Fossils and the rocks that bear them reveal much about the conditions and lives of ancient organisms. Paleontologists, the people who study fossils, seek outcrops of rock when they search for fossils. Why dig when you can just walk up to an exposed fossil-bearing layer of sedimentary rock, tap it with a rock hammer or chisel, and free some fossil from a tomb that predates the pyramids by hundreds of millions of years?
Fossils are not ubiquitous. In fact, it’s tough to become a fossil. The agents of decay and the forces of erosion make preservation chancy. Think about it. Let’s say a robin expires over your yard in the early morning and drops to the ground below a bush. Rodents, crows, insects, bacteria, and fungi all want their share of the “grocery store” that just dropped into their neighborhood. What’s left? Not much. Preservation is a rare process unless certain circumstances prevail, such as a lack of oxygen (as in a bog or deep stagnant water), a lack of humidity (as in a desert), rapid burial in muds (as in a mudflow underwater), or rapid freezing (as in high latitudes or altitudes). Some kind of preserving entombment is essential, but even that entombing material, having turned to rock, can, with its fossils, be eroded and destroyed.
So, you cannot necessarily find fossils in your neighborhood unless your neighborhood was once such a preserving environment that was also a place where organisms lived and died. And, if your neighborhood lies on rock that is very, very old, say older than about 610 million years, then chances are its only fossils are microbes. Big life, that is, life larger than microbes, is fairly recent on a planet whose age is about 4.5 billion years.
You might, however, have a house that overlies an ancient fossil tomb. Oh! How disrespectful! You built on a gravesite, and you either don’t know about it or you don’t care. Certainly, you aren’t going to let some paleontologist into your basement to start digging.
Your house is also in a place that was once different but known by other humans whose lives you will never know. They passed over the landscape of the past and left no record of their passing. Similarly, over the course of your life, you pass by places that are more or less significant to you without giving them a thought or leaving a record of your passing. Such places are throughways of your life, and the people along those throughways are less or more significant. You also pass by cemeteries, where the science of entombment has been practiced for hundreds of years. If you look at the “outcrops” of rocks on the cemetery landscape, you get little information about the lives of reposing humans. You see dates of birth and death and in rare instances, some epigram meaningful only to unknown relatives. In a sense, the strangers you pass are little different from the fossils over which you live and walk, unless you decide to dig for knowledge about their lives.
Fossil-hunting doesn’t always yield fossils. Sometimes paleontologists show up at a promising outcrop only to find that it lies in the backyards or basements of a newly constructed housing plan. Strangers who ask to dig around a swing set will probably never receive a friendly permission. We don’t like such intrusions, but just maybe, on occasion, someone will grant the permission to dig. One never knows until he or she tries.
You don’t have the time or permission to dig into the lives of all those whom you pass on your throughways. Like so many organisms of the past 600 million years, you share an environment with similar organisms that you don’t know. Like you, each is destined for some kind of burial. Once that burial comes, only a paleontologist can try to read the pattern of life of the organism. Why wait? All around you the history of your time is being written by the lives of similar organisms. You have an opportunity to acquire deep insights into their lives and their environments before entombment. You won't get permission to dig on every property, but you'll never know which site is open to you unless you ask.
Fossils are not ubiquitous. In fact, it’s tough to become a fossil. The agents of decay and the forces of erosion make preservation chancy. Think about it. Let’s say a robin expires over your yard in the early morning and drops to the ground below a bush. Rodents, crows, insects, bacteria, and fungi all want their share of the “grocery store” that just dropped into their neighborhood. What’s left? Not much. Preservation is a rare process unless certain circumstances prevail, such as a lack of oxygen (as in a bog or deep stagnant water), a lack of humidity (as in a desert), rapid burial in muds (as in a mudflow underwater), or rapid freezing (as in high latitudes or altitudes). Some kind of preserving entombment is essential, but even that entombing material, having turned to rock, can, with its fossils, be eroded and destroyed.
So, you cannot necessarily find fossils in your neighborhood unless your neighborhood was once such a preserving environment that was also a place where organisms lived and died. And, if your neighborhood lies on rock that is very, very old, say older than about 610 million years, then chances are its only fossils are microbes. Big life, that is, life larger than microbes, is fairly recent on a planet whose age is about 4.5 billion years.
You might, however, have a house that overlies an ancient fossil tomb. Oh! How disrespectful! You built on a gravesite, and you either don’t know about it or you don’t care. Certainly, you aren’t going to let some paleontologist into your basement to start digging.
Your house is also in a place that was once different but known by other humans whose lives you will never know. They passed over the landscape of the past and left no record of their passing. Similarly, over the course of your life, you pass by places that are more or less significant to you without giving them a thought or leaving a record of your passing. Such places are throughways of your life, and the people along those throughways are less or more significant. You also pass by cemeteries, where the science of entombment has been practiced for hundreds of years. If you look at the “outcrops” of rocks on the cemetery landscape, you get little information about the lives of reposing humans. You see dates of birth and death and in rare instances, some epigram meaningful only to unknown relatives. In a sense, the strangers you pass are little different from the fossils over which you live and walk, unless you decide to dig for knowledge about their lives.
Fossil-hunting doesn’t always yield fossils. Sometimes paleontologists show up at a promising outcrop only to find that it lies in the backyards or basements of a newly constructed housing plan. Strangers who ask to dig around a swing set will probably never receive a friendly permission. We don’t like such intrusions, but just maybe, on occasion, someone will grant the permission to dig. One never knows until he or she tries.
You don’t have the time or permission to dig into the lives of all those whom you pass on your throughways. Like so many organisms of the past 600 million years, you share an environment with similar organisms that you don’t know. Like you, each is destined for some kind of burial. Once that burial comes, only a paleontologist can try to read the pattern of life of the organism. Why wait? All around you the history of your time is being written by the lives of similar organisms. You have an opportunity to acquire deep insights into their lives and their environments before entombment. You won't get permission to dig on every property, but you'll never know which site is open to you unless you ask.
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