It’s me, not you. Keep that in mind here.
Sometime before people put restrictions on who could take what from anywhere, particularly, dinosaur fossils from certain highly fossiliferous areas, someone—I don’t know who—extracted a large tyrannosaur footprint that has, through circuitous routes, come into my possession. I don’t know the location where the footprint was found nor the details of the circuitous route, but having the footprint, I can deduce much about both the footprint maker and the environment of the “trace” fossil.
The three-toed print puts the dinosaur in the suborder Theropoda, and its size, about three feet from toe to toe and back to front, makes me think Allosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, or even Maposaurus, though other members of the suborder also had big feet. The thickness of the fossil indicates that the animal was heavy because the impression was made in some silty mud, the silt giving a greater viscosity to the mud and a greater resistance to mushing (not a technical term). I can’t rule out that an Allosaurus from Utah’s bone bed, or some therapod from Alberta’s bed, or Montana’s bed made it; but it seems to eliminate any Argentinian monster like Maposaurus or Gigantosaurus because such a circuitous route to my possession would have meant a heavy shipment cost. I think I can reasonably assume that the print came from North America, probably excavated by some tourist and passed through family hands until someone said, “We have no place to store this thing. Wait! I know, let’s give it to Professor Conte. He collects rocks and stuff.”
Although I don’t know where the footprint was found, I do know where it was not found, in Pennsylvania, for example. Cretaceous rocks are hard to come by in PA, and the Cretaceous was the time of the great therapods. Cretaceous rocks lie in the southeastern part of the state, and none are known to have produced large therapod tracks. Some therapods did, however, prance around in Pennsylvania during the Triassic, but their tracks indicate they were no larger than chickens (Did you read that some scientists think T. rex probably tasted like chicken?) So, looking at my dinosaur footprint, I know that it couldn’t have been found in the rocks of Pennsylvania, but that doesn’t mean a large therapod didn’t walk the streets of Philadelphia. For the last 160 million years, Pennsylvania has been a region of erosion, its once tall mountains reduced to hills with elevations no higher than 3,000 feet. Big therapod footprints, if they were here, were eroded away long ago.
You have made footprints in soft soils and beach sands, so you know the process. Step on something unconsolidated and, given your weight and the force of your gait, you’ll make an impression. Now imagine preserving the “hole” you made by filling it in with any material, say plaster of Paris or silt and sand or mud. Let the infilling material harden (or lithify), and then lift it as a separate unit from the material into which you stepped. Walla! A trace fossil. Your footprint preserved. Your toe marks appearing to be the reverse of your foot, the toes having made the downward impression and the infilling materials having made a flat surface. Thus with the dinosaur footprint I own. The middle toe is about six inches thick, and the infilling stuff is composed of silty muds. You have seen such material in coastal and inland swampy areas, where either tidal streams or freshwater streams have mixed muds and silts, in a mixed-energy environment.
Okay, so where is all this leading? We all leave traces of what we’ve done and where we’ve been. And we use traces others have left to deduce something about their lives. I was able to say, for example, that the footprint maker didn’t live in Pennsylvania. So, we can deduce the negative, what didn’t happen. And I can deduce the positive, for example, that a large therapod made the footprint. Finally, I can say something about the environment of the therapod, that it was mostly likely an area of silty muds indicative of a marshy or swampy area into which other silts and muds could be washed to infill the depression in a mixed-energy environment (more energy carrying silts, less carrying muds). The footprint was a collecting basin for what was to come after it.
And so with lives. Have a southern dialect or a western Pennsylvanian one? It doesn’t matter that you’ve moved to New England. People can tell something from your trace pronunciation. Have a particular expression that you include in your writing. Bingo! Indicator of a region. Wear a certain style? Also, an indicator. Prefer a certain type of music or literature. Trace fossils from your past, and for others, trace fossils of their pasts. For each of these trace fossils we can also deduce the negative, as well as the positive.
We’re all paleontologists when it comes to people we encounter. We make our deductions from the traces they carry with them. And, although we don’t always know the circuitous route by which they travelled to come into our realm and present, we can deduce something about that journey. We might be wrong, of course. We’re all known to jump to conclusions and to deduce from faulty premises. But given our experience with “human fossils,” with biographical details and probable histories, we usually come close to the reality that was and the journey to that reality.
Yet. Yes, yet. We can deduce incorrectly. Sometimes we just want our deductions to be so undeniably correct that we will ignore the limitations imposed by our not being there when the traces we have were made, just as I could not have been around when some three-toed creature was stepping into silty mud somewhere that was an exception to the usual kind of environment that produces silty muds.
Obviously, any steps we take to uncover a past through deductions will require some infilling of our own choosing and will be influenced by the ground over which we have walked. Infillings will also be composed of the materials that we have at our disposal, materials that we have collected through our own experiences and cultural influences. The infillings, the deductions, might not date to or originate from the place at the time the footprints were made, since all infillings occur after some critter or person depresses the ground.
And one more thing: The footprint maker doesn’t have control over all that washes into the footprint. You—or some famous person, for example—might have followers you know little or nothing about. The infilling might say something about the post-impression event, but little about the event—or the maker. Take Karl Marx, for example. Remember his oft-repeated idea that people should contribute to society according to their ability and receive according to their need? Do you think that he would be happy that his economic and social philosophy led to the deaths of more than 100,000,000 people in the twentieth century? Wasn’t his ideal world supposed to be for the benefit of both individuals and societies? He made an impression. He didn’t fill it. Those who stepped into his footprints put in whatever materials they wanted, including something Marx never said, that capitalism was unjust or that communism was just.
That means any deductions you might make about me might be more a product of your own steps and missteps. As you deduce a history of my life or any other person’s life, keep in mind that often the premise of the person making the deductions is “It’s not me; it’s you.” The premise should more appropriately be "It's not you; it's me." In the trace fossils of another's life, we might be looking at the trace fossils of our own.
Sometime before people put restrictions on who could take what from anywhere, particularly, dinosaur fossils from certain highly fossiliferous areas, someone—I don’t know who—extracted a large tyrannosaur footprint that has, through circuitous routes, come into my possession. I don’t know the location where the footprint was found nor the details of the circuitous route, but having the footprint, I can deduce much about both the footprint maker and the environment of the “trace” fossil.
The three-toed print puts the dinosaur in the suborder Theropoda, and its size, about three feet from toe to toe and back to front, makes me think Allosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, or even Maposaurus, though other members of the suborder also had big feet. The thickness of the fossil indicates that the animal was heavy because the impression was made in some silty mud, the silt giving a greater viscosity to the mud and a greater resistance to mushing (not a technical term). I can’t rule out that an Allosaurus from Utah’s bone bed, or some therapod from Alberta’s bed, or Montana’s bed made it; but it seems to eliminate any Argentinian monster like Maposaurus or Gigantosaurus because such a circuitous route to my possession would have meant a heavy shipment cost. I think I can reasonably assume that the print came from North America, probably excavated by some tourist and passed through family hands until someone said, “We have no place to store this thing. Wait! I know, let’s give it to Professor Conte. He collects rocks and stuff.”
Although I don’t know where the footprint was found, I do know where it was not found, in Pennsylvania, for example. Cretaceous rocks are hard to come by in PA, and the Cretaceous was the time of the great therapods. Cretaceous rocks lie in the southeastern part of the state, and none are known to have produced large therapod tracks. Some therapods did, however, prance around in Pennsylvania during the Triassic, but their tracks indicate they were no larger than chickens (Did you read that some scientists think T. rex probably tasted like chicken?) So, looking at my dinosaur footprint, I know that it couldn’t have been found in the rocks of Pennsylvania, but that doesn’t mean a large therapod didn’t walk the streets of Philadelphia. For the last 160 million years, Pennsylvania has been a region of erosion, its once tall mountains reduced to hills with elevations no higher than 3,000 feet. Big therapod footprints, if they were here, were eroded away long ago.
You have made footprints in soft soils and beach sands, so you know the process. Step on something unconsolidated and, given your weight and the force of your gait, you’ll make an impression. Now imagine preserving the “hole” you made by filling it in with any material, say plaster of Paris or silt and sand or mud. Let the infilling material harden (or lithify), and then lift it as a separate unit from the material into which you stepped. Walla! A trace fossil. Your footprint preserved. Your toe marks appearing to be the reverse of your foot, the toes having made the downward impression and the infilling materials having made a flat surface. Thus with the dinosaur footprint I own. The middle toe is about six inches thick, and the infilling stuff is composed of silty muds. You have seen such material in coastal and inland swampy areas, where either tidal streams or freshwater streams have mixed muds and silts, in a mixed-energy environment.
Okay, so where is all this leading? We all leave traces of what we’ve done and where we’ve been. And we use traces others have left to deduce something about their lives. I was able to say, for example, that the footprint maker didn’t live in Pennsylvania. So, we can deduce the negative, what didn’t happen. And I can deduce the positive, for example, that a large therapod made the footprint. Finally, I can say something about the environment of the therapod, that it was mostly likely an area of silty muds indicative of a marshy or swampy area into which other silts and muds could be washed to infill the depression in a mixed-energy environment (more energy carrying silts, less carrying muds). The footprint was a collecting basin for what was to come after it.
And so with lives. Have a southern dialect or a western Pennsylvanian one? It doesn’t matter that you’ve moved to New England. People can tell something from your trace pronunciation. Have a particular expression that you include in your writing. Bingo! Indicator of a region. Wear a certain style? Also, an indicator. Prefer a certain type of music or literature. Trace fossils from your past, and for others, trace fossils of their pasts. For each of these trace fossils we can also deduce the negative, as well as the positive.
We’re all paleontologists when it comes to people we encounter. We make our deductions from the traces they carry with them. And, although we don’t always know the circuitous route by which they travelled to come into our realm and present, we can deduce something about that journey. We might be wrong, of course. We’re all known to jump to conclusions and to deduce from faulty premises. But given our experience with “human fossils,” with biographical details and probable histories, we usually come close to the reality that was and the journey to that reality.
Yet. Yes, yet. We can deduce incorrectly. Sometimes we just want our deductions to be so undeniably correct that we will ignore the limitations imposed by our not being there when the traces we have were made, just as I could not have been around when some three-toed creature was stepping into silty mud somewhere that was an exception to the usual kind of environment that produces silty muds.
Obviously, any steps we take to uncover a past through deductions will require some infilling of our own choosing and will be influenced by the ground over which we have walked. Infillings will also be composed of the materials that we have at our disposal, materials that we have collected through our own experiences and cultural influences. The infillings, the deductions, might not date to or originate from the place at the time the footprints were made, since all infillings occur after some critter or person depresses the ground.
And one more thing: The footprint maker doesn’t have control over all that washes into the footprint. You—or some famous person, for example—might have followers you know little or nothing about. The infilling might say something about the post-impression event, but little about the event—or the maker. Take Karl Marx, for example. Remember his oft-repeated idea that people should contribute to society according to their ability and receive according to their need? Do you think that he would be happy that his economic and social philosophy led to the deaths of more than 100,000,000 people in the twentieth century? Wasn’t his ideal world supposed to be for the benefit of both individuals and societies? He made an impression. He didn’t fill it. Those who stepped into his footprints put in whatever materials they wanted, including something Marx never said, that capitalism was unjust or that communism was just.
That means any deductions you might make about me might be more a product of your own steps and missteps. As you deduce a history of my life or any other person’s life, keep in mind that often the premise of the person making the deductions is “It’s not me; it’s you.” The premise should more appropriately be "It's not you; it's me." In the trace fossils of another's life, we might be looking at the trace fossils of our own.
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