From Fossil Collecting to Palaeoclimate
Every fossil tells a story
A ten year old finds a really cool fossil
There weren’t many things I was going to take with me if I ran away from home (they had to fit in a plastic lunchbox) — but this fossil was one of them.
It had sort of winked at me — a four-armed cross that peeked up through the rubble of the floor under a limestone overhang. It was 1972 and my family was holidaying near Oamaru in southern New Zealand. I bent down to look and uncovered what looked like a small flying saucer which had somehow levitated into the cave, and nestled itself into the floor.
In fact, it was a fossil ‘heart-urchin’. It’s actually not well preserved, as it is only an internal mold — the outer ‘armour’ of calcite plates has vanished, and the mass of fearsome spines that would have surrounded it are long gone. Despite that, it was one of the first fossils I ever found (I was ten, go-figure) and one that’s always remained special.
That family outing pretty much set me on my path to becoming a palaeontologist. There was a lot of ‘loot’ that came home in the car after that trip— fossil shells, shark’s teeth, bones. They were laid out on make-shift shelves, and after pouring through every fossil book I could lay my hands on, I’d write their Latin names on a label to go with them. By that…
