Knew it

A woman is sitting beside a couple of amethyst geodes.

'Are these made in volcanoes?'
'Not directly, no, but there can be a link. The crystals of amethyst gradually grow into cavities in a rock, which can be sedimentary or igneous. Very often, though, the original cavities are related to volcanic activity - they can be bubbles of gas in lava flows. When the lava cools and hardens the pockets of gas are trapped. These little caves can then be filled with mineral growth as the material the crystals need to form and grow is washed through the rock with the movement of groundwater.'
'Ah. I knew it. Because they look like volcanoes, don't they?'

Show time

I leave on Monday for the show in Sainte Marie aux Mines in Alsace. Work, you know. Let's leave aside the fact that it's a beautiful place surrounded by vineyards, wooded valleys and peaceful farmlands. That the Kronenbourg brewery is in nearby Strasbourg. And that I'm staying in a lodge on an organic apple orchard with a group of friends. With a big barbecue area. Leaving all of that aside - this is a work trip.

On the list for this trip are lumps of North Sea mammoth, French ammonites, German urchins, Belgian brachiopods, Russian meteorites, Brazilian agates, Peruvian clams and Moroccan trilobites. Although it's a far smaller show than Tucson, people do travel from far and wide to sell there. I wonder if part of that is just because it's an amazing place to spend a little time. Remember - I do this so you don't have to. I know, I know. You're welcome.

Is there anybody out there?

Different meteorites contain different stuff. Not a revelation, and I've probably mentioned this before. Most that are found are iron, but most that fall are stony meteorites - chondrites. There are a wide range of chondrites, but possibly the most important ones, for a very specific reason, are the carbonaceous ones.

Carbonaceous chondrites have organic content  - and again there is quite a range. They are not common, and the challenge is to find as wide a range as possible - to try to form as complete a picture as possible. This will then provide a fair estimation of the 'starting point' of organic matter at the time the solar system, and Earth, were formed some 4.55 billion years ago. A line of thinking being researched now is common-source hypothesis, which suggests almost all organics are derived from a single source and that the early diversity stems from exposure to hydrothermal activity in their host bodies.

One of the biggest questions science faces is the origin of life. Evolution provides a comprehensive answer to the diversity and complexity of life, but so far the very beginnings are still to be revealed. It's a hot topic and there are many hypotheses currently being explored, but one that has come to prominence in recent years has been the idea that life, or at least the means to it, came to Earth from space. Not in a shiny silver rocket or flying saucer, but by way of a meteorite. This possibility is looking increasingly likely.

It follows that if the vast majority of organics in our solar system come from a solitary source that was being spread at the time of formation, the other planets were likely to have received their share. And, further to that, had the common source been outwith the system to begin with, surely the same material would be more widespread than just our solar system; would probably be elsewhere. Out there. Quick! To Area 51! Or whatever it is.

Mr Wood

A guy walking past as I put the sign out the other day suggested changing the shop's name to Mr Stone's Fossils. A few friends asked when I bought the business whether it would become Mr Dale's Fossils. But it's not a name pulled from the air - there is a Mr Wood, and he set up the business in the first place. They really were Mr Wood's fossils.

Stan Wood was in the merchant navy. He sold insurance. And then he found a fossil, whilst walking his dog, and fossils took over his life. Something about his find sparked his interest and he quickly learned more on the subject. Stan has a vital thing for fossil hunters - the eye. Where others see rocks, he sees fish. It didn't take Stan long to become an expert in the obscure fauna of Scotland's Palaeozoic, and he worked with Glasgow University's Hunterian Museum and others to provide scientifically important material for study. During this time he discovered the famous Lizzie - Westlothiana lizziae - and the shop's logo, the stethacanthid shark Akmonistion zangerli, as well as a host of other rare and wonderful animals. Stan has not only featured in a series by that hero of natural history, David Attenborough - Lost Worlds and Vanished Lives - but was also the subject of his own BBC documentary, Stan, Stan, the Fossil Man. He has a string of creatures named after him and a discovery record to match any. As fossil hunters go, he's a celebrity. And he's still going, wading through the rivers of The Borders to find material that will soon be on display in a special exhibition in the National Museum of Scotland, before touring the country.

It's a name to be proud of, so it's always going to be Mr Wood's Fossils.

Shaken and stirred

On April the 6th, 2009, there was an earthquake which killed 309 people in L'Aquila, Italy. Thousands of people were made homeless and a national disaster was declared. Two years later, though, there are still some after-effects being felt. Legal, not geological.

Increased seismic activity in the area had prompted the setting up of a committee to assess the threat posed. The group felt that while the main fault was clearly active, the consistent series of smaller movements they had experienced was ensuring energy was being released and that, consequently, the chances of a larger scale quake were lessened. Their findings were summarised and communicated to the public by a non-geologist from the group, a government official from the Civil Protection Agency. He felt the geologists had been relatively positive and gave the opinion that the threat of a major earthquake wasn't too serious.

And then...

Currently, six seismologists from that committee are to face trial for manslaughter alongside the government official. Apparently they are being prosecuted because the report offered 'incomplete, imprecise and contradictory public information.' For being wrong. Because they had falsely assured the public. Firstly are we to assume 'the public' will have taken this report as a cast-iron promise nothing bad would happen? I doubt that. Let's also leave aside the fact that some of the geologists feel their discussions had been misrepresented  - that may be legal positioning in advance of the blame game ahead. Predicting earthquakes - while aided now by far more technology and understanding than ever before - is still a very, very difficult job. Even coming reasonably close to accuracy is mightily impressive, given the number of factors at play. So can these guys be blamed? Be given ten year prison sentences for not being able to predict natural phenomena? To me, that seems far beyond harsh. It's looking for someone to blame.

The logistical and financial nightmare of evacuating a city means it rarely happens. Lost trade, the risk of crime, moving the elderly and sick, etc, etc. There have been occasions when seismologists have been advised to play down potential risks to avoid widespread panic, too. Then where would the blame lie? Who would carry the can? If this prosecution goes ahead, surely there will be far fewer seismologists willing to offer risk assessment short of advising everyone to run at the first sign of a tremor. You could employ anyone to wave their arms about and scream, you don't need a seismologist for that. This is stupid and may have serious repercussions.

Shapes

Today I was supposed to leave a little early so Kate could get to her book group. I got the grille up, the sign in and half of the storm doors closed. As usual in these situations, someone came in.

'Hi, the museum sent me down here, because they were too busy.'
'Oh, right. Okay.'
'Here, look.' He pulls a stone from his pocket and hands it to me.
'Look - here - a face. With one of those... you know. Like this.' He gestures.
'A ruff?'
'Yeah. And a big collar, look.'
'Mm.'
'And here is another face, a bit smaller, in this shape... here. You can see it better if you wet it a bit. See?.'
'Okay.'
'Look on the back. It looks like a number.'
'I don't... I can't... really see what you mean. I think it's igneous. A volcanic rock. You don't get... fossils in igneous rocks, though.'
'Do you not see what I see?'
'No. No, not really. Sorry.'
'I have another. Here, look at this.'
'Well this one looks like a piece of ironstone nodule I think.'
'Not a meteorite, you don't think?'
No. Sorry. Look, I really have to close up now. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.'
'Ok, no problem. It's just the museum folk sent me down here. Too busy.'

Star born

There are over 4,500 named minerals on Earth. There will be plenty more found and named, too, unless the latest bunch of Rapture people are right about tomorrow and things all go pear-shaped. There haven't always been this many, though. At the moment it's thought that when the planet was formed there were only around sixty minerals. Discovering a new mineral must be quite a thrill - I met a guy once who had been named as official discoverer of a few, though I can't remember the names. A couple have been found recently that date right back to the origins of the solar system. Krotite and Wassonite were both found by careful study of meteorite sections.

Krotite was found in a meteorite from North Africa and contains a substance that can only form under conditions of temperature and pressure that match the creation of our solar system 4.55-4.6 billion years ago. Further study of the mineral might help scientists understand more about how minerals originally formed from the collapsing molecular cloud during that time. As the nebula cooled particles of matter began to group together and minerals were precipitated. Those minerals that form at the highest temperatures would obviously have formed earliest, and krotite would have been amongst the first.

Wassonite was discovered in an Antarctic meteorite which had been found some 42 years ago. The crystals of the mineral were too small to be seen until recent technology - the Bond-villain-esque ion beam - allowed a proper analysis. Wassonite is titanium sulphide. And really, really tiny.

As technology develops mineralogists will be able to find more and more minerals in meteorites. Meteorites are pretty tremendous in themselves, just for being a rock that's fallen out of space, but when you think of them as some of the first solids to have formed at the formation of our solar system, they gain a little something. Respect your elders.

Old school malware

Phone rings.

'Good afternoon, Mr Wood's Fossils.'
'Hello, can I speak to Matt Dale, please?'
'Speaking.'
'Hello Mr Dale. Are you in charge of the company's computers?'
'Um. Yes'.
'I'm calling from the Computer Maintenance Department.'
'The what? Computer Maintenance Department of what?'
'Of Microsoft. Do you use Microsoft Windows?'
'Yes.'
'We are calling because your warranty has expired, which is why we have been receiving error messages in our department.'
'Which warranty? I haven't been getting any error messages. My computer's fine. What are you talking about?'
'Your software's warranty has expired, leaving your computer open to virus infection. We have been receiving error...'
'My software's warranty. Right. Well, I haven't had any error messages, and I have anti-virus. Everything's fine. Thanks for being so worried. Got to go now. Bye.'

Hang up.

Cut glass

Obsidian is a volcanic glass made when lava cools very rapidly. It happens too quickly for a distinct structure to form and when fractured, the edges can be just over a molecule thick. Which makes for a pretty sharp edge. Unsurprisingly, then, it's perhaps best known for its use in prehistoric times as a source of arrowheads, cutting blades and the like. Less well known is that obsidian is used to make surgical scalpel blades now, as they produce a narrower cut than a conventional steel blade and result in less scarring.

Most obsidian looks black at first glance, but on closer inspection it is usually translucent if thin enough and dark brown, grey or even greenish in colour. Above left is a polished piece of rainbow obsidian. Layers of tiny bubbles arranged along flow layers create a colourful iridescent effect. There are other well-known forms called mahogany, where high concentrations of iron makes a red/brown pattern throughout, and snowflake obsidian, which has clusters of white cristobalite.

Apache tears (shown right) are little blobs of obsidian found near Superior, Arizona. They are found surrounded by grey/white perlite, which is a hydrated form of obsidian. These little pebbles have a folk story of their own. In the 1870s, a group of US cavalry and volunteers set out to attack a band of Pinal Apaches, prompted by repeated cattle raids on a nearby settlement. The Apache, seventy five strong, were attacked at Big Pacacho and most of their number were killed in the initial gunfight. The remaining warriors, rather than submit to the cavalry, committed suicide, riding their horses over the cliff to their deaths. The tears of their families, on falling to the white sands surrounding the base of the cliffs, were turned to stone by the creator, Ussen, to mark the memory of the fallen Apaches.

Certified

Riley found this image on the net the other day. Sadly it was without context. Would be nice to know how extensive the publication is; whether it goes on to explain why it thinks the planet is only thousands of years old.

I get asked about the dating of fossils frequently, and it's a logical question. How do we know? People ask if they get a certificate of authenticity with their fossil and I have to explain that there is no world authority on everything fossily that supplies a thumbs-up sticker with every sale. With all sales in the shop the customer takes away a label with the basic details. Age, locality, name, etc. The fossils I sell do come with tags on them that tell us how old they are. There's a degree of trust involved here. The label I write then becomes a de facto certificate. It legitimizes the fossil somehow, and I sometimes feel a bit guilty about that. Why should people suddenly take what I write on a card as truth? I do not work out the ages myself. I don't do the tests personally. However - I have an understanding of how the dating processes work, and I know that the tests are repeatable, empirical, objective. Facts are objective. Truth is subjective. I feel comfortable that I'm passing on the best information I have when I sell something - it's important to me that I get as much right as I can. It's very much in the interests of the wholesalers to know as much about their stock as possible, and most do. When they provide detailed information, I'm happy with that. When there is some doubt or missing data, I'll try to look into it; try to find out more by spending a little time on the internet reading about the fossil or the site it came from. It's as 'true' as it can be.

Which takes me back to the original question - why believe the ages involved? My answer is - why not? For a long time I had a regular visitor to the shop who would ask me about my lack of religious belief and he told me he didn't believe the age of the Earth was 4.55 billion years old. He said that just 'felt wrong'. That he couldn't really comprehend that scale of time and that the biblically derived estimations of age as a few thousands of years were far more likely. In reply I'd tell him I didn't think that was justification enough to disregard the scientific view and embrace one based on far more dubious principles. The calculations involved, I mean. To get to be a scientist working in a specialised field takes years of study and a deep understanding of their subject. Why would I not put more store in what they say about that topic than someone who knows nothing about it? I'd far rather put my trust in tried and tested scientific processes than take the religious line without asking why. How can blind faith be regarded as more worthy than reason and critical thinking?

Where it all went wrong

I need a healing stone.
What sort of stone - do you know the name?
A healing stone - so my friend can take the next step.
Well I can give you this book to look through and you can...
Nah, nah, I don't need that. I'll just look... right - there it is. No, dinnae wrap it up, just give us it here.
You don't want to know what it is? 
It's £3.50.
But a label with the name, I mean?
Nah, nah. Nae disrespect man, but that's where it all went wrong.
Where did it all go wrong?
Naming things.

Time of our lives

Our planet is about 4.55 billion years old. Billion. That's four and a half thousand million, or 4,550,000,000. That's a really long time. We humans have only been around for a couple of hundred thousand years as we are now. We've really only been aware of these things for a relatively short time.

You've heard the metaphors before - if the history of the Earth were a 24hr period, etc. This site lets you work out your own metaphor. An easy one being that if the planet's history were laid out as a metre, recorded human history would be the last .002174mm. We just haven't been around that long. It seems like it to us, but we haven't. Until recently we were more concerned with where our next meal was coming from than the bigger questions - why we're here, how we got here. Where are we going? Who's that crouching behind the bushes? We're not geared up for thinking in geological time - we've not had any need to and it remains largely beyond our comprehension.

So. Why am I dribbling on about time and human insignificance again? Well - earthquakes have been in the news a great deal of late. Horribly tragic headlines from a number of countries. It seems to us, amidst the turmoil and disaster, that there have been an unusual number of big quakes in a short period of time, and the natural reaction is to look for a reason behind this. Is there a pattern? Where is it leading? We know a lot more about what causes earthquakes now, and roughly where they are more likely to occur. We can even have a stab at predicting events based on gaseous emissions, small tremors and so on, and seismologists are getting better at it. But as for discerning a pattern within a broader setting, that's just not possible. We view things from our own understanding of time. Geological time is another thing altogether, and current seismic happenings can only really be given their true context with proper hindsight. Not now, and not in the near future. Statistics based on so little information are next to meaningless, and there is no point scaring everyone with warnings of megaquakes, supervolcanoes, Godzilla attacks and so on. In the backs of our minds we know they can happen, but there's not much we can do about it. In a few billion years another galaxy will probably crash into ours, or the sun will turn into a red giant and eat us up. Gather ye roses.

Mother Earth

This Saturday I'll have a stall at a pagan conference. A gathering of witches and druids and so on. It's the third year in a row and it's been enjoyable enough so far - I don't take a great deal on the day, but it costs very little to set up and I think I get a bit of business from it afterwards. I'm not a pagan. I'm very firmly atheist and don't hold any religion or spiritual belief in any great regard. On the whole they're a very friendly bunch - and I'd have to say I can understand the underpinning of spiritual belief with all things natural. Just seems more accessible to me than the more - what? - human-centred religions. An embracing of the natural world rather than some historic prophetic figure.

The world of science has a religion of its own, of sorts, and at its core it has some resemblance to many of the tenets of paganism. In the 60s, James Lovelock, an environmental scientist working for NASA on the possibility of life on Mars. developed an idea that became the Gaia Hypothesis. He worked on it through the 60s and 70s before publishing Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth in 1979. Gaia was the Greek goddess of the Earth. The Earth Mother: a central figure in many belief systems. The central idea of Gaia, very simply put, is that the planet is some sort of self-regulating entity, reacting to constantly changing conditions to maintain some sort of balanced environment suitable for life. A range of interpretations have emerged and broadly the hypothesis can be split into Hard and Soft Gaia, which in turn cover a spectrum of more specific definitions.

I don't have the time, the space or the ability to give an in-depth explanation of the full hypothesis. However - I'll give a brief summary a go.... Soft Gaia holds that most of the processes of life on Earth are connected and influence each other and their surrounding environment directly. That living beings have changed their habitat by their very presence. It's hard to deny there's some truth to this and science will always be learning more about how the natural world fits together and operates as it does. Soft Gaia does not claim the planet has an active part to play in this, though. Hard Gaia goes further, though again along a sliding scale of immersion. It suggests the Earth is more actively self-regulating, and to this way of thinking the extreme is a living entity in itself. Mother Earth watching out for herself, taking steps to redress damage inflicted by her wards. Within this, some believe that all life is intrinsically connected to the point of it all being part of one living whole, a being of beings. You can see how this begins to become quasi-religious.

The concept wasn't exactly universally embraced - Lovelock came in for a bit of stick from the scientific world. Nonetheless, it's stuck around and Lovelock has had a long and very successful career. He's a formidably bright guy, and has been an active environmental campaigner, turning to his hypothesis from time to time to reflect contemporary understanding of green issues. The increasing awareness of global climate change and the unfortunate effect humanity has had on pretty much everything around us has ensured Gaia has stayed firmly in the consciousness. Soft Gaia's highlighting of interconnectivity is a productive outcome - we have become better at anticipating the potential implications of actions we may have previously thought of in isolation.

To me, while a nice idea, Hard Gaia is almost a shrugging of responsibility; a dereliction of duty. Like most religions, I see it as a reassurance - someone, something is taking care of stuff. Taking care of us. It doesn't really matter what we do to the planet, because it can look after itself. I see the appeal, but we need to accept that there are consequences for what mess we humans make.

Wee things big

I got a new toy - a USB microscope. It's not quite as effective as a proper microscope but it's fun to play around with, wasn't too expensive and is easy to use. Plug it into the computer, load a bit of software and muck around. I'm not entirely sure why I got it.

So now I need something to do with it. I think I might have a monthly competition on the Facebook page - name the mineral/fossil win a prize. Actually, monthly sounds like a lot of work. Perhaps annual.

When I stumbled into studying geology I was surprised at just how big a field it was. Maths, physics, chemistry, statistics, biology, etc. A large chunk of time was spent staring down a microscope at thin sections of minerals, learning to identify crystal shapes, growth patterns, associations and so on. I got there, eventually, but I never learned to love the microscope. Maybe that will change.

As you can see, I've had a play around with it now and these images are the results of two or three minutes fiddling. Haven't had to tinker with the images, though, and I'm pretty impressed with the quality given the price. Amber with bugs seemed the obvious choice and it looks like it's going to be quite useful for that alone.

Bring the hair

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I want a mammoth. The Japanese team at Osaka's Kinki University made the news again this week. They hope to 'make' a mammoth within the next few years. They started the project a while ago, but had to abandon the work they had done on skin samples as they found the cell damage from ice was too advanced. Scientists at another Japanese university recently had success in cloning a mouse from frozen cells giving the Kinki team fresh hope. That aside, cloning techniques with other animals have advanced since then and the group hope a new find on their summer trip to Siberia will provide material in viable condition. Global warming has resulted in more mammoth finds in Siberia and the problem in finding one is mostly one of time and transportation.

The process involves the insertion of mammoth cells into elephant eggs with their own nucleus removed, to produce an embryo which is then implanted into an elephant to carry to birth. The optimism of the Kinki bunch is all very well, but significant problems lie ahead. Even if they find their material (and they may yet turn to previous finds in the hands of Russian academic bodies) and it's in decent shape, the percentage of prepared elephant eggs that turn out to be usable is still very low. While the numbers involved still make the project look like something of a long shot, it's a step along the way. I think at some point in the near future a mammoth will be born for the first time in nearly four thousand years.

There are some ethical considerations. Let's leave aside the negligibly weak 'playing god' argument and focus on the fuzzy little bundle of joy itself. If and when it's born, it'll be all alone. That's a fairly bleak thought, and brings to mind the footage of the last thylacine from the Australian zoo in the 30s. So if it's to be done, I think there should be more than one - and it's pretty safe to assume there will be. Having sunk so much time and effort into the campaign so far, it would be weird to stop at one, barring disaster. Another concern that has been raised is the spectre of commercialism. Is this being done for scientific or financial reasons? Let's be generous and say primarily the former, but it's unrealistic to discount the pull and potential of the latter. Make the most of it, I'd say - go the whole hog and make a Jurassic Park equivalent. Seems to be their ultimate intention, after looking into a bit more - Pleistocene Park. Mammoths and mastodons, woolly rhinos, cave bears, aurochs, smilodons, Irish elk - the works. Revenues can fund further research. And I get to see the hairy beasts.

Dinosaur mad, he is

A slow March day. Maybe even summon up the energy to dust some stuff. Glance at the clock. 2.34.

Guy comes in, and up to the counter.
'You got any dinosaur stuff?'
'Yes - there are a few teeth to choose from - Spinosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, Edmontosaurus, Triceratops... There's some eggshell, bone, coproli...'
(Interrupting) 'Any T.rex teeth? See, what it is... My boy, right, he loves dinosaurs. It's all dinosaurs at the moment. Dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dinosaurs. T. rex is his favourite. Got any T. rex teeth?'
'No, afraid not. They're really expensive - I don't see very many and I couldn't afford to buy and sell them anyway. Have a look at these, though. Carcharodontosaurus were very similar to Tyrannosaurus in size and shape - they filled the same role in Northern Africa as T. rex in North America. Quite a range of prices - got some at £32 and the biggest is this one at £330. They look a lot like T. rex teeth.'
'Hmm. What about Velociraptor claws? Got any of those?'
'No, sorry. Claws are far, far more expensive than teeth. Dinosaurs grew and shed teeth constantly, so for every one dinosaur there could be thousands of teeth over its lifetime. The last claw I had was this size and £300 I think, but I haven't got one at the moment. There are plenty teeth to choose from though. I sell a lot of these Spinosaurus ones at £5 and £16.'
'He loves T. rex. Dinosaur mad, he is. Knows all the names and everything.'
'Well what about a bit of dinosaur eggshell?'
'What are these things? Snails?'
'They're ammonites. Sort of like an octopus that lived in a spiral shell.'
'I'll take one of these. And one of those things, there.'
'That's a brachiopod.'
'And one of these, too, please. What's this?'
'An oyster.'
'Right.'
'That's £15, please. Thanks. Bye.'
'Bye.'

Glance at the clock. 2.41. Reach for the glass polish and the cloth.

Here comes the sea

On the shelf at the back of the shop there are some Mesosaurus brasiliensis fossils. Mesosaurs were long-necked reptiles that lived in freshwater lakes in the Early Permian. Big deal? The important thing about mesosaurs is exactly where they were found. Finds of the same age in Southern Africa and Eastern South America were one of the first signs of continental drift and plate tectonics in general. They had been swimming in lakes which had formed in rift valleys as the supercontinent of Gondwanaland began to pull apart.

Plate tectonics has been big news of late, sadly, with earthquakes causing horrendous destruction and tens of thousands of deaths in Japan and New Zealand. It may not make the news all the time, but it is happening all the time. The Earth's surface is comprised of a group of plates which are moved around by the convection currents created in the molten rock of the core beneath them. The relationship between the plates is complicated but their constant movement has shaped the face of the planet - the atlas would look very different were it not for continental drift. Far more is known about the processes involved now than even a few decades ago. David Attenborough remembers a skeptical geology lecturer dismissing the idea when he was at university. There is still a lot to be learned about how the plates interact, though. A fuller understanding may help seismologists predict earthquakes over the longer term, so it's an area that deserves to see a lot of research.

Africa and South America parted ways some 200 million years ago, but in Eastern Africa a similar process is happening right now. The Rift Valley in Ethiopia is a depression caused by the pulling apart of the continental crust as - very slowly - a new ocean is formed. It's not like you need worry about having to buy a new map or anything; it's going to take quite some time. In geological terms, though, the separation is happening pretty quickly, and the volcanoes and earthquakes are a sign of what's happening not far below the surface.

Internet Business Database Company Online Directory

Most of the calls I get are not people wanting to buy things, but people wanting to sell things. Advertising. Electricity. Phone line rental. Most weeks I will get a call from someone from a company with a name made up from a small group of words. Internet, business, online, directory, marketing, database, company, and pages.

I'm not the best at remembering company names, really, but I do tend to have a vague idea of adverts I've paid for through the year. The first time I got one of these calls I was a little confused. Who? Internet Business Database? Hmm. You're checking to see if I want to make any changes to my listing this year? At first there's no mention of any cost, so as the guy runs through his checklist of contact details and keywords I nod to myself, make the right noises. Then it comes to the part about how much I need to pay for this year's listing. Good news, though - they can offer me an extra six months free as I'm an existing customer. I'm worried that I don't remember becoming a customer in the first place and tell the guy I need to check first. I tell him to call me back another day as I have a customer.

I run back through the books for a year, two years. No mention of Internet Business Database. I haven't paid them anything. The guy never calls back, but a few weeks later - a call from Business Directory Online. Similar spiel. This time I'm suspicious, so I ask how long ago I took out the advert. A pause, then 'Eighteen months'. Okay. I know fine well this time that I didn't. How much did it cost me last time? '£120 plus VAT'. I tell him I don't remember ever dealing with his company and that I don't want to continue the listing in any case. His reply was something along the lines of 'Oh - sorry - must be some mistake in our system. Bye'.

In the case of bigger companies with larger advertising budgets and more staff, I'm sure it's easy to lose track of which ads have been taken out in the year and assume the call is genuine. These scams must be effective enough to be worth pursuing because the calls, with small variations in company name, brilliant offer and small details, are frequent now. The last time I cut him off straight away with 'Don't bother' and hung up. Next time I'm going to string them along, though. Ask them why I still haven't received payment for the fossil they bought from me 18 months ago. I'll be happy to continue my listing if they send me the cheque for the balance of £314.

I have had a couple of slightly more sinister ones, telling me not that my listing is about to run out, but that I owe money for an advert campaign which has already been running. Those seem far more obvious to spot, though - not many internet marketing companies would do the work first and call later about payment. The people in this instances are aggressive to the point of threatening and I got incredibly angry with one woman who said I should expect to be taken to court by their legal department. I'm not really sure about what the proper thing to do in these circumstances. I should probably find out, really. Scum.

Earn your stripes

One of the things I was glad to get at the show in Arizona was Zebra Rock. I'd seen it around for a few years and while I'd bought a piece for myself, I'd thought it too expensive to work in the shop. Last year I noticed some at a far more reasonable price and gave it a go - lots of little tumblestone-sized pieces and a few larger lumps. It went very well. This year I couldn't find exactly the same stuff, but the seller told me he had a lot of rough material at another venue. A couple of days later I found it, and picked out a few kilos from a huge barrel. I'll need to wash it and sand it down a little, but the extra effort will be well worth it.

It's unusual stuff, and there has been a lot of discussion on exactly how it formed. It was first found in Argyle Station, in East Kimberley, Western Australia in the 1920s by a geologist visiting from New York. This locality is now under reservoir water and more sources have been found nearby - the stuff I have is from Kununurra, a little further North.

It's a silicious argillite - that's clay or siltstone with quartz and is pre-Cambrian in age; over 600 million years old. What makes it special, though, is its amazing banding pattern. It varies from spots to (more frequently) stripes but usually surprisingly regular. It looks like it has been hand-painted. These bands and how they were formed is the subject for debate. Originally it had been thought that it was the result of deformation of original sedimentary layers, or possibly the introduction of an iron-rich mineral into a pale clay. The grain-size and texture is consistent across the pattern, though, which would suggest the first of these is unlikely and the structure of the patterning provides difficulties for the second. What seems the most plausible explanation is that hematite-rich bands are the result of a hydrothermal precipitation of sorts - mineral-saturated water moving through the body of rock distributing iron-rich patches as it built sufficient concentration. This paper provides a better explanation than I can, and looks at the part magnetism may have played. Be warned - it's complimacated and has far more words than pictures. It's enough for me - and most others - that it looks nice.

Kicked by Thunder Thighs

A new sauropod has been found in a Utah site and named Brontomerus mcintoshi. Thunder thighs. Nice. The designation is on the strength of bones from two specimens collected in the 90s from the Hotel Mesa Quarry in Grand County, Utah, dated to about 110 million years old. Its hip bones suggest huge thigh muscles, hence the name. Comparing the bones with those of better-known relatives, it's thought the adults may have been around 14 metres long and weighed six tonnes. The heavy musculature of the upper rear limbs meant the animal could probably have delivered hefty kicks, either for defence or to establish dominance for mating rights. It may also have been able to 'stand up' for short periods, perhaps for browsing. Another suggestion is that the extra strength could have been to power very long legs - not enough material was found to support this idea, though.

A nice find. What really caught my attention, though, was the kicking given to commercial collectors in the article. A large chunk was given over to it. It describes the bones as 'rescued' from the quarry, and in this case I don't think the journalist means saved from the elements. The piece says the site 'has been looted by commercial fossil-hunters' and Dr Taylor, one of the researchers involved, describes the site as vandalised. He says commercial collectors smashed up the bones they didn't want - which seems unlikely to me. They may well have been broken but it's purely speculative to say how, why (if intentional at all) and by whom.

I definitely understand his frustration at not having more of the specimen(s) to study, and of course anyone collecting - privately, commercially or academically - needs to go about it correctly, respecting the site and material and recording helpful information. Seeing bone material used to weigh down a tarpaulin would annoy me, too. Reading a little more about the site's history shows the place 'previously known to private collectors' and that collecting had gone on there for some time. Difficult to see how the research team can feel all proprietorial about it - because they weren't there first and didn't find everything they wanted the site has been 'pillaged'? A bit rich if you ask me.