Oil companies have shown a reluctance to accept this, as fuel austerity measures and alternative solutions are not really in their interests. And oil companies have a great deal of money. Pair this money up with the passion of the IT zealot and we seem to have arrived at a new mutant breed of anti-science bill. Worrying, but you'd hope there would be the sense to discard this sort of nonsense as soon as it gets to any form of political platform. After all, the clear division of religion and politics was a founding principle of the US, as Thomas Jefferson pointed out:
'Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.'
Denial of the obvious has no place in school curricula. The elevation of contrasting ideas to the science class would lend them an undeserving credence and burden a generation with misinformation. 'Teach the controversy' is the catchphrase. Teach the facts, I'd say. Disgraceful this is still an issue.
Monday, 13 February 2012
Monday, 23 January 2012
Evening Redness in the West
Normally, I'll have a few days in New York with friends before reaching Arizona, but this time I'm meeting them afterwards in New Orleans. Very much looking forward to that part, but it does mean I'll have to get over my jet-lag while I'm getting through the most important part of the trip. Usually, as soon as I've dumped my bags at the hotel I'm off to see the guys I buy my Green River fish from. I'm always worried I'll be beaten to the bulk of the better material by someone who gets there a little earlier, so it's a relief once that bit's over. Next is usually onto the Utah trilobites, for similar reasons. It's difficult to know exactly how to time the trip. Arrive too soon and there will be few dealers set up - you can end twiddling your thumbs a little. Too late and the prime stuff has gone. Wait until near the end and you can get some good bargains as dealers don't want to lug all their unsold rocks home again and would rather dump them for anything approaching a reasonable sum. Bargains are great, obviously, but I'm more concerned with quality.
This will be my 12th Tucson trip, I think, and it's fairly routine by now, but it's always good to see everyone. Friends from all over the world come together for a couple of weeks, and the social side of it is by far the most appealing. And the sun. The sun is good, too.
Thursday, 12 January 2012
Space rock talk
Every year, the The Royal Society awards the Michael Faraday Prize to someone they feel has contributed a significant amount to society's understanding of science. For the communication of often complicated concepts in simplified and comprehensible terms. Making it so that even I can understand it, is what I'm getting at... Anyway. Winners are asked to give a lecture in January. The prize was awarded to Colin Pillinger in 2011, and he gives his lecture today. It's being broadcast live from 5.30pm, but will be available to watch in the Royal Society archives in a couple of days.
Colin Pillinger lead the Beagle 2 project to send an exploration vehicle to Mars. It didn't work. That's not unusual for Mars missions, though; it's a very long way away, after all. The idea, and it was a noble one, was to search for signs of life. So basically, Colin Pillinger is a Martian hunter - reason enough to listen to his lecture today. He's had an interesting career and his contribution to the promotion and popularisation of science is undeniable, so he's a very worthy winner.
Colin Pillinger lead the Beagle 2 project to send an exploration vehicle to Mars. It didn't work. That's not unusual for Mars missions, though; it's a very long way away, after all. The idea, and it was a noble one, was to search for signs of life. So basically, Colin Pillinger is a Martian hunter - reason enough to listen to his lecture today. He's had an interesting career and his contribution to the promotion and popularisation of science is undeniable, so he's a very worthy winner.
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
All in a lava
The extinction event at the end of the Permian is known as The Great Dying. Sounds sad, doesn't it? It is - lots of things died. If the saying about tragedy plus distance making comedy is true, it ought to be really funny, given it happened around 252 million years ago. It's not, though. In the sea, 96% of species went down the plughole, while 70% of land-based vertebrate creatures became even more land-based. In the space of about 200,000 years an estimated 83% of all the planet's genera were gone.
As with many such situations, working out exactly what happened is a long, on-going process but there is plenty evidence to suggest that a main cause may have been an enormous bout of volcanic activity. The Siberian Traps are a massive span of flood basalts, which were spewed out over a long period of time and covered up to 2 million square kilometers, or more, depending on your sources. This happened immediately before and during the extinction event, and threw inordinate amounts of nasty stuff up into the air with predictably dire consequences. The reflection of solar light and heat, the greenhouse effect of the gases in the atmosphere on the ozone layer, huge CO2 levels causing climate change, acid rain caused by the sulphur and, well, everything just being so dirty. All of these things are essentially bad for anything just trying to get by. Disruption of photosynthesis leads to a domino effect on the food chain, and adverse environmental conditions for a protracted period led to extinction on a scale not seen before or since.
Whether the Traps on their own were enough to cause all the destruction is a matter for debate. Although the K-T event that snuffed out the dinosaurs is heavily associated with a meteorite impact, there was more going on at the time. The Deccan Traps in India, another huge volcanic series, are considered an important factor. Inevitable comparisons prompted the search for a corresponding meteorite for the Great Dying. So far, though, a suitable culprit has not been found and it's not likely signs of a crater would have survived this long in any recognisable state. It's possible, though, that a series of problems was triggered by the formation of the Traps which combined in effect to compound the difficulties life on Earth was facing. Methane released by the Siberian eruptions led to a severe episode of global warming, damaging enough in itself, but also subsequent oceanic anoxia as a dropping temperature differential prevented adequate circulation of oxygen within the waters. Chain reactions...
It's reassuring to place these occasions in the context of geological time. We're not likely to see volcanic activity on the scale of the Siberian or Deccan Traps. If we do, though, it'll be pretty bad news. Even panic buying rice and beans may not be enough to save us.
As with many such situations, working out exactly what happened is a long, on-going process but there is plenty evidence to suggest that a main cause may have been an enormous bout of volcanic activity. The Siberian Traps are a massive span of flood basalts, which were spewed out over a long period of time and covered up to 2 million square kilometers, or more, depending on your sources. This happened immediately before and during the extinction event, and threw inordinate amounts of nasty stuff up into the air with predictably dire consequences. The reflection of solar light and heat, the greenhouse effect of the gases in the atmosphere on the ozone layer, huge CO2 levels causing climate change, acid rain caused by the sulphur and, well, everything just being so dirty. All of these things are essentially bad for anything just trying to get by. Disruption of photosynthesis leads to a domino effect on the food chain, and adverse environmental conditions for a protracted period led to extinction on a scale not seen before or since.
Whether the Traps on their own were enough to cause all the destruction is a matter for debate. Although the K-T event that snuffed out the dinosaurs is heavily associated with a meteorite impact, there was more going on at the time. The Deccan Traps in India, another huge volcanic series, are considered an important factor. Inevitable comparisons prompted the search for a corresponding meteorite for the Great Dying. So far, though, a suitable culprit has not been found and it's not likely signs of a crater would have survived this long in any recognisable state. It's possible, though, that a series of problems was triggered by the formation of the Traps which combined in effect to compound the difficulties life on Earth was facing. Methane released by the Siberian eruptions led to a severe episode of global warming, damaging enough in itself, but also subsequent oceanic anoxia as a dropping temperature differential prevented adequate circulation of oxygen within the waters. Chain reactions...
It's reassuring to place these occasions in the context of geological time. We're not likely to see volcanic activity on the scale of the Siberian or Deccan Traps. If we do, though, it'll be pretty bad news. Even panic buying rice and beans may not be enough to save us.
Saturday, 7 January 2012
Missing Skull-Bones: Hidden Sea Dragon - A guest post by Jeff Liston.
Missing Skull-Bones: Hidden Sea Dragon – the true story of the Speeton Clay ichthyosaur
or ‘Why really important specimens sometimes disappear for fifty years’.
This week, PLoS ONE published a paper which redrew the map as far as our understanding of ichthyosaur extinctions is concerned. The news headline ‘No major ichthyosaur extinction at the end of the Jurassic after all’ might best summarise the conclusions. Or (perhaps less accessibly) ‘Ophthalmosaurines alive and well and living in the Hauterivian of North Yorkshire’. But some might find it odd that the holotype featured was from a specimen collected over fifty years ago from near Scarborough: if this was so special, why did noone pick up on it before? Here is the answer – and sadly it is far from an atypical story.
The animal in question was found in the nineteen fifties by a group of postgrads at Hull University Geology Department. At weekends they would hop on a train and go look for fossils. This particular weekend in Spring 1958, they were fossil-hunting in the Speeton Clay (Lower Cretaceous), and found an ichthyosaur. Over succeeding weekends, they went back and recovered it, piece by piece, bringing it to Hull University, where it sat in their collections for some years, waiting for an ichthyosaur worker to look at it. Enter Robert Appleby, Britain’s premier ichthyosaur worker in the fifties, sixties and early seventies, who borrowed some of the material (mainly skull, with some representative vertebral centra), intending to include it in the Handbuch der Palaoherpetologie, for which he was to do the ichthyosaur volume.
Then things became a little complicated. Margaret Thatcher’s government initiated the Earth Sciences Review (see The Earth Sciences Review Twenty Years On) at the end of the nineteen eighties, with the aim of saving money by cutting geology departments. Despite Hull’s distinguished record as a department (and possibly due to a slightly biased assessment by a ‘hard rock’ worker from Oxford University), it was targeted for closure, and homes needed to be found for the collections housed by the department. By this stage, one of the 1958 postgrads – Keith Ingham – was Curator of Palaeontology at the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow. He went back to Hull to pick up his research collections (he had become a world-renowned trilobite worker in the interim), and the Head of Department, John Neale, helped him recover his research material for transferral to the Hunterian. In the process, the fate of the Speeton Clay ichthyosaur was raised – was it just going to be thrown in a skip? - and John made it clear that Keith, as one of the discoverers, could transfer that specimen as well. Cue the ignominious transfer of an ichthyosaur to the back of a landrover, and a few hours later the specimen arrived in Glasgow.
Sadly, once there, it suffered from a similar problem to the one it had suffered in Hull: by the time I arrived at the Hunterian about 5 years later (in 1993), there had been no vertebrate specialists employed by the Museum for over eighty years, and the collection had fallen into some disarray. As I sorted through the collections over the next ten to fifteen years, it became clear that the Speeton Clay animal, as an extremely rare Early Cretaceous ichthyosaur, was off everyone’s radar, and needed to be catalogued, numbered, described and published before I left. Firstly, I had to recover the bones on loan to Robert Appleby – no mean feat, as he had retired from Cardiff University in the nineteen eighties to finish the Handbuch der Palaoherpetologie, and it was difficult to track down anyone who knew where he now was living. Some months of research later, I had a telephone number. “Are you finished with the material?” “Not quite yet – I would hope to be soon….” I took to phoning Robert every 6 months, to encourage him to finish with the material as soon as possible. Until one week in February 2004 when I phoned, to discover from his wife Valerie that he had died a few days earlier on the 8th.
Very soon after, I travelled down to recover the material that he had had on loan, and also received a request from Valerie to help with the posthumous publication of a variety of materials that Robert had been working on – most of which I am hoping to see enter publication this year. Within the 500+ page monograph that he had completed the first draft of only a couple of days before he died, was a description of the Speeton animal within a general taxonomic review of the genus Platypterygius. Having recovered the skull material on loan, and seeing how complete the specimen was, made me even more determined to see the specimen published – this was clearly something exceptional, which could easily get lost amongst the collections again. I could write it up myself, but I knew that with my knowledge of ichthyosaurs being restricted to one genus – Ophthalmosaurus – I was unlikely to do justice to the specimen, and needed an ichthyosaur worker (thin on the ground these days) to do the job for me. I started looking for a candidate, but in the meantime I gave the job of auditing the specimen to an Honours zoology student of mine, Jessica Tainsh. After she completed the initial listing of elements present, I got her to incorporate the specimen into an existing character data set, in case a useful cladistic analysis might be possible. One or two characters leapt straight out, that seemed to reinforce my impression that this was special – in particular a small peg-like structure on the basioccipital, a fairly rare character in ichthyosaurs. By this time, I had seen Valentin Fischer present on Early Cretaceous ichthyosaurs at the European Association of Vertebrate Palaeontologists meeting in Aix-en-Provence in June 2010, and I knew that this was the person to describe the Speeton Clay ichthyosaur, as he had the breadth to place it in overall context and really do the job properly. I began to hassle him – when was he coming to Glasgow to see the specimen? By the end of 2010, I knew that I was going to be leaving the Hunterian the following year, and increased the pressure on him, sending him Jessica’s Honours project report through, and making it clear that he was unlikely to get the access that he required after I had left the Hunterian (they were already overstretched, and unlikely to employ a palaeontologist after I had left). Eventually, he agreed to come in June 2011.
Valentin turned up at the Hunterian that week with his Apple laptop and expanding dataset – he had just finished a draft of a paper on an animal from Cremlingen, which a couple of ichthyosaur workers including Michael Maisch and Judith Pardo Pérez had also looked at with a view to writing up. Within twenty minutes of looking at the Speeton Clay specimen, he said “Jeff, I think this is the same animal as in Cremlingen”. With a ruthlessness that I am not entirely proud of, I asked him what he estimated the size of each animal to be – and he made clear that the German specimen was much smaller than the Speeton animal. I smiled sweetly at him (it’s possible) and said “Well, it is clear that the German animal cannot be the type specimen, as it might be a juvenile.” (The rationale is that characters that are juvenile might not be present in the adult form, so are not the safest for defining a taxon.) Valentin agreed – and that afternoon we started to look at possible names. There were a number of striking adaptations throughout the skeleton that appeared to operate together to make the axial skeleton quite inflexible – a very robust rear of the skull; a remarkably solid scapula; an undulating perimeter to the vertebral centra which I had naively interpreted as preservation distortion, was actually a beautiful ‘locking’ mechanism to restrict axial flexion – and the concept of the ‘rigid swimmer’ was born. In a nicely circular way, Keith Ingham (although retired from the Hunterian some ten years earlier) was very into the grammar and construction of fossil names, so he was my first port of call for suggestions as to how to translate the concept of ‘rigid swimmer’ into Greek. While Valentin continued to score the specimen for characters in his expanded dataset, and started looking at rewriting the description he had previously based on the German animal, we batted back and forth some name ideas, discarding some for phonetic reasons, others for ‘overuse’ by other taxa. After his week’s visit to the Hunterian was over, it was clear that the Speeton Clay animal would be written up as the holotype of the ‘rigid swimmer’, with the German specimen as secondary paratype material.
I then left the process to be steered primarily by Valentin and Darren Naish, who I knew were far better positioned to write an ichthyosaur paper than I, as I had a lot of work to finish before I finally left the Hunterian at the end of August 2011 – and thereafter I was on the road to a variety of conferences for some months, finishing up another couple of papers. This is my way of trying to excuse the fact that I did not review or correct the final copy of the paper, where it transposes the last three digits of the holotype (the specimen is GLAHM 132855, not 132588). Hey ho. But with over 4,100 views of the paper in the last 5 days, the specimen at least now no longer languishes in anonymity within the collections of the Hunterian, and has finally achieved the status and recognition that it has so long deserved.
Thanks, Valentin – again, really good job.
And bear in mind that this is the first of three phases of ichthyosaur work that Darren, Valentin and I are hoping to publish this year, partly derived from Robert Appleby’s unfinished works – optimistically under the ‘brand identity’ of ‘Ichthyosaur Revolution’. So stay tuned…..
Jeff Liston,
National Museums Scotland,
(also School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol),
Edinburgh,
SCOTLAND.
Upper image: GLAHM 132855, the Holotype of Acamptonectes densus. (Ribs omitted to preserve the sanity of the curator - because he would have had to lay them all out and put them away again afterwards.) Photograph © and many thanks to Iona Shepherd.
Lower image: Acamptonectes densus Fischer et al., 2012, as reconstructed by C. M. Kosemen (contact c.m.kosemen@gmail.com).
or ‘Why really important specimens sometimes disappear for fifty years’.
This week, PLoS ONE published a paper which redrew the map as far as our understanding of ichthyosaur extinctions is concerned. The news headline ‘No major ichthyosaur extinction at the end of the Jurassic after all’ might best summarise the conclusions. Or (perhaps less accessibly) ‘Ophthalmosaurines alive and well and living in the Hauterivian of North Yorkshire’. But some might find it odd that the holotype featured was from a specimen collected over fifty years ago from near Scarborough: if this was so special, why did noone pick up on it before? Here is the answer – and sadly it is far from an atypical story.
Then things became a little complicated. Margaret Thatcher’s government initiated the Earth Sciences Review (see The Earth Sciences Review Twenty Years On) at the end of the nineteen eighties, with the aim of saving money by cutting geology departments. Despite Hull’s distinguished record as a department (and possibly due to a slightly biased assessment by a ‘hard rock’ worker from Oxford University), it was targeted for closure, and homes needed to be found for the collections housed by the department. By this stage, one of the 1958 postgrads – Keith Ingham – was Curator of Palaeontology at the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow. He went back to Hull to pick up his research collections (he had become a world-renowned trilobite worker in the interim), and the Head of Department, John Neale, helped him recover his research material for transferral to the Hunterian. In the process, the fate of the Speeton Clay ichthyosaur was raised – was it just going to be thrown in a skip? - and John made it clear that Keith, as one of the discoverers, could transfer that specimen as well. Cue the ignominious transfer of an ichthyosaur to the back of a landrover, and a few hours later the specimen arrived in Glasgow.
Sadly, once there, it suffered from a similar problem to the one it had suffered in Hull: by the time I arrived at the Hunterian about 5 years later (in 1993), there had been no vertebrate specialists employed by the Museum for over eighty years, and the collection had fallen into some disarray. As I sorted through the collections over the next ten to fifteen years, it became clear that the Speeton Clay animal, as an extremely rare Early Cretaceous ichthyosaur, was off everyone’s radar, and needed to be catalogued, numbered, described and published before I left. Firstly, I had to recover the bones on loan to Robert Appleby – no mean feat, as he had retired from Cardiff University in the nineteen eighties to finish the Handbuch der Palaoherpetologie, and it was difficult to track down anyone who knew where he now was living. Some months of research later, I had a telephone number. “Are you finished with the material?” “Not quite yet – I would hope to be soon….” I took to phoning Robert every 6 months, to encourage him to finish with the material as soon as possible. Until one week in February 2004 when I phoned, to discover from his wife Valerie that he had died a few days earlier on the 8th.
Very soon after, I travelled down to recover the material that he had had on loan, and also received a request from Valerie to help with the posthumous publication of a variety of materials that Robert had been working on – most of which I am hoping to see enter publication this year. Within the 500+ page monograph that he had completed the first draft of only a couple of days before he died, was a description of the Speeton animal within a general taxonomic review of the genus Platypterygius. Having recovered the skull material on loan, and seeing how complete the specimen was, made me even more determined to see the specimen published – this was clearly something exceptional, which could easily get lost amongst the collections again. I could write it up myself, but I knew that with my knowledge of ichthyosaurs being restricted to one genus – Ophthalmosaurus – I was unlikely to do justice to the specimen, and needed an ichthyosaur worker (thin on the ground these days) to do the job for me. I started looking for a candidate, but in the meantime I gave the job of auditing the specimen to an Honours zoology student of mine, Jessica Tainsh. After she completed the initial listing of elements present, I got her to incorporate the specimen into an existing character data set, in case a useful cladistic analysis might be possible. One or two characters leapt straight out, that seemed to reinforce my impression that this was special – in particular a small peg-like structure on the basioccipital, a fairly rare character in ichthyosaurs. By this time, I had seen Valentin Fischer present on Early Cretaceous ichthyosaurs at the European Association of Vertebrate Palaeontologists meeting in Aix-en-Provence in June 2010, and I knew that this was the person to describe the Speeton Clay ichthyosaur, as he had the breadth to place it in overall context and really do the job properly. I began to hassle him – when was he coming to Glasgow to see the specimen? By the end of 2010, I knew that I was going to be leaving the Hunterian the following year, and increased the pressure on him, sending him Jessica’s Honours project report through, and making it clear that he was unlikely to get the access that he required after I had left the Hunterian (they were already overstretched, and unlikely to employ a palaeontologist after I had left). Eventually, he agreed to come in June 2011.
Valentin turned up at the Hunterian that week with his Apple laptop and expanding dataset – he had just finished a draft of a paper on an animal from Cremlingen, which a couple of ichthyosaur workers including Michael Maisch and Judith Pardo Pérez had also looked at with a view to writing up. Within twenty minutes of looking at the Speeton Clay specimen, he said “Jeff, I think this is the same animal as in Cremlingen”. With a ruthlessness that I am not entirely proud of, I asked him what he estimated the size of each animal to be – and he made clear that the German specimen was much smaller than the Speeton animal. I smiled sweetly at him (it’s possible) and said “Well, it is clear that the German animal cannot be the type specimen, as it might be a juvenile.” (The rationale is that characters that are juvenile might not be present in the adult form, so are not the safest for defining a taxon.) Valentin agreed – and that afternoon we started to look at possible names. There were a number of striking adaptations throughout the skeleton that appeared to operate together to make the axial skeleton quite inflexible – a very robust rear of the skull; a remarkably solid scapula; an undulating perimeter to the vertebral centra which I had naively interpreted as preservation distortion, was actually a beautiful ‘locking’ mechanism to restrict axial flexion – and the concept of the ‘rigid swimmer’ was born. In a nicely circular way, Keith Ingham (although retired from the Hunterian some ten years earlier) was very into the grammar and construction of fossil names, so he was my first port of call for suggestions as to how to translate the concept of ‘rigid swimmer’ into Greek. While Valentin continued to score the specimen for characters in his expanded dataset, and started looking at rewriting the description he had previously based on the German animal, we batted back and forth some name ideas, discarding some for phonetic reasons, others for ‘overuse’ by other taxa. After his week’s visit to the Hunterian was over, it was clear that the Speeton Clay animal would be written up as the holotype of the ‘rigid swimmer’, with the German specimen as secondary paratype material.
Thanks, Valentin – again, really good job.
And bear in mind that this is the first of three phases of ichthyosaur work that Darren, Valentin and I are hoping to publish this year, partly derived from Robert Appleby’s unfinished works – optimistically under the ‘brand identity’ of ‘Ichthyosaur Revolution’. So stay tuned…..
Jeff Liston,
National Museums Scotland,
(also School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol),
Edinburgh,
SCOTLAND.
Upper image: GLAHM 132855, the Holotype of Acamptonectes densus. (Ribs omitted to preserve the sanity of the curator - because he would have had to lay them all out and put them away again afterwards.) Photograph © and many thanks to Iona Shepherd.
Lower image: Acamptonectes densus Fischer et al., 2012, as reconstructed by C. M. Kosemen (contact c.m.kosemen@gmail.com).
Sloppy journalism
One of the hazards of posting quick and easy geological stories to the shop Facebook page with some glib comment attached is that I don't always put in an adequate level of background research. I got caught out yesterday linking to a BBC article about a bit of a breakthrough in ichthyosaur history which had been given a slightly misleading spin by the journalist.
The article, while a little cursory, focuses on the 2005 find from Braunschweig in Germany, missing the point that the source material, a paper published on PLoS ONE, based its findings far more heavily on the study of fossils found near Scarborough in 1958 and since. On this occasion, at least, I'm able to redress my sloppiness to some extent and allow one of the authors of the original paper to guest on the blog and either tell us a little more about the subject or give me a dressing down. In my defence, I don't pretend to be a proper scientist. I don't even own a white lab coat.
[Edit] Jeff will tell the story behind the paper. Now, I've never written a scientific article, because I don't know enough about anything and I'm lazy. Jeff, however, is a proper scientist so the blog post will be longer than usual and contain some technical terms such as 'basiocciput'. I find it best just to nod at those parts and carry on. Anyway. I'll get the final draft in a couple of days and post it.
The article, while a little cursory, focuses on the 2005 find from Braunschweig in Germany, missing the point that the source material, a paper published on PLoS ONE, based its findings far more heavily on the study of fossils found near Scarborough in 1958 and since. On this occasion, at least, I'm able to redress my sloppiness to some extent and allow one of the authors of the original paper to guest on the blog and either tell us a little more about the subject or give me a dressing down. In my defence, I don't pretend to be a proper scientist. I don't even own a white lab coat.
[Edit] Jeff will tell the story behind the paper. Now, I've never written a scientific article, because I don't know enough about anything and I'm lazy. Jeff, however, is a proper scientist so the blog post will be longer than usual and contain some technical terms such as 'basiocciput'. I find it best just to nod at those parts and carry on. Anyway. I'll get the final draft in a couple of days and post it.
Monday, 19 December 2011
Sluggish
It's been a while since the last post. I'll put it down to the weather, but really it's a number of things. I've been busy, there haven't been any geological stories that have particularly prodded me to write about, and I'm struggling for motivation a little. Doing the Facebook page most days is good for keeping me up to date on relevant stories, but it's added to the list of things I should be doing and sometimes I begin to resent that list.
I'm awful at the mailing list, for example. I know that's supposed to be good business practice; building a mailing list and keeping your customers informed. But I've always felt these sort of things can be intrusive, and almost never sign up to such lists myself. I forget that (in most cases) people are actively subscribing and may actually want to learn of new stock. I think I've only sent out about 5 mails in four or five years. The last one was the other week and the first reply was nearly instantaneous - an email saying simply 'Unsubscribe. Cheers!'. Kind of demoralising. Clearly an email a year is just too much for some people. Wonder why they wrote their name in the book... That said, I did get a couple of sales from it, as well as a trade offer. At the moment, I'm getting an email every day from an online florists, despite never actively adding my name. Now it's easy enough to ignore these things and send them to the spam folder, but that level of frequency is annoying. I've tried to unsubscribe twice. No luck so far.
So there's that. What else? Hmm. Well, I had my first Tucson-related nightmare last week, which means it's coming closer. This was one I've had before - arriving at the room of my main Green River fish dealer to find it empty; everything sold. There are other dealers I buy fish from, but my reliance on a few particular dealers is pretty heavy, and the thought of not being able to buy the quality and quantity of fish I need does actually scare me a bit. Most things I'd be able to source similar quality and numbers some way or another, but there are a few lines that I need to get to before they've been picked over too much. It's a great concern in the preceding month or so: hence nightmares.
Another significant thing in the Mr Wood's world lately has been a staffing issue. Riley, who has been here for three years or so now, will be leaving for a job in Turkey in February and I've had to find a replacement. I've been incredibly lucky in recruitment so far and I think I've found someone to continue the run.
So. Bit of a scattergun post this time. Back to geological things next time, most likely.
I'm awful at the mailing list, for example. I know that's supposed to be good business practice; building a mailing list and keeping your customers informed. But I've always felt these sort of things can be intrusive, and almost never sign up to such lists myself. I forget that (in most cases) people are actively subscribing and may actually want to learn of new stock. I think I've only sent out about 5 mails in four or five years. The last one was the other week and the first reply was nearly instantaneous - an email saying simply 'Unsubscribe. Cheers!'. Kind of demoralising. Clearly an email a year is just too much for some people. Wonder why they wrote their name in the book... That said, I did get a couple of sales from it, as well as a trade offer. At the moment, I'm getting an email every day from an online florists, despite never actively adding my name. Now it's easy enough to ignore these things and send them to the spam folder, but that level of frequency is annoying. I've tried to unsubscribe twice. No luck so far.
So there's that. What else? Hmm. Well, I had my first Tucson-related nightmare last week, which means it's coming closer. This was one I've had before - arriving at the room of my main Green River fish dealer to find it empty; everything sold. There are other dealers I buy fish from, but my reliance on a few particular dealers is pretty heavy, and the thought of not being able to buy the quality and quantity of fish I need does actually scare me a bit. Most things I'd be able to source similar quality and numbers some way or another, but there are a few lines that I need to get to before they've been picked over too much. It's a great concern in the preceding month or so: hence nightmares.
Another significant thing in the Mr Wood's world lately has been a staffing issue. Riley, who has been here for three years or so now, will be leaving for a job in Turkey in February and I've had to find a replacement. I've been incredibly lucky in recruitment so far and I think I've found someone to continue the run.
So. Bit of a scattergun post this time. Back to geological things next time, most likely.
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Fade to blue
'So -what is this? It's a lovely colour.'
'It's a dyed turquoise from Arizona. They call it turtle turquoise.'
'Dyed? So does it fade?'
'Well, I don't think so.Um. You'd be be better asking Matt, there, I think.'
'This is dyed. Will it fade? What colour did it used to be?'
'We've had some of this material for a few years now, and I've not noticed any fading - it's not likely to fade any quicker than any other stone. It was most likely just very pale turquoise that they might not have had a market for. Quite a lot of the stuff sold as turquoise is really just dyed howlite. But it's pretty stuff, and dying it makes it of some use for jewellery. If you were to leave it out in bright sunlight for a while it might fade, I suppose, like many naturally coloured stones.'
'But will it? Why did they dye it? It's such a lovely colour - is that because of the dye?'
'...I think so. Yes, probably.'
'I'm going to get it. It's lovely. I just hope it's as nice in ten years time.'
'Me too.'
Friday, 18 November 2011
Meteorites and meteowrongs
Most days, a meteorite will fall to Earth somewhere. Almost all of them are stone, with only a small percentage iron-nickel or stony-iron. It's hard to recognise a stony meteorite - with an iron one you can feel the unusual weight, cut it to see the metallic sheen inside, etch it for crystal pattern and so on. With a stony one, it usually just looks like a slightly shiny stone. And there are plenty of them lying around. I'm sure you've noticed. So how do you find a meteorite?
Short of one smashing a hole in your house or flattening your car, chances are you're not likely to come across one, but it's not impossible. It was once thought the chances of finding a meteorite were too low to bother, but one man made it his life's work to change that perception. In 1923 Harvey Nininger, a teacher, saw a fireball and became fascinated with meteorites. Eventually he quit his job to focus on hunting them, and he was offered space in Denver Museum, with his collection on display. He worked out a system. 'Go out and educate the people; tell the people what they're like, offer a bonus if they find any. And in a country where the land is farmed, they will turn these things up. And that's the way I made the collection.' In 1946, he founded the American Meteorite Museum near Winslow, Arizona, close to Meteor Crater. By this time he'd built up an enormous collection of material, and he began to push for the study of meteorites to be taken more seriously. The museum moved to Sedona after a new highway was built, and when business began to fall away, Nininger sold his collection to the British Museum and the Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University. He was now in a position to spend more time hunting, so went back to his hobby while writing books and giving lectures on the subject. Science owes this man a great deal.
I frequently get people bringing me their 'meteorite' finds. So far there hasn't been a meteorite among them. Pyrite nodules quite often. Industrial slag. A piece of pottery. Some galena and a lot of... well... pebbles. But, you never know. There was a nice story earlier this month about a farmer who in 2006 had found a big lump of pallasite, spectacularly speckled with olivine. He cut a bit off, realised he had something special, and it ended up being recently designated a new find and given its own name - Conception Junction, after the town in Missouri where it was found. So there can be a happy ending.
Short of one smashing a hole in your house or flattening your car, chances are you're not likely to come across one, but it's not impossible. It was once thought the chances of finding a meteorite were too low to bother, but one man made it his life's work to change that perception. In 1923 Harvey Nininger, a teacher, saw a fireball and became fascinated with meteorites. Eventually he quit his job to focus on hunting them, and he was offered space in Denver Museum, with his collection on display. He worked out a system. 'Go out and educate the people; tell the people what they're like, offer a bonus if they find any. And in a country where the land is farmed, they will turn these things up. And that's the way I made the collection.' In 1946, he founded the American Meteorite Museum near Winslow, Arizona, close to Meteor Crater. By this time he'd built up an enormous collection of material, and he began to push for the study of meteorites to be taken more seriously. The museum moved to Sedona after a new highway was built, and when business began to fall away, Nininger sold his collection to the British Museum and the Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University. He was now in a position to spend more time hunting, so went back to his hobby while writing books and giving lectures on the subject. Science owes this man a great deal.
I frequently get people bringing me their 'meteorite' finds. So far there hasn't been a meteorite among them. Pyrite nodules quite often. Industrial slag. A piece of pottery. Some galena and a lot of... well... pebbles. But, you never know. There was a nice story earlier this month about a farmer who in 2006 had found a big lump of pallasite, spectacularly speckled with olivine. He cut a bit off, realised he had something special, and it ended up being recently designated a new find and given its own name - Conception Junction, after the town in Missouri where it was found. So there can be a happy ending.
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
By the light of the sun
Vikings, as everybody knows, got around a bit. By sailing, largely. They are thought to have reached America, long before it was being called that, they made themselves busy round most of the European coastline and reached the Mediterranean, the Black and the Caspian Seas. They knew how to handle a boat.
This all took place before there were magnetic compasses to help them navigate, so it's all the more remarkable. I had a customer come into the shop last week looking for a piece of iolite, a blue-violet variety of cordierite. They wanted it because they knew it as Viking's Compass - apparently it had been used by Vikings to find the sun on overcast days. Iolite is pleochroic; the colour varies as you turn the stone in the light. This happens as light of different polarizations is bent to different degrees by the mineral structure as it passes through. I'd not heard of this use of the stone before, and also hadn't heard of an iolite source in Scandinavia. It's not a hugely rare stone, however, and I mentioned above, these were some well-travelled guys.
In the news today, though, is an article about a cleavage rhomb of Iceland Spar - or optical calcite, above right - found on an Elizabethan ship sunk in 1592. It looks like it had been used as a navigation aid in a manner similar to that mentioned above. This clear form of calcite has a set of recurring planes of weaknesses - cleavages - which cause it to break into distinct rhombic shapes. It's known for its birefringence, where light passing thought the rhomb will produce a double image. Another way to find the sun, by rotating the stone until the images are of the same intensity. This find, though dating to a few hundred years after the Vikings had calmed down somewhat, adds weight to the belief that they used some form of crystal to find the sun and, subsequently, their direction. And it'd have been pretty easy for Vikings to get their hands on samples of Iceland spar. Somewhere or other.
In the news today, though, is an article about a cleavage rhomb of Iceland Spar - or optical calcite, above right - found on an Elizabethan ship sunk in 1592. It looks like it had been used as a navigation aid in a manner similar to that mentioned above. This clear form of calcite has a set of recurring planes of weaknesses - cleavages - which cause it to break into distinct rhombic shapes. It's known for its birefringence, where light passing thought the rhomb will produce a double image. Another way to find the sun, by rotating the stone until the images are of the same intensity. This find, though dating to a few hundred years after the Vikings had calmed down somewhat, adds weight to the belief that they used some form of crystal to find the sun and, subsequently, their direction. And it'd have been pretty easy for Vikings to get their hands on samples of Iceland spar. Somewhere or other.
Friday, 21 October 2011
Orange-Brown
It's been a long time coming, but here's the new shop front, more or less finished. Couple of tiny bits to touch up, but I'm happy with it. I may miss the fossil stencils a little.
Given the trouble it's taken to get this done, I'm not keen to ever go through the process again. I was thinking recently about - in the longer term - opening another shop. It would either be a fossil shop elsewhere or maybe a shop selling something else in Edinburgh. Fossils and minerals are what I know best, but the benefits of being able to spend time in the other place without hours of travelling means it's worth exploring new possibilities. Not something I'm going to do anything about in the near future anyway.
As the sign writer was working his magic (and he was impressively quick) I thought it'd be a nice touch to add a little extra. So I got him to put the date the business was established on the wall, too. I had to do a little checking to make sure of it, as I'd come across 1988 in a couple of Stan's old documents, but the shop was opened in June 1987. I even found a picture of a proud and beaming Stan at the launch event - it was from the Scotsman's archives, and available through SCRAN. I've bought the image for the shop, and will license it for use on the blog in time for next year's 25th anniversary.
Wednesday, 19 October 2011
On the map
The Grassmarket is a great place. It's got a reputation as a bit of a drinking den, which may still be true to a lesser extent, but I think that does it a huge disservice. It's more than that, and always has been. It has an amazing history, some lovely architecture and - obviously - a proliferation of interesting, independent businesses. Its mix of little shops, cafes, restaurants and bars make a visit a very different experience to walking along a town high street or through a modern shopping mall. A bit of character, not a list of familiar brand names and logos.
Small businesses are by nature more susceptible to trying financial times - it can be difficult to weather lengthy downturns and there has often been a bit of swapping around in the area as shops close and new ones fill the gaps. While there are a few empty premises at the moment, things have been relatively stable of late and I believe the Grassmarket is beginning to see its status and profile climb a little.
Last week, The Guardian added Edinburgh to its popular City Guide feature in the online Travel section. For these, it selects ten businesses in a few categories, writes a brief review and marks them on a map. A linked accompanying article collates the reviews. Mr Wood's Fossils makes the list of Independent Shops, which made me very proud, but also included were three other Grassmarket traders - Hannah Zakari, Deadhead Comics and I.J. Mellis, the cheesemonger. Red Door Galleries made the Craft & Vintage section, The Grain Store is in Restaurants, Under The Stairs in Cocktail bars and The Last Drop in pubs. Transreal Fiction, my old neighbour, and Anaglogue Books have also been featured by the same newspaper in the past couple of weeks. Publicity like this - unpaid recognition on merit alone - is a fantastic boon for small businesses like these and hopefully will help build the Grassmarket's reputation as a place to spend a few hours browsing shops, having lunch or just wandering around.
Small businesses are by nature more susceptible to trying financial times - it can be difficult to weather lengthy downturns and there has often been a bit of swapping around in the area as shops close and new ones fill the gaps. While there are a few empty premises at the moment, things have been relatively stable of late and I believe the Grassmarket is beginning to see its status and profile climb a little.
Last week, The Guardian added Edinburgh to its popular City Guide feature in the online Travel section. For these, it selects ten businesses in a few categories, writes a brief review and marks them on a map. A linked accompanying article collates the reviews. Mr Wood's Fossils makes the list of Independent Shops, which made me very proud, but also included were three other Grassmarket traders - Hannah Zakari, Deadhead Comics and I.J. Mellis, the cheesemonger. Red Door Galleries made the Craft & Vintage section, The Grain Store is in Restaurants, Under The Stairs in Cocktail bars and The Last Drop in pubs. Transreal Fiction, my old neighbour, and Anaglogue Books have also been featured by the same newspaper in the past couple of weeks. Publicity like this - unpaid recognition on merit alone - is a fantastic boon for small businesses like these and hopefully will help build the Grassmarket's reputation as a place to spend a few hours browsing shops, having lunch or just wandering around.
Monday, 17 October 2011
Marked cards
The labels are important though. For a number of reasons. Firstly it means something to me that people leave with a little bit of knowledge about what they've bought. Even if they aren't particularly interested after a couple of days, the name and locality will be there for them should they ever choose to look. Or if they want to impress their friends with the age of their meteorite or whatever.
Secondly, hand-writing the labels is a small but effective act of customer service. Almost everyone is pleased to have the details written down - sometimes they've already been jotting it down on a scrap of paper as they browse, or taken a picture of the label on their phone. The fact they're hand-written at the time of purchase, rather than pre-printed is also helpful, I think. It suits the unique nature of the fossils and minerals themselves, and reinforces the idea that these aren't mass-marketed, manufactured products, but something a little bit special. We're a small business and don't spend a great deal on advertising. Word of mouth is our most efficient method of getting known, so treating the customer well is essential. I want people to remember the shop for the right reasons.
Which leads me to the last role of the labels - they act as a form of background advertising in themselves. There are a ton of little orange cards out there, each with Mr Wood's Fossils written on them. And the address. And phone number. Anyone curious about the fossil can pick up the card to see what it is. They can also see exactly where it came from and how they might go about getting one of their own, should they feel inclined. So while it can be a pain to write out the tags for a pile of thirty mixed tumblestones... it's usually worth it.
Friday, 7 October 2011
Creep on creepin' on
'Ooh, look at these eels! How weird.'
'Those aren't eels - they're some sort of fish.'
Most weeks I'll be asked what trilobites were. To reply you need to gauge exactly how interested people are in the answer. Some are more than happy to listen to your five minute spiel about one of the most interesting animals to have graced the planet. Most aren't, though, and some variation of 'kind of like a slater that lived in the sea' is what they're after.
For a beastie that's given so much to science, I reckon they're still flying under the radar a little. As I mentioned a few weeks back, Attenborough's First Life last year got them some publicity, and some ten years ago Richard Fortey's Trilobite was something of a popular science sensation. His engaging enthusiasm for trilobites made for an accessible and rewarding read for people with no geological background. For a few weeks, trilobites made the papers. I can see that they're a harder sell than dinosaurs. Not as immediately recognisable as the iconic spiral of the ammonite, or as dramatic as giant shark teeth. They may be destined to remain the creepy crawly of the fossil record (I once had a woman return one to the shop as she 'couldn't sleep with it in the house'), but trilobites deserve a little more love, I reckon.
Monday, 26 September 2011
A present
A taxi pulled up outside the shop today, and the driver got out. He came in and I recognised him from last week, when he'd found a couple of minerals he'd been looking for. I can't remember exactly what. I think maybe aquamarine and something else.
'Hi. Just wanted to say I was delighted with the crystals I got here the other day, and I brought you this.'
He put down a bottle of blackcurrant Lucozade.
'Oh. Thanks very much!'
'You're welcome. Bye!'
'Bye.'
Magic.
'Hi. Just wanted to say I was delighted with the crystals I got here the other day, and I brought you this.'
He put down a bottle of blackcurrant Lucozade.
'Oh. Thanks very much!'
'You're welcome. Bye!'
'Bye.'
Magic.
Friday, 23 September 2011
Dinner with the Denisovans
And maybe a little more than dinner in a few cases.
I linked a couple of news stories to the Mr Wood's Fossils Facebook page today which are about the movement of humans across the globe. One was about how DNA studies shed a little light on how aboriginal Australians made their way there, and when. The other was a little more general, and concerned the gradual population of Asia with Homo sapiens.
When we humans spread ourselves around, it was eventually at the expense of our closest relatives. Neanderthal is the most famous non-human hominin to have been been out-competed to extinction, but let's not forget old Uncle erectus and Auntie Denisova. Who? Not much is known of the Denisovans. In fact, only a bit of finger bone and a tooth. It's thought they were part of a migration from Africa between that of the Homo erectus and modern humans, and the mitochondrial DNA results of the bone analysis suggest a common ancestor with both the Neanderthal and us at about 1 million years ago, then with the Neanderthals alone at a later date. So - once split, the Denisovans toddled off across Asia and made themselves at home.We know they lived in the Altai Mountains of Siberia around 40,000 years ago - that's where/when the fossils are from - but they probably were reasonably widespread.
They would have lived alongside both Neanderthals and humans, and those first groups of humans that passed through Asia on their way to Indonesia, Australia and points Antipodean show a higher percentage of shared DNA with the Denisovan line than those that came along later. Some level of interbreeding went on with the locals as these migrations passed through.
Anyway - just a little more to add to the storyline. There are a few sites that illustrate the human migration pretty well, though keeping these up to date must be a constant task. Have a look at these - The Bradshaw Foundation's Journey of Mankind, and the Genographic Project's Atlas of the Human Journey. It's far easier to understand when there's a map and a big arrow, I think.
I linked a couple of news stories to the Mr Wood's Fossils Facebook page today which are about the movement of humans across the globe. One was about how DNA studies shed a little light on how aboriginal Australians made their way there, and when. The other was a little more general, and concerned the gradual population of Asia with Homo sapiens.
When we humans spread ourselves around, it was eventually at the expense of our closest relatives. Neanderthal is the most famous non-human hominin to have been been out-competed to extinction, but let's not forget old Uncle erectus and Auntie Denisova. Who? Not much is known of the Denisovans. In fact, only a bit of finger bone and a tooth. It's thought they were part of a migration from Africa between that of the Homo erectus and modern humans, and the mitochondrial DNA results of the bone analysis suggest a common ancestor with both the Neanderthal and us at about 1 million years ago, then with the Neanderthals alone at a later date. So - once split, the Denisovans toddled off across Asia and made themselves at home.We know they lived in the Altai Mountains of Siberia around 40,000 years ago - that's where/when the fossils are from - but they probably were reasonably widespread.
They would have lived alongside both Neanderthals and humans, and those first groups of humans that passed through Asia on their way to Indonesia, Australia and points Antipodean show a higher percentage of shared DNA with the Denisovan line than those that came along later. Some level of interbreeding went on with the locals as these migrations passed through.
Anyway - just a little more to add to the storyline. There are a few sites that illustrate the human migration pretty well, though keeping these up to date must be a constant task. Have a look at these - The Bradshaw Foundation's Journey of Mankind, and the Genographic Project's Atlas of the Human Journey. It's far easier to understand when there's a map and a big arrow, I think.
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
Clash of the titans
Planet Dinosaur kicks off on BBC1 at 8.30 tonight with a battle between two stars of the commercial dinosaur world. Carcharodontosaurus saharicus and Spinosaurus aegyptiacus were both busy terrifying what's now Northern Africa around the middle of the Cretaceous Period. They were huge animals. Enormous. With big teeth and claws. Which are readily available for sale! They are well represented in the remains found in the Kem Kem region around Taouz, Morocco, one of the biggest and most productive dinosaur sites ever found. Before material started coming out of there in quantity, the only dinosaur teeth relatively easy to buy were from a couple of US sites and they were far more expensive. The Kem Kem teeth are so plentiful they have allowed dinosaur fossils to be sold at prices affordable to children with a little pocket money. The better examples are, of course, more costly, but a dinosaur tooth is still a dinosaur tooth. The possession of real fossils can strengthen a passion for the subject and instill desire for further learning; create a depth of respect for history that doesn't always come from pictures in a book.
Spinosaurus has seen a fairly rapid rise in fame. When I was a kid, the dinosaur hall-of-fame included Tyrannosaurus rex, the undisputed king, Stegosaurus, Diplodocus, Triceratops and the sadly-missed Brontosaurus. Today's crop of dinosaur superstars has to have Velociraptor and Spinosaurus in there, too, thanks to the Jurassic Park factor. There's no disputing the effect a blockbuster movie or big-budget tv series can have. Amber sales are still influenced by the first of the Jurassic Park films, and Attenborough's programs on early life shown late last year sparked a noticeable run on trilobites for months after. Good for business, of course, and I'm looking forward to the day when a fossil sea urchin gets to the last round of X Factor. Probably never happen. Anyway. I hope Planet Dinosaur meets expectations; Spino vs Carch is a brilliant way to open.
Spinosaurus has seen a fairly rapid rise in fame. When I was a kid, the dinosaur hall-of-fame included Tyrannosaurus rex, the undisputed king, Stegosaurus, Diplodocus, Triceratops and the sadly-missed Brontosaurus. Today's crop of dinosaur superstars has to have Velociraptor and Spinosaurus in there, too, thanks to the Jurassic Park factor. There's no disputing the effect a blockbuster movie or big-budget tv series can have. Amber sales are still influenced by the first of the Jurassic Park films, and Attenborough's programs on early life shown late last year sparked a noticeable run on trilobites for months after. Good for business, of course, and I'm looking forward to the day when a fossil sea urchin gets to the last round of X Factor. Probably never happen. Anyway. I hope Planet Dinosaur meets expectations; Spino vs Carch is a brilliant way to open.
Friday, 9 September 2011
Bear bones
After a few years without, I've finally got a few cave bear paws in stock. The price went a little crazy, and I'm not sure I'll be able to buy them again unless a new find is made. Not unlikely, but just a case of wait-and-see. I came very close to buying a complete cave bear skeleton a while ago, but chickened out thinking I'd not have the space to display it. Wish I had now, as the price has trebled since. At this point, as some seem to get disproportionally upset by this, I should point out that these paws are from Ursus uralensis, which is not the true cave bear, but rather more similar to a modern grizzly. They still spent long enough in caves to fall down big holes and pile up in great numbers, though, so I'm not particularly bothered with the distinction. Fact is that cave bears were so named because most of their fossils were found in caves, so it was assumed that's where they spent most of the time. The same assumption can easily be made for uralensis, though they were clearly different animals.
Proper cave bears - Ursus spelaeus - lived all across Europe until a little over 27,000 years ago at the onset of the peak of the last ice age. Possible reduction in available foods and likely competition for shelter with humans are thought to be responsible for their demise. They looked like large brown bears, but had slightly wider skulls and heavier limbs. Their dentition was slightly different, too, and it's thought their diet was more vegetarian than that of brown bears.
The Carpathian Mountains have proved a huge source of cave bear remains, with sites in Romania and Slovakia being particularly rich. We had a cave bear skull once, which sold for a good bit less than it'd cost to replace now. Teeth are reasonably easy to keep in stock, and are good sellers, while claws are harder to come by and don't sell as well. We even had a baculum once, I remember. I had to make an extra little sign to sit beside it, saying 'Yes, really.' Baculum are penis bones, which almost all mammals have, to some extent. Not humans, as you may have noticed. I've linked the word above to the Wiki entry, to save you googling 'penis bone'. I'd advise against that. Walrus baculum, known in Alaska as oosik, can be two feet long, and were used as clubs. What a way to go.
The Carpathian Mountains have proved a huge source of cave bear remains, with sites in Romania and Slovakia being particularly rich. We had a cave bear skull once, which sold for a good bit less than it'd cost to replace now. Teeth are reasonably easy to keep in stock, and are good sellers, while claws are harder to come by and don't sell as well. We even had a baculum once, I remember. I had to make an extra little sign to sit beside it, saying 'Yes, really.' Baculum are penis bones, which almost all mammals have, to some extent. Not humans, as you may have noticed. I've linked the word above to the Wiki entry, to save you googling 'penis bone'. I'd advise against that. Walrus baculum, known in Alaska as oosik, can be two feet long, and were used as clubs. What a way to go.
Friday, 2 September 2011
Amber - caution
The other day a woman approached Riley and said she was looking to replace an amber pendant she'd had when she was young. It had been very dear to her and had been lost. Might we have anything similar? Riley got out the bag of amber pendants we have before asking her to describe it. It had a seahorse in it, the woman explained.
'Ah', said Riley. Sadly he couldn't find a pendant that matched the one she lost. If seahorses were ever arboreal it was for a very short period in their evolutionary history. They just weren't cut out for climbing.
Fake amber isn't uncommon. Commercial amber is usually from one of three sources - the Baltic Sea, the Dominican Republic and the Chiapas Hills in Mexico. There are plenty of other places amber's found, but not in such quantities, and not of such quality. Amber is, of course, fossilised tree resin - in the case of the Dominican stuff, it's mostly from the hymenaea tree. In Baltic examples it's from pine or eucalyptus trees. I've seen insects 'planted' in reconstituted amber, and in plastic, and very often if it looks too good to be true, it possibly is... For something to become trapped in tree sap it has to be somewhere near a tree. If your prized piece of amber contains a seahorse, or a strawberry, or a digital watch, you should be suspicious.
There are ways to check for fakery, though. Ether or acetone (or paint thinner, or nail polish remover) will usually start to melt plastic but leave amber unharmed. Sticking a heated needle into the piece will give off a tell-tale smell. Amber gives off a pine sap smell (perhaps unsurprisingly) while plastic will give of the smell of burnt plastic. You knew that. Amber can be scratched by a coin, where most of the plastics used are a little harder. All of these are a little destructive. I'd expect were you to blow up pieces of plastic and amber with the same amount of gunpower, the fragments of plastic would fly further, but it's not really a test you'd want to put your amber through. Alternatively, you can putting your piece in some salt water. Amber should float. Or try a UV lamp - amber fluoresces as shown in this video.
Lastly, some sell copal as amber. This may simply through ignorance, however, and isn't really on the same level of deceit as bugs in plastic, if it can be called deceit at all. Copal is basically young amber - still resin from trees - and can be found containing insects in Madagascar, Bolivia, Colombia and a few other sites. These places produce material ranging in age from around 100,000 to 500,000 years old, where most amber is 25 million years old and more. Copal isn't as hard as amber, so doesn't work as well for jewellery. It tends to be paler in colour, too.
'Ah', said Riley. Sadly he couldn't find a pendant that matched the one she lost. If seahorses were ever arboreal it was for a very short period in their evolutionary history. They just weren't cut out for climbing.
Fake amber isn't uncommon. Commercial amber is usually from one of three sources - the Baltic Sea, the Dominican Republic and the Chiapas Hills in Mexico. There are plenty of other places amber's found, but not in such quantities, and not of such quality. Amber is, of course, fossilised tree resin - in the case of the Dominican stuff, it's mostly from the hymenaea tree. In Baltic examples it's from pine or eucalyptus trees. I've seen insects 'planted' in reconstituted amber, and in plastic, and very often if it looks too good to be true, it possibly is... For something to become trapped in tree sap it has to be somewhere near a tree. If your prized piece of amber contains a seahorse, or a strawberry, or a digital watch, you should be suspicious.
There are ways to check for fakery, though. Ether or acetone (or paint thinner, or nail polish remover) will usually start to melt plastic but leave amber unharmed. Sticking a heated needle into the piece will give off a tell-tale smell. Amber gives off a pine sap smell (perhaps unsurprisingly) while plastic will give of the smell of burnt plastic. You knew that. Amber can be scratched by a coin, where most of the plastics used are a little harder. All of these are a little destructive. I'd expect were you to blow up pieces of plastic and amber with the same amount of gunpower, the fragments of plastic would fly further, but it's not really a test you'd want to put your amber through. Alternatively, you can putting your piece in some salt water. Amber should float. Or try a UV lamp - amber fluoresces as shown in this video.
Lastly, some sell copal as amber. This may simply through ignorance, however, and isn't really on the same level of deceit as bugs in plastic, if it can be called deceit at all. Copal is basically young amber - still resin from trees - and can be found containing insects in Madagascar, Bolivia, Colombia and a few other sites. These places produce material ranging in age from around 100,000 to 500,000 years old, where most amber is 25 million years old and more. Copal isn't as hard as amber, so doesn't work as well for jewellery. It tends to be paler in colour, too.
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
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