Remember the stories about President Lincoln as a boy, the kid who walked miles to return a lady’s penny and the kid with a sense of humor. As the latter, he held some neighbor kids upside down to have them “walk” on the ceiling, leaving those impossible footprints his stepmother, supposedly also a person of humor, made him clean before repainting the ceiling. Seems that “walking” on the ceiling isn’t a new trick: Some dinosaur did it a bunch of years ago on a cave ceiling in Australia. Or, so the story went before somebody figured out the trick.
It wasn’t a trick by a teenage dinosaur. Instead, the dinosaur walked through shallow water, making footprints in the sediment. Over that bunch of years, the sediments lithified and those in the layer beneath the impressions eroded away, exposing the bottom of the footprint. That supposedly remained an unsolved mystery since their discovery. And that in itself is a mystery.
Why? Think about it. The impressions you make when you walk in sand or mud are “im-pressions,” that is, pressed into the sediment. Over time, other sediments can be washed or blown in to fill the depression made by your foot. That means the bottom of your foot becomes a cast of the foot. Most people would mistake the toe casts to be the top of the foot, and that is apparently what happened in Australia as no one for a while figured out how the footprints got on the cave ceiling.
Even in museums, dinosaur footprints, extracted from surrounding sedimentary rocks, are displayed upside down because the orientation makes them “look” like a foot. The 200-million year-old footprints found by geologist Ross Staines in 1954 in the Mount Morgan cave were recently reexamined by paleontologist Anthony Romilio who explained how the dinosaur made ceiling footprints top-down and not, Abe Lincoln style, bottom-up.*
I have little doubt that if the Lincoln story is true, his mother understood immediately how he accomplished the feat. The world as we know it works as we have known it. Gravity continues to play its role. But I found it interesting that intelligent people could be puzzled by a phenomenon with clues so apparent. Yet, children who visit museums still see footprints displayed upside down, the flat part (the top of the infill of the mold) on the bottom and the bottom part (the “toes”) on the top.
Much of what we do we do to fit the mold we know or imagine. We are easily fooled by a different orientation from whatever we have experienced. Magicians use our susceptibility to their advantage, fooling not just you, but also me and many others who allow our preconceptions to interfere with our ability to reason and solve. Politicians play on the same susceptibility. And, apparently, Honest Abe was no exception among politicians, at least in making the impossible appear to be possible.
So, here’s some advice (for me as well as for you): Before you look in amazement at "footprints on the ceiling," consider that the world still works the way it has always worked and allow that frontal cortex of yours to reason whether or not you are seeing things top-down or bottom-up.
*U. of Queensland. Solved: The mystery surrounding dinosaur footprints on a cave ceiling. 17 Feb 2020. Online at https://phys.org/news/2020-02-mystery-dinosaur-footprints-cave-ceiling.html Accessed February 16, 2020
Also, if you want to see images of dinosaur footprints, see images located at https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=AwrEZ7CloUpeQmAAXwsPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTByMjB0aG5zBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?p=dinosaur+footprints&fr=yhs-pty-pty_maps&hspart=pty&hsimp=yhs-pty_maps&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9zZWFyY2gueWFob28uY29tL3locy9zZWFyY2g_aHNwYXJ0PXB0eSZoc2ltcD15aHMtcHR5X21hcHMmdHlwZT1BMSZwYXJhbTI9OTc4NDQzNDctNDU3NC00MWZhLThkNzUtNzQ4N2E4Y2UzNGVkJnBhcmFtMz1tYXBzZGlyZWN0aW9uc3NlYXJjaF80LjR-VVN-YXBwZm9jdXM1OTUmcGFyYW00PS1haXNvX2VtYWlsLUFkdmVydGl6ZV92NC1kc2ZfZW1haWwtLWJiOX5DaHJvbWV-SW1hZ2VzK29mK2Rpbm9zYXVyK2Zvb3RwcmludHN-RDQxRDhDRDk4RjAwQjIwNEU5ODAwOTk4RUNGODQyN0UmcGFyYW0xPTIwMTkwNjAzJnA9SW1hZ2VzK29mK2Rpbm9zYXVyK2Zvb3RwcmludHMmdD06Ly9tYWls&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFQ9Il9EJs4eisGGGKbObg_TWcXSOpYHic3ErXqdSQmGYpoH6yHAXUo2yDWFcwbaOw8Qr1luBg_IeDz2-TWmfJDKp35rRL4MY-Zb9ILi299JVO0Cx1skp6gT39dPxbM4poRLpwQT_MVULujT3BA9PTahBP_josDwGg72Y3vlnQFH&_guc_consent_skip=1581949528
Or visit the Dinosaur Footprint Museum in Connecticut.
In showing college geology students a large dinosaur footprint taken from a western fossil site, I used to orient it bottom-up and then ask a series of questions to see whether students could understand the orientation, that the flat side was the top of the infill, for example, and that the “toes” were the filled in mold, a cast of the toes. Once the students understood the orientation, they easily imagined the method by which the footprint was made and preserved. Why it took more than half a century for someone to explain the footprints in Australia isn’t a mystery: The cave was shut off from visitors for a decade or so, and only recently did Romilio have access to the cave, the casts made by Staines, and photos Staines took a half century ago.
It wasn’t a trick by a teenage dinosaur. Instead, the dinosaur walked through shallow water, making footprints in the sediment. Over that bunch of years, the sediments lithified and those in the layer beneath the impressions eroded away, exposing the bottom of the footprint. That supposedly remained an unsolved mystery since their discovery. And that in itself is a mystery.
Why? Think about it. The impressions you make when you walk in sand or mud are “im-pressions,” that is, pressed into the sediment. Over time, other sediments can be washed or blown in to fill the depression made by your foot. That means the bottom of your foot becomes a cast of the foot. Most people would mistake the toe casts to be the top of the foot, and that is apparently what happened in Australia as no one for a while figured out how the footprints got on the cave ceiling.
Even in museums, dinosaur footprints, extracted from surrounding sedimentary rocks, are displayed upside down because the orientation makes them “look” like a foot. The 200-million year-old footprints found by geologist Ross Staines in 1954 in the Mount Morgan cave were recently reexamined by paleontologist Anthony Romilio who explained how the dinosaur made ceiling footprints top-down and not, Abe Lincoln style, bottom-up.*
I have little doubt that if the Lincoln story is true, his mother understood immediately how he accomplished the feat. The world as we know it works as we have known it. Gravity continues to play its role. But I found it interesting that intelligent people could be puzzled by a phenomenon with clues so apparent. Yet, children who visit museums still see footprints displayed upside down, the flat part (the top of the infill of the mold) on the bottom and the bottom part (the “toes”) on the top.
Much of what we do we do to fit the mold we know or imagine. We are easily fooled by a different orientation from whatever we have experienced. Magicians use our susceptibility to their advantage, fooling not just you, but also me and many others who allow our preconceptions to interfere with our ability to reason and solve. Politicians play on the same susceptibility. And, apparently, Honest Abe was no exception among politicians, at least in making the impossible appear to be possible.
So, here’s some advice (for me as well as for you): Before you look in amazement at "footprints on the ceiling," consider that the world still works the way it has always worked and allow that frontal cortex of yours to reason whether or not you are seeing things top-down or bottom-up.
*U. of Queensland. Solved: The mystery surrounding dinosaur footprints on a cave ceiling. 17 Feb 2020. Online at https://phys.org/news/2020-02-mystery-dinosaur-footprints-cave-ceiling.html Accessed February 16, 2020
Also, if you want to see images of dinosaur footprints, see images located at https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=AwrEZ7CloUpeQmAAXwsPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTByMjB0aG5zBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?p=dinosaur+footprints&fr=yhs-pty-pty_maps&hspart=pty&hsimp=yhs-pty_maps&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9zZWFyY2gueWFob28uY29tL3locy9zZWFyY2g_aHNwYXJ0PXB0eSZoc2ltcD15aHMtcHR5X21hcHMmdHlwZT1BMSZwYXJhbTI9OTc4NDQzNDctNDU3NC00MWZhLThkNzUtNzQ4N2E4Y2UzNGVkJnBhcmFtMz1tYXBzZGlyZWN0aW9uc3NlYXJjaF80LjR-VVN-YXBwZm9jdXM1OTUmcGFyYW00PS1haXNvX2VtYWlsLUFkdmVydGl6ZV92NC1kc2ZfZW1haWwtLWJiOX5DaHJvbWV-SW1hZ2VzK29mK2Rpbm9zYXVyK2Zvb3RwcmludHN-RDQxRDhDRDk4RjAwQjIwNEU5ODAwOTk4RUNGODQyN0UmcGFyYW0xPTIwMTkwNjAzJnA9SW1hZ2VzK29mK2Rpbm9zYXVyK2Zvb3RwcmludHMmdD06Ly9tYWls&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFQ9Il9EJs4eisGGGKbObg_TWcXSOpYHic3ErXqdSQmGYpoH6yHAXUo2yDWFcwbaOw8Qr1luBg_IeDz2-TWmfJDKp35rRL4MY-Zb9ILi299JVO0Cx1skp6gT39dPxbM4poRLpwQT_MVULujT3BA9PTahBP_josDwGg72Y3vlnQFH&_guc_consent_skip=1581949528
Or visit the Dinosaur Footprint Museum in Connecticut.
In showing college geology students a large dinosaur footprint taken from a western fossil site, I used to orient it bottom-up and then ask a series of questions to see whether students could understand the orientation, that the flat side was the top of the infill, for example, and that the “toes” were the filled in mold, a cast of the toes. Once the students understood the orientation, they easily imagined the method by which the footprint was made and preserved. Why it took more than half a century for someone to explain the footprints in Australia isn’t a mystery: The cave was shut off from visitors for a decade or so, and only recently did Romilio have access to the cave, the casts made by Staines, and photos Staines took a half century ago.
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