Marie marie

Finally got all my plans set for the French show. It's in St Marie aux Mines, in Alsace. Very pretty part of the world. It's always sunny when the show's on - hot, usually. This is broken sporadically by huge thunderstorms and very heavy downpours, but they are normally short-lived. Doesn't seem like it when you are trying to get back to sleep in your tent.

There are other shows in Europe, but this one has most of the exhibitors I want to see and it's not too expensive to go. I don't have to spend anything like as much as in Tucson to make it worthwhile and that's just as well with the Euro currency rate at the moment.

I try to tie my flights in with those of friends and travel on together, but that hasn't worked this year. So I'll be flying on my own to Switzerland and getting a train to a town a few miles from where I want to end up. Which is on a cider apple orchard/farm somewhere near a road. By some fields. This is going to be easy.

Last year there was an armed siege right beside the show. I watched it all. Exciting, in parts. I'll post about it next time.

How much?

Some friendly Canadians.

'Can we have this ammonite, please?'

'Of course. Would you like a stand to go with it? They're sixty pence.'

'How much is that?'

'Sixty pence. 60p.'

'But how much is that?'

'Em. Well. A bit more than 50p; a bit less than 70p. Point six of a pound. What do you mean?'

'Oh - like sixty cents?'

'A bit, yes.'

'Ok. We'll have one.'

Ida

Yesterday, with some fanfare, the fossil primate Darwinius masillae was displayed in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. There has been a great deal of hype about this fossil, which, given it was actually found in 1983, seems a little contrived. It's a very important fossil, without doubt, but a lot more study needs to be done before it quite lives up to its billing. It had been in a private collection until is was bought by the univeristy of Oslo a couple of years ago.

The site it came from is a famous fossil locality - Messel, near Frankfurt in Germany. The Messel pit its home to an oily shale that contains fossils preserved with incredible detail. The deposits are Eocene, and are roughly 46 to 50 million years old. Aside from thousands of fish, the site has yielded birds, crocodiles, insects and a number of different mammals - bats, mice, horses, pangolins and more. Fur, feathers, scales are all beautifully preserved, but the shale is so delicate that fossils are usually given some form of supportive backing. I currently have a fish that is set in a sort of fibre glass sheet. The Messel pit was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the mid-90s.

Ida, as she's been called, was at first thought to be a relative of lemurs, but had a number of simian characteristics, leading some to trumpet her as a 'missing link' fossil in the human lineage. The presence of opposable thumbs, fingernails and dental details suggest she lies somewhere around the division between prosimians (modern lemurs, bushbabies, etc) and simians (higher primates, like Old World monkeys, apes and you). So while she might not be a direct human ancestor, she's likely to be a close cousin to our ancestral monkeyman.

Jewels

This week a South African blue diamond was sold at auction in Geneva for £6.2 million after a bit of a bidding war. This makes it the most expensive blue diamond ever. It's set in a platinum ring, and doesn't look very big. If I was spending that much, I'd probably want something a little bigger. Car-sized, maybe, or at least the size of an overweight cow. The diamond will be named by its new owner. Unlike Cabbage Patch dolls, they don't come with a wee label with their name, hobbies, etc. What will it be called? Is it like a show dog or racehorse where they have their 'stage' name, like Fragrant Broccoli Starfield for example, and then their 'pet' name, such as Stumpy? I don't know the answer to this.

Diamonds, in their purest form, are colourless. They are pure carbon. The presence of trace elements during formation, radiation and also slight physical deformations can influence the colour, though, and diamonds can be found in a number of colours. After clear, the most commonly found are brown and yellow, where Nitrogen is present. Red, pink, orange, violet, green, purple, blue and black varieties are also found. Black diamonds are usually the result of inclusions of graphite, the 'lead' in a pencil and another form of pure carbon, but as soft as diamond is hard. Blue diamonds are formed when there is boron present.

Diamonds form when carbon-rich rocks are subjected to high pressures at (geologically speaking) relatively low temperatures. While almost all are formed deep under areas of the Earth's continental plates (not oceanic), very small diamonds can be formed on meteorite impact. It's no use squeezing a lump of coal to form a diamond. That doesn't work. Even after 37 minutes. I got bored.

And another thing

On Saturday, a Jehovah's Witness came into the shop and told Riley that all the fossils on Earth were deposited during the flood that Noah floated about on. Now - I've heard this argument many times before and more than one religion sticks to this demonstrably wrong line.

When Riley asked what happened to the animals found in the fossil record that are no longer running around, the answer was that the wicked animals had not been saved. Whether this slight twist is the party line or not, I have no idea. But I like it as an explanation...

The dinosaurs all died because they were naughty.

Red in tooth and claw

There's a very rich Cretaceous site in the Kem Kem area of Morocco. Lots of dinosaur teeth are found there. Lots. The stone is mostly a crumbly, pinkish sandstone and while the teeth and bones found are quite fragile, the preservation can be remarkably good. There are a few animals found in the stratigraphy - the T.rex-like Carcharodontosaurus, the sauropod Rebacchisaurus, the raptor Deltadromeus, crocodiles and a pterosaur, Sirrocopteryx.

For me, though, the most notable find of this area is Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. Spinosaurus was originally found and named in Egypt in the early 1900s but the original holotype was destroyed during WWII. Other examples have been found in Egypt and Tunisia, but the Kem Kem churns out bucketloads of Spino teeth and some claw and bone material.

Spinosaurus is thought to be the biggest carnosaur found so far. Estimates put the weight between 7 and 9 tonnes, and between 50 and 60 feet in length. It is related to the Baryonyx of England and Brazil's Irritator, has a long, crocodilian snout, simple, smooth teeth with slight vertical ridges and a large 'sail' on its back.

The skull and jaws show a long muzzle with raised nostrils - a little like crocodiles. It's thought Spinos may well have eaten fish as well as smaller dinosaurs and probably scavenging. More recent research has suggested that the shape of the extended vertebral bones that form the 'sail' is consistent with those in modern buffalo with large fatty humps on their backs. Spinos may have had more of a lump than a sail. Not quite so dashing.

Bit of a side note here. As with many dinosaur genera, there are arguments about many aspects - range in size, purpose of sail/hump, palaeoenvironment, etc. Recently it was realised that modelling of dinosaurs and creation of assemblages from articulation of bones etc left too little allowance for intervertebral discs. With a more realistic spacing of vertebra, most dinsoaurs may well have actually been much bigger than previously thought.

Spinosaurus was one of the stars of the Jurassic Park series, appearing in the third film to smash the T.rex about, and bite his face off. Bragging rights to the Spino.

Bilbo finds his feet

This month more light was shed on the origins of the hobbit - Homo floresiensis. It's a hominid species that was discovered six years ago in caves on an Indonesian island. They're a little controversial, these guys. And little. About a metre tall - hence the hobbit tag. Nobody knows if they had hairy feet.

Anyway - they are very interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, bones have been found dating between 95,000 years and 12-13,000 years. That's not very long ago, even within the human evolutionary timeframe. It's thought they lived alongside modern H. sapiens. Well, possibly in different caves.

Secondly, a number of scientists argue that they are not a distinct species. Some have said the solitary complete skull found is a bit of an anomoly, others saying the whole colony was a group of pinhead dwarf humans. More recent study has shown considerable differences between the hobbit skull and human microcephalic skulls, pointing towards the distinct species theory. Further research on the bones of the arms and wrists support this and would seem to provide conclusive evidence that the hobbits split from the hominid line earlier than H. sapiens.

Similarities to Australopithecus, a hominid that died out in Africa about 1.5 million years ago have led to suggestions that an ancestor of Australopithecus or Homo habilis left Africa earlier than it was previously thought. As with other species living on isolated islands, they remained separate and distinct from other species. The Out of Africa migration of modern humans is thought to have taken place between 80,000 and 50,000 years ago. By this time, clearly, hobbits had already been established in their Indonesian caves. The rapid spread of Homo sapiens into Europe and across the globe led to the disappearance of all other hominid species. (Something we said?) Seems like the hobbits lasted a bit longer than the rest.

Drumming fingers

Today is a quiet day. A couple of customers have been in, but no sales. There are days when it does get a little frustrating; when you want to go marching up and down the street with a placard or something. There are things I should be doing. Still a big batch of sectioned ammonites to be priced and labelled, still the hoovering I meant to do yesterday. Still coffee to make.

I was born profoundly lazy. Nothing can be done.

What can I do to motivate myself? Set goals? Reward myself with a caramel wafer? Stab the back of my hand with a fork? One of the forks in the shop is pretty sharp. That may work.

Hang on.

No. I have a sore hand, but no inclination to go into the basement for the boxes of fossils. Maybe I should start with small, manageable targets. I will make some coffee.

Stalled

This weekend I'm setting up a Mr Wood's Fossils table at a convention. This will be the first time I've done it, and it's taken quite a while to get ready. Working out what stock I should take, trying to remember what else I may need. It's a long list - bags, pens, labels, tablecloth, float, stands, fliers, and plenty more.

The convention is taking place not far from the shop, but rocks are notoriously heavy. And I have a lot of them to lug about. Hopefully a good few less afterwards. Because it's a Saturday, I wouldn't have been in the shop, so I'm not paying any extra out in wages and it wasn't not expensive to pay for the table - so hopefully it'll work out pretty well. Even if it proves a bit of a washout, I have to think longer term. I could pick up a few new customers, so I'll be handing out cards and fliers left, right and centre.

I don't spend that much on advertising, though I get approached a lot. It's really difficult to know what's effective. Or at least cost-effective. Word-of-mouth has always been the most powerful marketing tool for Mr Wood's Fossils. I place a lot of emphasis on customer service in the hope that customers go away with a good impression, remember the shop and maybe tell a couple of friends. I'm looking forward to the weekend - at least to see what it's like to run a stall. Maybe it'll be something I could do a little more often.

Coprolite

When people say you can't polish a turd, don't believe them.

Coprolites are fossil dung. The one above is from a turtle. Probably quite a big turtle. I get asked how you can tell which animal 'laid' it. It's not always possible, but at times a direct comparison can be with recent examples. Preferably not that recent. In other instances, clues can often be found in the stratigraphy. It's usually possible to piece together a reasonable understanding of the palaeoenvironment; where and how the animal was living. Also, sections can be made, allowing a look inside the jobby. Exciting work.

A site in Moab, Utah provides a great deal of this stuff, and very often you can see little cross sections of undigested plant material in the polished surface. Found amongst the coprolites are the occasional gastrolith, or gizzard stone. Like some animals today, many dinosaurs ingested pebbles to help them break down tough plants in their gut. I wouldn't suggest you eat a handful of gravel before your tea, but it was very helpful for some of the sauropods of the Jurassic.

Much of the plant material in these coprolites is preserved as a vibrant red jasper, and the most colourful stuff is graded out and used to make jewellery. A few years ago there was a bit of a Hollywood craze for wearing coprolite jewellery. Didn't really catch on here, unfortunately.

Shaken

Monday's earthquake in Italy has left over 200 dead, many more injured and thousands homeless. Towns and villages were devastated. The timing of the quake, in the early hours of the morning, must have been a factor in the number of deaths, but the fact is that there is still no reliable way of accurately predicting an event.

I did see the story of a seismologist who had measured increased levels of radon gas emissions in the days preceding the earthquake. He was convinced something was coming, and felt his advice was going unheeded. He took to driving around the streets with a megaphone, trying to warn people to leave the area. It's a sad tale, but imagine what your reaction would be to that scene. Disbelief, at least. Concern for his sanity, possibly.

The truth is that it's an incredibly tricky business, seismology. Many influencing factors, unpredicability of timescales, and then the difficulty experienced by the frantic Italian in his van. Who will believe you? Err on the side of caution and you cost thousands of people time, money and inconvenience. And run the risk of crying wolf. Err on the side of negligence and the risks are considerably higher. Thankless task.

I read today that the Italians authorities are flying in dozens of clowns to go round the temporary camps 'entertaining' people. That's terrifying. You've lost your home and everything you own. You and your family are living in a tent, surrounded by hundreds of other shell-shocked families in tents. And then round the corner, through the rubble, comes a gang of twenty clowns.

Mess

Knee-deep in rocks, fossils, paper, cardboard and scraps of sticky white labels. Getting there.

Currently in the middle of washing a load of Californian jade which had been lying in somebody's basement in Arizona for years. It's nice stuff, and I got a great deal on it.

Somewhere along the line, a few boxes got a bit of a soaking. Not a problem for most rocks, you'd think, but there are some which will have an adverse reaction.Will have to repack quickly...

Tuesday

Nearly here. The Tucson containers have been unloaded in Bristol and my crates are currently being tampered with by Simon. Once he's finished, he'll kindly condense and ship them up to Edinburgh.

All being well, they should be on the pavement outside the shop sometime on Tuesday. And then an hour or so later, inside the shop.

It's a busy few days for me, but I enjoy them. Unpacking all the stuff I bought in January and February that I've almost forgotten about. Working out prices, making new labels, and getting things on the shelves.

On the sea shore

For Ada Lovelace Day...

Mary Anning was, for a long time, an unsung heroine of palaeontology. She lived in early 19th Century Lyme Regis, Dorset, on England's fossil-rich South coast. Her parents were poor, and her father supplemented his income making furniture by collecting and sellng fossils. There was a small tourist trade in fossils at the time, and Mary and her brother took to the beaches to help their father.

The fact that seven of Mary's brothers and sisters did not live past early infancy allows some insight into the circumstances of the time, and Mary was only eleven when her father died, leaving the family in even more desparate circumstances.

While Mary would have been selling her early finds to tourists, the science of palaeontology was by now beginning to find its feet. Fossil enthusiasts began to seek out fossil hunters to quickly expand their collections and understanding of their importance. It wasn't long before Mary was supplying these budding palaeontologists with material and they began to provide her with a steadier income.

Mary made some very significant finds, including the first complete ichthyosaur skeleton, a plesiosaur and even a pterosaur. Her family recieved a welcome financial hand from one of her customers, who sold his collection to help support Mary's work. It wasn't until much later in life that she began to recievemore official recognition for her discoveries. She was awarded regular funding for her contributions to science and, just before her death in 1847, was granted honourary membership of the Geological Society. Honourary only, as she was a woman.

The famous tongue twister 'She sells sea shells...' is thought to be about her.

Mother-of-pearl Day

Ammonite fossils sometimes show a mother-of-pearl like layer where the aragonite of the original shell has not changed to calcite, as usually happens. Light reflecting from the thin layers of aragonite undergoes an interference which leads to a beautiful spectrum of colour display.

Ammonites from Majunga in Madagascar can show this effect and those of a South Dakota locality, and there are some Somerset ammonites which can display fine colour too, but by far the best examples come from Placenticeras ammonites in 70 million year old rocks in Alberta, Canada. Here the stone is called ammolite (among other names) and the better grades of ammolite show a fantastically intense, opal-like colour.

Colour ranges across the spectrum, but greens and reds are most common. The purply-blues are rare, and fetch a bit more money. The highest grade gems can be pretty expensive, but it is possible to get nice colour at a reasonable price. Complete ammonites can be found, though they are rare and can take hundreds of hours of painstaking preparation to reveal the colour fully. Needless to say, the ammonites cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Ammolite has been officially classified as a gemstone, though quite what that means I don't know. Nobody's officially classified me as anything. Something to do with grading? Marketing? What I do know is that it looks great. It's one of my favourite stones. I try not to take stones home, but with ammolite I find it very difficult to part with some pieces. I buy mine from a good friend, who collects, cuts and polishes it himself. Not many people are allowed to collect the material, and it's also very difficult to actually find it. Can be dangerous, too - the best stuff is found on the steep, scree covered banks of a torrential river, accessible only for a short period of the year. A large part of the formation is found on a Kainah tribal reservation, and permission to collect is controlled.

The Blackfeet consider the stone to help with the buffalo hunt and call it buffalo stone. There aren't many buffalo near where I live, but I may try it out on some cows. I won't actually hunt them, though. Maybe just sneak up on them.

I've been selling ammolite in the shop for a decade now, and people love it. It took me a while to get round to selling jewellery, but now it's a jewellery line that is memorably different and it's been doing well. This year I picked out a few pendants but also got a bunch of pieces that I will get made into pendants and rings. It takes a bit of time to get them done that way, but is worth doing.

Thought as it was Mothers Day this weekend, I'd pick a gem as a theme today...

Hands off approach

Last week, I overheard a comment as a couple of people were leaving the shop. It's one I've heard a few times before, and went a little along the lines of:

'I don't think they should be allowed to take things from the Earth. It's like shells, isn't it?'

I can understand the conservational principles behind the thinking, but cannot agree with the sentiment. Firstly, there's a significant difference between the shell trade and fossils. Without knowing a great deal about the shell business I can't say what standard practice is, but there is at least the potential for dealers being pro-active - actually killing lots of cuddly little slime-lumps to sell their homes to somebody. Rather than just filling a bucket with shells from the beach after a high tide, for example. I don't know if this goes on or not and I don't want to be in any way accusatory, but my point is that with fossils, it can't. Nobody can go out with a shotgun, a flask of coffee and a couple of cheese and pickle sandwiches on a day's trilobite hunting. Beaten to the punch by hundreds of millions of years.

A common comment in the shop is 'Why aren't all these things in museums?'. I'm pretty sure I've addressed this issue in an earlier post. If I can be bothered, maybe I'll go and have a look later, and edit this. Would be a good exercise in posting a link, which I should get round to. (Stone sentinels - ooh, look, I could be bothered). Anyway, there's clearly a link with these lines of thinking. With one, an assumption of intrinsic scarcity leading to the feeling that everything should be locked away and looked after by somebody for the greater good. And with the other, perhaps, the feeling of collective ownership, or ownership by 'the planet' leading to a feeling of suspicion of those exploiting a common resource. Both 'hands off those fossils' lines of thinking, in different ways.

As I said, I have addressed the former point already, but one moment of tv annoyed me greatly. Let me vent for a second. Tony Robinson's Time Team archaeology program had a sideways dip into matters palaeontological a few years ago. Early in this programme, they stated that they knew very little about the subject, and less about the commercial side to the subject. Yet later on they were scathing and condemnatory about a little 'Mom and Pop' store they came across selling fragments of dinosaur bone and eggshell. They were horrified that anyone should be selling this precious and rare material, and were outraged that it wasn't all safely locked away in a museum somewhere. I don't think there would have been many museums that would have taken that stuff if they had offered to drop it on their doorstep. It's purely commercial material, of little or no scientific value. And they ought to have done a little research into that before writing off a whole industry like that.

On to the second 'pillaging the Earth' line. If fossils weren't collected then nobody would see them. Nobody would learn from them. Nobody would be able to appreciate their beauty. Those that are lying around on the surface may be seen by a few diligent beachcombers or desert wanderers, but would eventually be destroyed by the elements. Those buried within the rocks, the vast majority, would stay there, benefitting no-one, until the rock is eroded. However many fossils are found and collected (and sold), most will remain hidden from view.

One issue that I should probably raise here is the possibility that the Earth would 'feel' the loss of the stones. I mean as some sort of sentient being. Mother Earth. I've said before that I hold very strong atheist views, so this doesn't hold any water for me. Gaia Theory is a fascinating topic, and one I'll save for another post, but I would contend that it's a form of religion for scientists. Poor Mother Earth would also then presumably feel the loss of metal ores, oils and gases by that measure. In which case the loss of a few fossils here and there is small beer.

In the field

I did my geology degree at Glasgow University. At the time, the course provided more hours spent in the field than any other in Britain. Geological field trips are far from random. Destinations are selected very carefully.

Obviously, the geology and exposure of the area is important, but first and foremost is the weather. Geology can only properly be studied in temperatures that will make your nose turn black and fall off, fingers curl into pitiful talons and eyes freeze to icy marbles. Wind is vital - it has to be fierce, and, ideally, unpredictable. The cardinal rule, though, is that precipitation must be heavy and near constant. Gaps between raindrops, hailstones or snowflakes must only be enough to allow sheltered breathing.

This, perhaps, is why Scotland has been the source of so many key figures in the development of the science. During my time at Glasgow University we covered a great deal of Scottish soil. And saw very few days of clement weather. That said - our final year trip was from a choice of three. One to Ireland, one to the North of Scotland, where I had recently spent 6 weeks mapping, and one to the South of Spain. I went to Spain. It was very hot, very sunny, and there were a lot of bars fighting for the custom of a big group of sun-scorched students. The one downside of the trip - mammoth minibus journeys in baking heat, jolting around pitted, narrow, twisting and precipitous mountain roads. With hangovers.

My mapping project aside, the most memorable Scottish trip was to the Ardnamurchan peninsula. It's a truly lovely place, but, at least while we were there, not blessed with the most welcoming climate. It rained, snowed, hailed and was incredibly windy throughout, save for one memorable instant. the hotel we were staying in laid on packed lunches for the students every day. They tried to give us a little variety, but clinging to a rocky hillside in a howling hailstorm I remember not being overly pleased to be trying to spread a frozen block of butter onto a cream cracker with a flimsy plastic knife, with the reluctant lump of cheese-ice scowling at me before flying into the gale.

Later that day, though, the rain stopped, the wind died and a bright warm sun appeared from nowhere. It went quiet, and then we heard a muffled thundering noise. We looked around as the sound grew louder, and then around the bend in the valley came a huge herd of red deer. They ran right past, metres away, and disappeared over the small hill behind us. It was a magical moment, broken only when the rain resumed its war of attrition, very shortly after.

A downward spiral

Ammonites are often the first thing people thing of when fossils are mentioned. Their spiral-shelled form is iconic in palaeontology; memorably beautiful, appealing to artists and mathematicians alike.

They appeared in the Devonian, and died out alongside the dinosaurs during the extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous, 65 million years ago. Meantime, they survived two big extinctions, at the ends of both the Permian and Triassic. Tough cookies.

They are incredibly useful stratigraphic markers, providing clues as to the age of the rock layers they are found in, and by extension, helping show relationships between bodies of rock in different parts of the world.

The name ammonite comes from the Egyptian god Amun, who was, towards the latter part of his career as a deity, depicted as having the head of a ram. Rams, as most of you will know, have nice, tightly coiled spiral horns, and the resemblance to ammonites is obvious. See how convoluted I've managed to make this explanation? Pliny the Elder named the fossils he was finding after the horns of Amun. Pliny the Younger named them poo-stones (in Greek) and got a clip round the ear.

Going off at a bit of a tangent for a second, here, I love how the ancient Egyptians gave their gods animal heads. Real character. Maybe there were some that didn't get much press that had other animal body parts. A god with the legs of a chicken? The arms of a bear?

It is often assumed that the closest living relative of ammonites is the nautilus, and it's easy to see why. Most recent study, though, suggests that the octopus may be the true relative. Now a god with an octopus for a head - there's a winner. Don't think Cthulhu counts...

There's a fair bit of mythology attached to the ammonite. St Hilda of Whitby in the middle 600s AD was supposed to have killed all of the snakes in the area by decapitating them with her whip - the ammonites found around the Yorkshire coast were assumed to be the remains. Local craftsmen have carved heads on them to form lucky snakestones for centuries. In 5th Century India, ammonites were regarded as the embodiment of a god, 17th Century Germans considered them a charm against witchcraft, and many North American plains tribes carried them for good luck, too.

For me, though, they are simply one of the most appealing forms in nature. There's something magical about the spiral.

All the pretty fishes

The Green River Formation of Southwest Wyoming is has to be one of the favourite fossil localities of every fossil dealer on the planet. The many layers of micrite - muddy limestone - that compose the formation contain fossil fish of exquisite detail and in numbers that would make your eyes bulge from your head, pop and dribble down the front of your shirt.

And not just fish - bats, birds, reptiles and even a small horse have been found. These are rare, though, and fetch tidy sums. The beauty of the site is that it offers so much high quality material that there is sufficient to supply the academics with as much as they could possibly need whilst also providing a fantastic commercial line for the fossil trade.

The site(s) have been very well studied over the years and a great deal is known about the geological history. The rocks were laid down as a series of lakes, shifiting over time from about 58 million years ago for perhaps 15 million years. By far the most common fish found is the Knightia, below left, a relative of the modern herring, followed by Diplomystus, above right. Most of the fossil-bearing layers date to around the 50 million mark. There are 10 or 11 private quarries, many offering digging expeditions, and also a National Park, where some of the rarer material is carefully protected.

The amount and quality of the fossil material in the Green River Formation allows great insight into the environment of the area at the time. Leaves, seeds and even flowers from a number of plants can be found, and a good idea of the fauna is preserved within the rock - a snapshot of the area's wildlife.

Wyoming weather permits only a few months fossil hunting each year and the professional diggers make the most of it. They have to strike a delicate balance between keeping their potential finds intact whilst also shifting tons of rock about with heavy machinery. The more valuable finds are often from deposits from the edges of the lakes - mammals, birds, reptiles - and this material is also the hardest to access.

I've been invited to go digging a number of times. I'd love to go, but it would be difficult to justify financially, as I see the dealers at the Tucson show and buy from them there. One day, though.

Bright sparks

Yesterday was curtailed by a power cut. The joy often experienced by those excused work by elements beyond their control is not necessarily shared by small traders.

I had some customers in, and they stuck around for a while, as they had some questions about ammonite hunting. I showed them how it was usually possible to see the edge of the shell protruding from a nodule, and where the collector would then place the chisel to try to open it. By torchlight.

Yet again there are roadworks outside the shop - not sure why this time. On this occasion they drilled through an electricity cable, cutting off power to the bookshop next door. When my lights went off, I went next door to find that Mike had already been without electricity for a while and had done the sensible thing. Headed to the pub. I followed suit.

It can be exasperating, losing trade as a result of the ineptitude of others, especially when it's such a frequent occurrence.

Got to learn to stop griping about this stuff - back to geology next time.