Probe

Just had another visit from a born-again Christian who has been coming in for early morning discussions of late. He was, at first, a little cagey about revealing his motivation. His opening questions were about the ages shown on the labels in front of the fossils. To begin with, he just said he doubted that the earth was millions of years old but give his reason as being that it felt wrong.

Over subsequent visits, he has talked more about his religion, though, and shown that his scepticism of science is really based on countering anything that may undermine his interpretation of the bible. This involves, it transpires, an estimation of the age of the earth at somewhere between 6-10 thousand years. Back to that again. I know - it's just something of a sticking point with me. It seems to me, admittedly a firm atheist, there can be ways of incorporating new information into a faith and that people should not shoot themselves in the foot by flatly denying the obvious. By 'obvious' I'm not saying the earth is definitely 4.55-4.6 billion years old - science works by constantly revising current thinking - but that an age measured in only thousands of years is easily dismissed as nonsense. There are living trees almost 10,000 years old, and so far at least one example much older.

Anyway - he is a very nice guy and clearly very driven. He is, to his great credit, able to at least listen to my responses to his questions and give them some thought. I suspect I will be seeing more of him.

Treasure

Some guy found a huge pile of gold stuff while metal detecting in Staffordshire. I would like to find something like that.

Quite often customers confuse archaeology with palaeontology and make Indiana Jones jokes. I'm not like Indiana Jones, really. I realise that's hard to believe. Archaeology is concerned with the study of past human activity, culture and society through found artifacts and buildings etc. There is an element of overlap when it comes to the fossil record of human ancestry, but not much. Given humans have only been around for the blink of an eye in geological timescales, it's a small (but very interesting) area of the subject. A good example of palaeontology and archaelogy working together is studying the spread of tools across the continents. It's a useful addition to the hominid fossil record, and within more restricted ranges even the use of specific materials and designs can be tracked. Shows how people were moving from place to place, and perhaps early signs of trading and so on.

Denver

There's a big fossil and mineral show on in Denver at the moment. It's one I've never been to, though is a good size and is a regular for many of my friends. It's tough seeing all the pictures - feel like I'm missing out.

It would be difficult to justify going. I see most, if not all, of the dealers I'd want to at the Tucson show, and I'd have to buy a considerable amount to off-set the travel costs and so on. Same 'problem' with the Munich show and St Marie... One day I'll probably go, just to experience the show.

Mini rex

Quite a few articles around today about a description of a very small tyrannosaurid from around 35 million years before the larger-sized tyrannosaurid body shape started to appear.

Raptorex kriegsteini has lots of the characteristics of its famous relative, T. rex, and importantly shows that the distinctive features such as the skull shape and small forelimbs were in place well before they got all super-sized. These dinos were only 8 feet long, and weighed about the same as my friend Keith. Less than me.

The surprising thing about the discovery is just how little the body plan changed as it was scaled up. There were a few tyrannosaurs around North America and Asia throughout the later Cretaceous, and they weren't all as enormous as T.rex - a good example being Nanotyrannus lancensis, which deserves a post of its own - but the typical features are present in all.

Collecting glasses

Tektites are lumps of natural glass formed from terrestrial rock on the impact of a meteorite. The instantly molten rock is thrown high into the air, cooling and solidifying on the way down, so is often distributed some distance away from the impact crater. Not all meteorites have created tektites -in fact so far there are only a handful of tektite sources.

The first tektites were found in 1787 in the Vltava or Moldau River, in what's now the Czech Republic. These are now called Moldavite, and are perhaps most appealing example. They vary slightly in colour, but are generally a deep bottle green. They're prized for jewellery now and are often cut and faceted for setting. Moldavite is linked to a huge meteorite impact in Germany, the Nordlinger Ries crater, which occurred around 14 million years ago.

Elsewhere, the Chesapeake Bay impact in the US has produced tektites found in some Southern states, a grouping of sites around Western Africa are thought to link to an impact in Ghana and tektites found in Australia, China and South East Asia may come from one huge impact. In this case, though, the crater has yet to be identified and there is a good chance they may be from more than one event.

While the impact theory is almost universally accepted, there are a few other suggestions for tektite formation. The most interesting is that they are little lumps of lava from volcanoes on the moon. As wild as this sounds, there is at least some evidence to lend it some weight. Tektites are very dry. Drier than bone. Drier than a towel in a tumble drier in the desert. Moon lava is also very dry. And so... Well - there's more to it than that. I'm being glib.

Another stone I should bring up here is the controversial Libyan desert glass. Although it was first found a long time ago - tools were made with it in the Pleistocene - it still isn't entirely clear exactly what it is. Prevailing opinion now puts it as a tektite, though the shapes it takes are not the usual tektite forms, it is far lighter in colour and it has a far higher silica content than normal. I can't see how this cannot at least be partly attributed to the terrestrial rock in the area of impact, though. If the meteorite hit a sandstone, might the resulting tektites not be silica-rich? Still lots of research being done on this interesting rock, though.

Out of Georgia

There was an interesting talk at the British Science Festival in Guildford yesterday about hominid finds in Dmanisi, Georgia. The story itself is not new, with the first discoveries being made back in early 1990s, but the talk discussed the current thinking on the finds. You can read a little about it here, but the article is more than a little hyperbolic in its claims that the finds demolish the Out of Africa theory.

The skeletons and skulls date to around 1.8 million years old and are a more primitive species than Homo erectus, the folks responsible for what had previously been considered the first road trip out of Africa, around 1 million years ago. H. sapiens, us lot, didn't get round to heading North until relatively recently, maybe 100,000 years ago. Imagine the packing that went on. 'Look, I'm sure you're not going to need all those loin cloths. Just bring the extra hairy ones; it's probably going to be freezing.'

While still not certain, the Dmanisi finds resemble a more developed H. habilis or possibly closer to H. ergaster. It had been thought that erectus had been the most primitive hominid to make the trip into Eurasia. While the Out of Africa theory had regarded two major excursions from the continent as being the most significant, it had never ruled out any number of others at different times. It seems that these early Georgians had made the journey some considerable time before the more evolved erectus left for pastures new, but that does nothing to undermine the theory's main points, as the species was clearly a bit of an evolutionary dead end.

The article linked to above suggests that at some point the Georgian hominids may have made the return journey to Africa and continued to feed into the evolutionary melting pot. I see no need for this to have happened at all. Seems much more likely that not everyone went North in the first place and that probably the majority of the species stayed at home, where it was warm and they knew they could get tasty antelope.

Anyway - it's a topic I find fascinating. One thing is certain - as more finds are made, more evidence is revealed and we will be able to add to the story of human evolution and expansion from Africa.

Reality bites

Wow - dinosaur teeth!

Awww. They're blunt.

Home alone

Riley, the Mr Wood's Fossils auxiliary, has told me of his plans for the Christmas break. Like last year, the American Idle will be lounging around in his homeland for nearly a month. Such a slacker. This leaves me facing a month manning the shop on my own.

If you come in on a Saturday in the near future, please feel free to berate him for his lack of dedication. And if you come in during late December, please bring me a strong coffee.

None more black

Jet is very black. So much so that they call things that are really black jet-black. (Let's forget for a second that jet can also be dark brown). It has a long history of use in jewellery, despite it being more of a fossil than a mineral. It has - slightly condescendingly -been called a mineraloid. I'm always a little disappointed to be described as a humanoid. It's like I didn't quite make the grade.

Jet is actually a dense form of lignite - a coal. It's thought the best jet is fossilised Araucaria wood, better known as the monkey puzzle tree. Given how it can be found in the stratigraphy, most jet seems to have been initially deposited as driftwood. A softer form was originally laid down in freshwater. Another form of coal, anthracite, is often mistaken for jet, but true jet takes a far better polish than the pretenders.

Whitby, in Yorkshire, has long been a centre for jet jewellery, as some seams around that area provide very high grade material. A lot of material is also washed up on the beaches around that part of the coast, though it tends to be of lesser quality than the material directly mined. It's harder to find now, but there is still enough to keep a few jewellery makers going. Vikings used to come to Yorkshire to get jet, taking a break from their raping and pillaging to pick out a pretty brooch. The oldest jet jewellery, though, is thought to be between 16 and 17,000 years old, and plenty of 10,000 year old stuff has been found in Germany.

Queen Victoria was a big fan of jet. Because it's black and it went with her dresses. Her endorsement saw a bit of a boom in the trade. It's not quite as popular now as it was back then, or in the twenties, but it's still a nice stone. And I like nice stones.

Look!

Advertising is a tricky thing to get right. Because the shop is a little different, I get approached a lot. Newspapers, magazines, travel guides, web promoters, etc. I'm lucky in that I get a little more editorial than I might as, say, a card shop, but it can be very difficult to weigh up the pros and cons of each 'exciting opportunity'.

There are a couple of ways to gauge the effectiveness of advertising, but they can be clumsy and offputting at times. I take out a small and incredibly expensive advert in a tourist brochure that goes out in vast numbers all over the country. I have recently downsized the ad, as it had reached the point where I felt it may have become impossible to justify the expense. At least, with that one, people regularly come in waving the brochure. There are a couple of other Edinburgh tourist guides I go in most years, though I tend to vary it a little.

I also take out the occasional ad in the Scotsman and Evening News. With a newspaper ad, many people may see it, but it's a one day thing, quickly binned. Or recycled, of course. Web promotion seems even more nebulous, but at least some form of site traffic monitoring can be put in place in many cases.

I've recently had a spate of calls from website promoters suggesting I paid for their services last year and that it was time for me to renew. Or even, that i had agreed to split payment over two years and it was time for the next installment. This one was the fourth, and by this point I actually told the guy not that I didn't remember but that I didn't believe him. The first one was a little suspicious, but by the fourth over two months or so, I was certain it was a scam. A hard one to spot, though, as often money paid to push your website can seem like cash thrown into the wind.

However - I've had a few calls recently that I have listened to. I'm sponsoring a rubber chicken in a play in this year's Fringe. Gets my name in the program. I got to name the chicken, too. Woody. I'm going to have a 20 second ad running in the Ocean Terminal shopping centre for the next two years. It was a good deal, though it still added up to a hefty sum. I get to keep the rights to the ad, though, so maybe I'll be able to find something else to do with it. There will be some Mr Wood's Fossils 'advertorial' in Vogue this autumn, too. That was a call out of the blue. Apparently, someone had heard we sell meteorite pendants. Sadly, I won't be making the cover.

Bitten

There's a film out at the moment called Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus. Now, while I'm sure that almost everyone has a soft spot for giant-sized sea beasties - and especially sharks and octopuses - this film will probably not be an oscar winner. Harsh to judge a film on its title alone, but... You know.

I don't know too much about fossil octopuses, but the Giant Octopus that's currently kicking about is the Enteroctopus. A good name, worthy of a film itself. They only get up to about 20-23 feeet long, though. Not really that giant.

Mega sharks, however, are another matter. The undisputed mega shark was the Carcharocles megalodon. It was a relative of the great white - Carcharodon carcharias - and in fact was until quite recently assigned to the same genus. Megalodon, as it's usually called, means big tooth. Do I need to tell you why? Okay. It had very big teeth. No - bigger than you're thinking. No - hold on - not that big. Be realistic. The biggest complete tooth ever found was a little over 7" long.

The estimated maximum length of megs has been the subject of some debate. The best approach is the use the closest living relative, the great white, as a comparative measure. The technique is to scale up from tooth size and although different figures have been bandied about over the years, current thinking puts the approximate maximum length at around 60'. That's similar to a good-sized sperm whale. There have been bigger sharks, but not carnivorous ones.

Great whites attack a potential meal by ripping out a big fleshy lump - ideally the stomach area - and then coming back in for the kill once the thrashing around has abated a little. Megs would consider seals a bit of a light snack and there's evidence they used to attack whales - vertebrae with tooth scars etc.

Like many sharks, megs would have grown teeth constantly, shedding as they became worn, broken or loose during lunch. It's thought they would have had around 250 teeth in their mouth, too, so for every one shark there would have been a great many teeth throughout its life.

Megs died out only about 1.5 million years ago, and while many people would like to think there are a few still about, lurking in the depths, many others are very glad they are gone. Snorkelers and surfers especially.

Lost In Transition

Where are my paper bags?

Twisted metal

One of the things I get asked about a lot in the shop is bismuth. Bismuth is an elemental metal that's grouped with arsenic and antimony. Unlike those, however, it's not (very) poisonous. In fact, one of it's main uses until relatively recently has been in stomach medicines for various reasons. Pepto-bismol, for example.

It forms naturally in a couple of ores and sometimes as nuggets. What draws the comments and questions, though, are the artificially grown hopper crystals. These are made using almost completely pure bismuth with trace additions of other elements to add varied colour to the oxidised layer that quickly forms over the silvery-grey surface.

Only a few people in the world make it, and the process to make decent crystals is a closely guarded secret. A friend of mine bought the business and know-how from a retiring Belgian and is now making his own in his garage in England. A few experiments has led him to the biggest crystals ever made. It's pretty brittle stuff, so once the crystals get over a certain size they can be quite fragile. He buys the raw material in ingots from a company that refines metals. The price has risen a fair bit in recent years as bismuth has gone from being a moderately useful by-product to an increasingly important product in its own right.

It's now being used as a substitute for lead in fishing weights, as an alloy for shot, pellets and plumbing uses. There are plenty of other new uses, but an important discovery made recently will lead to it being used in electrical circuit boards and in solar power cells. Bismuth diodes allow

two-way current flow, which will create far more efficiency in electrical equipment.

Great for global technology, not so great for the price of bismuth crystals.

Seated

Some good news. This is only loosely related to the shop, but it's commuting to work, so I reckon it counts...

The X29 is now a double decker. I get on the service near the start of its route back into the city, so always get a seat in the morning, but by the time it had got closer to the centre, the single decker was very often packed solid. So then it became a game of 'Who Gets the Seat?' Who might take offense? Who deserves it more - the shaky old lady or the man who looks like he's being eaten from the inside by beetles? And then - where to stand to best let people past?

Now there's space for everyone. Someone will still have to sit next to me, though. Nobody likes doing that, because I look like someone shaved a bear, and have to crush my legs sideways to cram them into the seat space, every jolt threatening to shatter my kneecaps. But someone will eventually overcome their fear of discomfort and the unknown and perch beside me. Today it was a nicotine-sodden chain smoker who played with his temporarily extinguished cigarette for the entire journey. Brilliant.

What's it called?

A problem I encounter relatively frequently is one of common names. More for minerals than fossils, but there are examples of both. I mentioned briefly when writing about chalcopyrite that it is often called peacock ore. It's pretty clear where the name comes from in that case. It's shiny and colourful - so are peacocks. It's not always so obvious.

This morning I had a call from a customer looking for minerals only by their common names - she didn't know the geological names - and I had heard of none of them. A bit of digging found a reasonable answer for one of them and a fairly tenuous answer for another. There are often more than one common name for a mineral, and also the application of the label may also be heavily subjective. Nobody is 'in charge' of assigning the names, anyone can do it and there's no comprehensive database to check up on.

As an example, a great many shapes and variety of quartz crystal have common names attached. I currently have optical, candle, elestial, cactus, fenster, laser and faden quartzes. And this is before colour is considered...

The mineral above is known as lemon (or citrus) chrysoprase. It's not chrysoprase. It's magnesite with nickel in it. So a number of the common names are misleading as well. There are loads (that's an accurate figure - you can quote me) of 'jaspers'. If someone wants to market a stone they've found in commercial quantities, they seem to resort to calling it 'Something Jasper' if they're not 100% of what it actually is.

The picture to the right shows a Devil's Toenail. It's not really from the devil's foot. There are millions of them, and the devil would have had to spend all his time growing toenails and shedding them instead of going around being bad just to make a beach-load. They are actually Gryphaea, a type of oyster. With fossils, while there are some locally specific common names, it's less of an issue. Michigan's Petosky Stones are coral, Dudley Bugs are beautifully preserved Calymene trilobites, and there are a few more notable examples.

The crystal healers are very big on common names and I have a fair few as regular customers. I'm happy to help them find out the geological names of what they're looking for and to try and track down examples, but I feel sometimes the names are a little exploitative. I've seen some ugly rocks given appealing names as a sales aid. If you dig up a lump of murky brown calcite, it's going to be a bigger seller as 'Dolphin's Heart Calcite' than 'Mud-lump Calcite'. You get the idea.

Bouillon

The French stock has been here for a week or so, but I haven't. Finally getting round to unpacking it all and pricing it up.

Aren't I lazy?

Release the simians

Monkeys were on the loose in Edinburgh Zoo yesterday. In Chester Zoo, two days ago, a bunch of chimps were running free after they escaped from Monkey Island. If there isn't a film called Escape From Monkey Island, there should be. Is there something in the air? Some sort of simian revolution? Sleepy keepers? Whatever it is, I'm all for it. I know monkeys and such can be dangerous when they find their freedom, but it's understandable. They would surely be expected to take a little time to adapt to their new society. Learn that is unacceptable to throw your faeces at others, stand to one side on escalators, etc.

Once I've found out a little more, I hope to release some monkeys in the shop. They would have to be of a smaller genus. Maybe capuchins. If this is some new movement, I want Mr Wood's Fossils to be involved.

Near where the fossil show is in France, there is a tourist attraction called Montagne des Singes. Monkey Mountain. Reassuringly, the name says it all. These forward thinking French folk have fenced off the top of a hill and filled it with macaques. Once you have paid, you can have a handful of unseasoned popcorn and enter the world of the monkeys. Once in, the rules are much like those of stripclub (so I hear). They can touch you; you can't touch them. I've been a couple of times. It's great. If you go, it's best to hold one piece on the flat of your outstretched hand and wait patiently. Don't charge at them, screaming, throwing handfuls of popcorn in their faces. They react badly. I'm talking about monkeys, here, not strippers. Just to be clear.

I should also point out that there is a worthy ethic behind the mountain. It's a breeding program that has steadily been re-introducing the animals into areas where their numbers have dwindled in the wild. It's been pretty successful so far.

Housework

It's Sunday, and I'm in the shop. Dusting and cleaning the inside of the display cabinets. I hope you appreciate this. Please all come in and say how nice the glass shelves look.

I got so carried away I even forgot to eat my Monster Munch.

Gates

Security at this year's St Marie wasn't quite as prominent as usual. Perhaps it was the same, and because I didn't really spend much time in the town in the evenings this year I just didn't notice. During the day, you need a pass to gain entry to the fenced off show area. Different types are available - day passes, week-long trader passes, etc, but all require a little plastic card on a printed necklace thingy. Long queues usually build up on the show's official public days, and the pass holders can skip these. Individuals vary, but often a cursory glance is all that you might expect.

At night, however, the situation changes and the heavy security is drafted in. These guys clearly dream of being SAS or Imperial Stormtroopers. It looks very much like they got to design their own uniforms, too. Boots that go up to their armpits, huge telescopic truncheons, lots of guns, leather gauntlets, flak jackets, etc. A little bit of overkill, maybe. And then the dogs. Look like they've somehow got some tiger and bear genes into the rottweiler pool. If they wanted, they could probably bite people through the wire fencing.

In fairness, there is a huge amount of money in the show. In fossil and mineral form, perhaps, but vulnerable to theft all the same. Last year, a friend of mine had his bag stolen from its hiding place under a table. It had seventeen thousand Euros in cash, his passport, camera, credit cards, everything. All gone with little or no chance of seeing anything back from the insurance. This was in broad daylight, in a busy selling tent. It's not uncommon, sadly.

At night, the nature of the show means most of the stock is left in tents overnight. Tents that are secured only by a little bit of rope tied at the bottom. So it's quite reassuring to have the bear-dogs on the prowl.

Hexapoda

Back in the shop after the French trip, and handsomely patterned with red blotches and welts. I stayed on an organic apple orchard; great for cider lovers but equally great for fans of mosquitoes. It was too hot to sit inside and we had a few meals sat round tables outside. Whatever anti-bug measures we took didn't really seem to put them off too much.

Lying on a tiny, narrow bunk bed in sweltering heat with a sheet pulled over your head whist being dive-bombed by the high-pitched whine of the mozzy does not make for a good night's sleep.

Still. I had a good time; always nice to spend time with the people and while the weather was oppressively hot at times, there was at least a fridge nearby.

Brought a few smaller things back in my hand luggage, but the rest will be a week or so yet.