Into the valley

I leave for the Euromineral show in Sainte-Marie aux Mines, Alsace tomorrow morning. It's the smaller of the two shows I regularly go to, but cheaper and offers a few different dealers. It's not exactly tiny - there are around 900 dealers and over 20,000 visitors. The setting is refreshingly green after the desert of Tucson, too. It's close to the German and Swiss borders, in an area famous for its wines, and every little village has its own vineyards. If I wasn't working so hard, I might be able to go around a few and try some. And nearby is Montagne des Singes - Monkey Mountain. This is as great as it sounds - a fenced-off hilltop full of Barbary macaques. I've probably mentioned this before, but it's worth bringing it up again. There are also a lot of storks flapping around. Storks are good.

Sainte-Marie aux Mines was a silver mining town and Euromineral has its origins in a local mining exhibition in 1962, which developed into a regular event and then a small scale trade show after only four years. It has grown steadily ever since, and now takes over the town for around a week as the streets are closed and tents put up. The locals put up with a lot of noise and mess for a while, but the town does well from it and everyone is generally made very welcome.

I used to camp in one of the town's two campsites but prices rose, amenities declined and I gave up a few years ago. Now I stay with a group of friends in an organic cider farm a few miles away. Lovely place, but can get busy with mosquitoes. Riley will be running the shop while I'm away.

Bigmouth strikes again

I love animals, but for the most part I'm not that bothered by birds. Birds of prey are generally a bit more interesting, with their air of arrogant menace. I appreciate the beauty of feather patterns and colours. The mechanics of flight are fascinating. Chicken sandwiches are nice. And so on. For me, though, the most interesting thing about birds are their origins. These things are what we have left of dinosaurs, and it's easy to overlook that. Take a closer look at an ostrich, for example, and you can start to picture its reptilian ancestry.

All that said, some birds stick out as being worthy of a bit more attention. Pelicans for example. Who doesn't have a soft spot for pelicans? They have been in the news a lot recently for unfortunate, oily reasons, but I saw an article on the BBC site about a fossil pelican that caught my attention. The main point of the article is that the 30 million year-old fossil is pretty much the same as modern species. News! Pelicans stay the same for a long time! It is reasonably newsworthy, though, as changes in most bird morphologies have been considerable in that time. This shows that either the pelican has found the perfect form for its niche or it has reached an equilibrium point where the compromise of flight and flappy-jowled beak has proved difficult to get beyond. Whatever the reason, it looks like the pelican has found a good ecological spot and is sticking with it. Now we just have to stop drenching them in oil.

Biting back

A dig in the Turkana region of Northern Kenya six years ago has thrown some light on the diet of hominids living in that area 1.95 million years ago. A recently published report shows that the site contained butchered remains of at least ten different animals, with a few surprise inclusions. Alongside the bones of small birds, fish and antelope were those of hippos and even crocodile. Seems like these Homo habilis weren't content to play it safe. Must have been quite the feeling for the hero of the hunt to return to camp dragging a crocodile. I would probably have been the guy at the back of the party, shamefully hiding my haul of one sparrow and two trod-on lizards under my matted beard.

The site produced a huge number of bones and the stone tools that were used to prepare the meat and the findings provide a good insight into not only the diet but the habitat of the time. What's now a very hot, dry area would have been considerably wetter back then. It's thought the additional calorific intake provided by increasing the amount of meat in the hominid diet sped development of the brain. That will be my excuse from now on. Researchers think the meat was eaten raw, and it is unknown if there was garnish of any sort. Cooking was an important breakthrough in the story of human evolution.There was a great Horizon programme about it last year, I think. Well worth a look if you can find it.

Shark art

A couple of months ago I commissioned a painting of the shop logo shark, Akmonistion zangerli, from the palaeontological artist Bob Nicholls. He sent me this preliminary sketch (left) before starting work in the middle of May. He finished last week and sent me a picture of the completed work, which should arrive in a couple of days. You can see the picture below. The little fish are Acanthodes, a foot-long spiny shark abundant in the Early Carboniferous.

Akmonistion was found in the early 80s by Stan Wood in the Manse Burn Formation, a 330 million year old series of rocks in Bearsden, Glasgow. The most complete specimen found is in the collection of Glasgow University's Hunterian Museum, who employed Stan as a fossil hunter for a time. There were some truly weird sharks (see Helicoprion) patrolling the

seas of the Carboniferous and Akmonistion was certainly one of them. It was a stethacanthid shark, about the size of a big dogfish, and males had an anvil-shaped brush-like fin crested with little denticles covering the flat surface on top. These spiky, scaly bits were also in a patch on top of its head. A number of suggestions have been put forward for their purpose; display, as a weapon of sorts or even a way of hitching a lift by clamping on to a larger swimmer. Perhaps the most plausible is that they were used much like a stag's antlers, in a battle to prove dominance. Some pieces I have read on them say that only male stethacanthids have been found with the spiky anvil, and in fact only males have been found at all, suggesting that the females have been given another name entirely. It may be that Symmorium, a contemporary and similar shark of which apparently only females have been found, is the girl to the stethacanthid's boy - and consequently the reason behind the strange fin. I'm not sure about this, as I have also read articles about the Bearsden material that suggests both male and female sharks were found - some sexual dimorphism in the number of denticles (and presence of claspers) - but female stethacanthids. I'll need to ask...

Anyway - Bob's work is always great, so it's no surprise that the commission has turned out so well. I'm looking forward to getting it framed and up on the wall.

Hypermarket

The brand new all-singing, all-dancing Mr Wood's Fossils site is now live. It's been a long time coming, but it looks great and I'm really pleased with it. Still a couple of little tweaks to be made, but it's up and running.

It's an online shop, with a cart and so on, making it a big step up from the old site. There are links to the blog, the Facebook page and even an RSS feed - and I'm still not entirely sure what that is. Next step is to add a bit more stock to it, and while I have the images for a few more, I'll need another photography session to cover a few more lines. Anyway - take a look by clicking on here.

What's the time?

Neanderthals in the news again, this time with a story about some tools found in roadworks in Kent. On the face of it, the story itself is an interesting one, with the sediments containing the finds being dated at between 100 and 110 thousand years ago. Significant because Britain is generally thought to have been empty of people - Neanderthal and Homo sapiens - at the time. This was at the start of the last Ice Age and around 40,000 years before the island was supposedly inhabited by hominids again. It's known Neanderthals were nearby in Northern France at this time, and to me it seems unlikely there weren't a few making it over the relatively short stretch of water and ice. Sea levels were fluctuating considerably and there were at least patches of land in what's now the Channel at time between 100,000 and 60,000 years ago. They weren't known as seafarers, but the lure of all those tasty mammoth would have been a powerful draw.

The point I'd like to take up, though, is the reservations of others in the scientific community about the accuracy of the dating technique used by the research team. Given that the point of the story here is that the dating of the finds puts Neanderthals in Britain well before it had been thought they'd arrived - it all falls down if the technique used is not scientifically robust. In this case, the team from the University of Southampton and Oxford Archaeology used Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) which measures the length of time since some minerals were exposed to daylight. It can be a useful and reliable dating tool within certain parameters. Some have pointed out that these dates are at - or exceed - the limits of time range of OSL's effective application, which may throw a little doubt over the results obtained.

I have a bit of a personal issue with this topic. Proponents of Young Earth Creationism are keen to attack geological and archaeological dating techniques, and I get to meet a few of them - only now and again - in the shop. It's usually an interesting experience, and usually frustrating. Without wishing to tar them all with the same brush, typically they have the idea that there is a large body of scientists that doubt the efficacy of dating techniques. This is not the case. There are, of course, scientists out there with these beliefs, but they are a tiny minority. Young Earthers seem to think that if they can discredit carbon dating - almost always the only method they have heard about - all of natural science will collapse and people will turn to religion. Presumably theirs.

There are a number of tried and tested approaches used to determine the age of rocks or sediments which produce repeatable results and can very often be cross-checked with more than one technique. Their reliability is not in any doubt when used correctly. So - where a dating method is used with surprising results or in potentially ineffective circumstances it is vital that the evidence and outcomes are examined more critically than ever. The scientific process relies on impartial observation and careful peer review. It's worth being as sure as you can be, and worth admitting when you aren't.

What do you call a squid with two arms?

Nectocaris pteryx, of course. Which means, erm, finned swimming crab. One of the many weird squidgy things found in the famous Burgess Shale of British Columbia in Canada was a 5cm long blob with fins, stalked eyes and a pair of tentacles. There had been only one specimen collected originally, and while a few researchers had studied it - including Stephen Jay Gould and Simon Conway Morris - it wasn't until this year that it has been more firmly identified as an early cephalopod.

A group has studied a further 90 specimens collected by the Royal Ontario Museum and has recognised features of later relatives that give credence to the cephalopod tag. This is significant as it drags the origins of cephalopods back in time by a good 30 million years to 505 million years ago.

Unlucky for some

Opals have a reputation for being unlucky, and there are various possible reasons floating around the internet it turns out. The most plausible is the negative press the stone got from Sir Walter Scott's novel 'Anne of Geierstein'. I'd never heard of it. Apparently somebody dies after their opal gets wet and turns colourless. Prior to the book, opals were considered very lucky. Power of the press.

Lucky or unlucky, opal can be a beautiful stone. Like jet, it's another stone saddled with the unfortunate designation of mineraloid, because it's essentially hydrated quartz. The water content varies up to between 15-20%, and this will affect the stability of what can be a temperamental stone. There's quite a range - milk, jelly, fire, boulder, cherry - but when most people think of opal it's of the precious gemstone types. The vivid flashes of colour that can be seen in some varieties is due to the way the quartz is arranged in its construction. Tiny spheres of quartz are packed together in grids and this structure will diffract light passing through to create a play of colour.

It's a bit of a pain to work as a gemstone - it's prone to cracking and usually the best display face will require careful positioning. Like with most gemstones now, there are a few synthetic forms available now. Gilson opal was the first effective one, developed in the 70s, but I saw some Japanese stuff a couple of years ago that looked amazing. Expensive, but amazing. The bit shown above is from Welo in Ethiopia. The material has been around for a few years, but I've thought it a little too expensive for me to find a market for. Last year, though, a new site was found, there were a bunch of new sellers around and the price was very good. I bought a load and I'll get some more this year.

Subtle dig

Yesterday an American guy came in and came up to the counter pretty quickly, his wife hanging back by the door. He seemed a little edgy.

'You have someone that carbon-dates all this stuff for you?'

'No - carbon dating is only useful up to about 40,000 years, but there are other pairs of isotopes that are used for longer time periods. And other methods..... [explanation of other dating techniques] ...and the material is almost always identified at source by the collector.'

'Ah - so you rely on the word of others?'

'Well, of course - why wouldn't I? It's in the best interests of the collector and seller to provide as much accurate information as possible about their product.'

'Did you know the Grand Canyon has been underwater five times? You can tell from the rocks.'

'Well - do you mean during its formation?'

'So is there someone that authenticates all these ages for you?'

'Err, well, no. There's no official body for the authentification of fossils - you might take something along to a museum or find a university with a geology department, though. It comes from all over the world - lots of different localities and the experts in those particular sites and fossil faunas will be spread all over, too. I have spent a long time studying geology and palaeontology, though, and most people in the trade know their subject pretty well.'

'So - you DO have to reply on the word of others. That must make it difficult for you, working here.'

'No. Not in the slightest.'

I was expecting him to go on. He seemed to have an issue with the dating, and I've found that the underlying reason is almost always a belief in Young Earth Creationism. He seemed to think he had made some significant point, however, and left with a curt goodbye. I have had similar conversations before, where the individual questions the ages of the fossils in the shop, makes some vague reference to upside-down trees, the subjectivity of time, buried laser guns or something and then quickly legs it feeling they have left my belief in the scientific process rocked to the core.

I find it strange. If you have these deeply-held beliefs, don't be afraid to test your thinking on them - see how they stand up in conversation. If you think I'm being naive, insincere or even deceitful by accepting and passing on the word of people who have invested a large chunk of their life studying certain fossil beds, tell me why. This guy - to me - was being hypocritical. I find it hard to believe he has never taken the word of another at face value. He didn't get round to telling me about his beliefs. I may have him pegged wrongly, but I don't think so. I'd have liked to discuss it further with him; find out why he doubted the ages. Anyway. Whatever floats his boat. Or Noah's.

Octopurse

There's a little bit in the news today about the argonaut. It's often called 'paper nautilus', but it's an octopus; a little one that floats around near the surface of the ocean. Females are bigger then the 1-2cm males, but still only reach around 10cm. What's interesting about them, though, is that before they lay eggs, the females secrete calcite from the tips of a couple of specialised webbed tentacles and form a spiral shell. She will live in the shell, sticking the head and tentacles out the front, but the main purpose seems to be to protect the eggs. Most octopuses lay theirs in holes in rocky substrates. In their lairs. I wish I had a lair.

Argonauts are known to bob around just below the water surface and draw in a pocket of air to store in the shell, and this leads to another function of the shell. This air bubble can be used to control the buoyancy of the animal, greatly reducing the effort needed to move up and down through the water column. Effort that can then be expended by the argonaut in more profitable ways - going to the pub, making rock buns, etc. Obvious advantage.

A squashy, tentacley thing living in a spiral shell in the ocean? Hmm. Sound like an ammonite? The closest living relative of the ammonite is the octopus, not the spiral-shelled, tentacle-flapping nautilus, BUT this isn't a cephalopod family heirloom; the argonaut has developed this afresh, the clever little pulpbag. What's going on? Covergent evolution? Could be. Octopuses are brilliant.

Sharp stone!

Was watching BBC's Horrible Histories this morning with my son before school and this sketch came on. It's generally a very good show - informative, engaging, and certainly teaches my son about history while he's unaware...

Anyway - coincidentally I got three little Neolithic scrapers in the post today. I don't know masses about archaeology, but there's something appealing about 'caveman tools'.

Written in the sand

An article in yesterday's New York Times about the interpretation of trace fossils found in a layer of the micritic limestones of the Green River Formation. This famous site is where I get most of the fossil fish I sell, so it caught my eye.

Strange patterns in a layer of the rock had led to some interest. Anthony Martin of Emory University identified fin and mouth marks associated with graze feeding on the substrate, and due to the estimated size of the fish responsible, suggests Notogoneus osculus. The significance of the find is that it had previously been thought the oxygen levels would have been too low at this depth of 35 to 50 feet to allow fish to swim along the bottom of the lake. This would also help account for the unusually large number of fossils from the site - a de-oxygenated layer greatly boosts the chances of fossilisation. The fact that this Notogoneus had been grubbing around the lake bottom shows that - at least for some time - there was enough oxygen down there for fish to feed.

Cousin Ug

There was a nice little piece in today's Metro about Neanderthals. The main topic was another hot potato of hominid history - just how well did Homo sapiens get along with his new neighbour Homo neanderthalensis when he moved into Europe between 50 and 100 thousand years ago? A passing nod on the way to the morning hunt? Did they invite each other to their respective barbecues? Or did it go a little further than that?

Whether or not there was interbreeding has been a subject for debate since shortly after the first Neanderthals were first identified as a separate hominid and named in 1864. The first evidence of them had been found in Belgium in 1829, with subsequent finds in 1848 (Gibraltar) and 1856 (the 'original' find in the Neander Valley in Germany). For some time there has also been debate as to whether Neanderthals should have species status or be a sub-species of modern man. Current thinking has them standing proud and alone as their own species. It seems very likely we share Homo heidelbergensis as an ancestor.

Anyway, the piece was due to the publication in today's Science of new research on the Neanderthal genome. Information has been pieced together from three individuals to provide a far better understanding of the genetic make-up of our closest relative. Perhaps the most interesting find was that Neanderthals are genetically closer to current non-Africans than with Africans. This suggests a degree of interbreeding. Modern man and Neanderthals did indeed get it on. Between one and four percent of modern man's genome is Neanderthal. I reckon I'm closer to one percent, but there's a guy that gets my bus that's got to be pushing four.

Neanderthal man went missing around 30,000 years ago. If anyone spots him, please call the police. We all miss him.

Giant dwarf

The other week I was struck with a sudden desire to know the height of the world's tallest dwarf. The feeling passed, and I still haven't found out. But then this story caught my eye - remains of a little-ish dinosaur, Magyarosaurus dacus have been identified as a dwarf sauropod. The actual find was made in Transylvania in 1895, and at the time the discoverer suggested it may have been an 'island dwarf' species. This process is an evolutionary scaling down demonstrated now in many examples - my favourite being a species (or race, possibly) of dwarf mammoth found on Wrangel Island, to the North East of the Russian mainland, that may have only died out around 1700 BC.

For a long time it had been thought the find represented a juvenile, as there were larger 'normal' sized sauropod bones being found at the same site. Recent research, though, suggests the smaller bones were those of an adult animal and so a dwarf sauropod. It's still the size of a decent horse, this thing. It's just small for a sauropod, which usually - Supersaurus, Argentinosaurus, Diplodocus, etc - were big enough to empty a good-sized lake with a belly-flop.

A stab at professionalism

I have a new and easy way to encroach upon your lives and give you just that little bit less personal time. Or you could look on it as advertising. Or maybe - at a push - the provision of informative geological snippets. In any case, I have set up a Facebook page for the shop, which seems to be the way to go at the moment. Try this...

If the link above doesn't work... to sign up, I think you have to search for Mr Wood's Fossils in the little box, and the page should appear. Then you have to 'like' it. I think. I set it up, so I didn't have to do that bit. You can post stuff on the wall, complain about shoddy service, make rambling incoherent suggestions, start discussions. All sorts. The best bit, though, is the 'Reviews' section, where people can say how brilliant everything about the shop is, even the dust, and how they can't wait to go there again. I might go and write a review now.

Phoenix flowers

In South Korea, a lotus has been grown from a 760 year old seed. It had been found with nine others when excavating the ruins of a castle in South Gyeongsang. Scientists planted them all and three have grown into healthy plants - albeit ones afraid to go out in the dark and with a liking for Cliff Richard. It's not the first time plants have been successfully grown from ancient seeds. Lotuses have been grown from older seeds before, plants grew from 500 year old seeds in the bombed wreckage of the Natural History Museum during WWII, and a few years ago Israeli scientists grew a date palm from a 2000 year old seed.

So - I have been given some inspiration. For the next few weeks, I will be sitting on my dinosaur egg while at work. When (or - I suppose - if) it hatches, I will convert the basement into a Dinosaur Park and become terribly rich. Maybe I should do the conversion before it hatches so I don't have to put up with Kenny (or Hilda if it's a girl) trampling all over my stuff upstairs while I work on it. Anyway - print out this page for free entry in the first week of opening. You deserve it. Oh - and bring some cycad leaves.

On show

This week, I've had a tv set designer in picking out some stuff for a kids' science show. A week or two ago someone came to pick some minerals for an display about colour, dyes and pigments and a month back a museum phoned to ask if they could borrow a large piece for a temporary geology exhibition. Sometimes, designers come with very specific thoughts about what they're looking for and it's not always easy to find them something that'll fit the bill. It's all the stuff of nature. It's not like you're picking out a t-shirt - I'd like this belemnite, but do you have it in red? Anyway - on these occasions, the designers went away very happy, which is always satisfying. It'll be great to see some of my rocks on tv, even if they don't have speaking parts. Last time it happened, I went with them, for a live evening talk show on a regional station. I'm pretty camera shy in any case, but the thought of live television had me very nervous.

Had to get the train to the studio, along with a box of stuff to talk about. Got off at some station I didn't know was there, and walked up a hill to this huge semi-derelict mental hospital. It looked like half of the building was open to the elements, with tumbled walls and missing roofs. There were a few cars parked outside, which offered some reassurance, but wandering through the building to find the green room took me through corridors of ruined rooms and I couldn't find a single person. Eventually I found a bare-walled room with a formica table, some plastic chairs and a drinks machine. There was a guy sat playing guitar. He was to go on before me, and play out over the end credits. He was friendly, less nervous and we talked.

The host came in with some crew and we went over the questions he would ask me - a big help, and I felt a lot calmer. We were led to the studio area, and turning the corner from the green room, the building was transformed into modernity. Lights, carpets, plants, pictures and finally the studio itself - a simple talk show set with comfortable chairs around a low table. I watched the show until it was my turn, slipping into the seat while the singer did his turn. My go. After a brief introduction, the presenter led me in with a couple of the discussed questions and then veered wildly off course by asking me about the whale jawbone monument on top of Berwick Law. I know enough about the story of the bones, having grown up not far from there, but I was a taken a little off guard by this random diversion. Didn't really know where he was going with this, or how to reply. 'Must have got lost', I said. He stuck to his list.

Monkey puzzle

Araucaria is a genus of tree with a number of living species, the best-known of which is Araucaria araucana - the monkey puzzle tree. My favourite tree, probably, if only for its name.

It's a bit of a survivor, this tree, as it's been around since the Jurassic. Araucaria mirabilis was growing in what's now Patagonia in Argentina around 210 million years ago. There used to be quite a lot of beautiful fossil cones from this locality on the market a few years back, but the source has dried up and new regulations have largely made Argentinian material a thing of the past for the fossil trade. There are still some floating around, though, and I have got some sliced cones - shown here. Quite nice, as you can see cross sections of the seeds, but not quite as satisfyingly tactile as the complete cone.

Dust!

British airports will be closed today because of the huge cloud of volcanic ash drifting over from Iceland. Despite throwing tons of bright orange liquid rock into the air and making a lot of noise, volcanic activity has its downside. Ask the crispy-coated people of Pompeii. They hated volcanoes.

When Krakatoa blew its top in 1883, a little to the WEST of Java, the explosion was four times more powerful than the biggest ever nuclear bomb detonation. The bang was heard over 3,000 miles away and around 21 cubic kilometres of rock, ash and dust was chucked up into the sky. All this stuff floats around for ages, making a mess, ruining stuff and making the weather go all funny. And it killed over 36,000 people. Also very bad.

But there have been eruptions far more powerful than Krakatoa. Whether they contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs or not, at the time of the extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous around 65 million years ago the Deccan Traps in India were spewing out ash and gas that would have been spread across a large part of the globe and affected the climate pretty dramatically. The huge meteorite landing in Yucatan at the same time sent up enough junk to make the sky all black and kill nearly everything. Impact Winter, it's called. So - combining the two makes for an unhappy time for the dinosaurs, known to be fond of an outdoor lifestyle.

Another mass extinction, at the end of the Permian about 250 million years ago, can be landed squarely at the feet of Vulcan, the cantankerous god of fire and volcanoes. The Siberian Traps were thousands of times more powerful even than Krakatoa. Again - nearly everything died. Statistically, we're most likely overdue another super-eruption somewhere. But statistically, we're most likely due for another enormous earthquake and meteorite impact. Stock up on the beans and bottled water and check for loose roof tiles while you still can.

The bad news for this guy is that the last time Eyjafjallajokull erupted, 200 years ago, it went on for two years. Not only that, but there is another, larger volcano nearby which is very often triggered by it. This could take a little while.

Reloaded

All my US stuff arrived. All someone else's US stuff arrived too, and has gone back on the truck. I plastered my crate with lots of address labels to go alongside the big shark logo stencils. Worth it...

So. Now it's all in the basement, and waiting for someone with lots of energy to unpack it all, count it, price and label it, move it to the store room, make price and info tags and put some on the shelves. Time for coffee.