A FEW WORDS ABOUT FOSSILS

     One day not too long ago I was doing a little hiking along the river a short distance from a place called Grout Park.  Grout Park is known for its strange rock formations and for the fossil rocks that are there.  I didn’t expect to find one in the river.  I was poking around among the rocks along the edge of the river and in the little channel before you get into the main river just to see what might have been washed downstream and ashore by the spring run off and flood waters.  I didn’t find a whole lot that I didn’t already have plenty of, a few curiosity pieces, weathered, tumbled rock that were interesting and I was about to head on down to the park to sit and eat my lunch. 

     I took one more quick look around and then there it was, just beyond the channel a few feet out into the river.  A rock caught my eye.  I waded out a ways and that rock kept beckoning me.  I got a little wet reaching for it but it was a nice day so I didn’t really care.  I gave it a cursory look and put it in my backpack thinking it might be a concretion and maybe I’d crack it open when I got home just to see what it was like inside.  I didn’t think much more about that rock until later that night.

     While I was in the park I did some photography taking pictures of the different rock formations and some of the fossils.  Back home I downloaded my pictures and looked at them more closely.  I’m not a great photographer but I had some really nice shots, clear, good lighting, and sharp.  I had some wonderful fossil images.  Those photos were on my mind while I cleaned and took care of the rocks I had brought home with me.  I still hadn’t really given a serious look at the rock I’d gone wading for.

     Finally with that rock cleaned up and dried off a bit I picked up my hammer and gave it a whack and a few more nice steady and even whacks.  It didn’t break easy but it chipped and splintered in a few places and then it cracked and I wanted to cry, no so much for the piece that landed on my toe as for what I saw when I picked it up.  I should have looked closer in the first place but I thought it was a concretion or just a rock I was curious about, layered rock probably and I wanted to know. 

     It wasn’t until I picked that piece up off the floor that I saw what I had been looking at in a couple of my photos.  I looked at the photos and I looked at the rock.  Sure enough I had a fossil.  It was a piece of  rock that had probably broken away from the fossil ledges upstream and been weathered, tumbled and shaped and the work of the water, the weathering had exposed fossils.  I’d already ruined a few but for the most part my fossil rock was intact.  I treasure it.  It tells me some of the ancient history of the area I live in.  Fossils aren’t really an uncommon find.  You just have to look for them.

     Fossils are probably one of the most exciting finds you will ever make not only because they are intriguing to look at but because of their history and age and the stories that fossils can tell us.  I get excited when I find a fossil and I want to know its story.  Fossils are any remnant part or imprint of organic life (plant or animal) that once existed in a past geological time frame that have been imbedded in rock, amber, petrified wood etc.

     Fossils are usually found in areas where there are large amounts of clay and limestone, oil shale and coal deposits.  The best place to look for a fossil is where there is a lot of sedimentary rock.  You may also find some in other rock forms but not as often.

     Fossils are the prints, remains or petrified forms found naturally imbedded in rock of the common or prehistoric past.  They tell us the story of our Earth; its life in the past, the details of the unique and mysterious animal and plant life that once inhabited our planet.  Some still do in those hidden and far out of reach places that we have yet to or are only recently discovering.  There is much we still don’t know about the planet we live on but fossils help us to learn about it.  Though fossils are not exceptionally rare it is always a surprise and thrill when you actually find one.  They are indeed worth seeking.  I have a couple of places that I am now looking very closely at because of some recent finds that have given me clues.  When you are a rock hound you also may want to be part sleuth.  Fossils are messages in stone though they aren’t always easy to decipher and something that looks like it might be a fossil may turn out to be unique weathering.  I have a few questionable pieces that I am yet to call a fossil but it is possible if not probable that I have at least a couple of fossils unidentified.  The possibility lies in the location they were found.  The probability is the time line.  They just don’t quite mesh so for now they are just interestingly weathered rock.

     Fossilization is the result of heat and silica and water, the silica replacing the decomposing parts of animal and plant life leaving a film of carbon behind.  The process is so slow and so minute that even the finest details of life may be left visual through this type of preservation.

     Sometimes buried material is replaced by other materials with the silica such as calcite, dolomite, chalcedony or pyrite making a solution that spreads all the way through the plant or animal filling its pores.  (Our Petrified Forest in Arizona would be a perfect example of this type of fossilization) As the solution hardens the imprint of the plant or animal  remain for posterity.

     Sadly not all forms of prehistoric life have been preserved by fossilization or we have yet to find them.  However, there are other stories and messages in stone (stone carvings and hieroglyphics for example) that once translated continue the tale of life on Earth in the ancient of ancient times, tales that were written in stone once man arrived on the scene that tell of life and lives that no longer exist, at least to our knowledge.

     I have a few nice fossils in my collection and a handful of other stones that I question as to whether what I am seeing is a fossil or not.  I am relatively sure at least a couple are but the others I believe are weathering patterns.  I’m just a rock hound, not a scientist and I’m just not certain enough to really call them fossils.  Of course I’d like to believe they are.

     There are five types of fossilization or means by which organic matter is preserved and becomes a fossil.  (1)Authigenic Preservation…This type of fossil is a mold or cast, the imprint of a life form that has died and decayed leaving only a trace or “footprint” of their former existence.  It is very similar to what happens when we find a footprint of an animal in the mud or sand on a beach or riverbank or in the woods and make a plaster copy of it by pouring plaster-of-paris into it, letting it dry and then carefully lifting it from the ground or those hand prints your children made in clay and gave you for a Christmas gift the year they were in kindergarten.  I have a fossil fern from Georgia that is this type of fossil.  I remember as a young girl my friend Patty Dunnett and I used to have a marvelous time making leaf, flower and insect prints in clay (I’m guilty of the insect imprints, Patty wouldn’t touch them)  I had several of them I had kept for several years but with all my packing and moving and unpacking they finally broke and soon found their way to the rubbish heap but they were in a sense fossils.

(2) Carbonization…Carbonization is the second form of fossilization. This type is also known as coalification.  Carbonization results from the removal of all but the carbon elements of organic matter after death; the oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen that made up the organic life form have been removed.  Carbonization takes place when the water elements of an organism no longer exist (3) Petrification is the third type of fossilization.  It is the process by which organic matter is replaced by the minerals from the surrounding rock in a given locality; a good example would be petrified wood where the organic tissue has been replaced by agate, calcite, pyrite and other such rock and mineral.

     (4) Then there is a type of fossilization known as the Recrystallization  process.  Recrystallization takes place when crystal forms in the original structure replacing the organic matter.  This is a more common find among shelled creatures than any other organic life form leaving us a record of the shelled animal life from our prehistoric past.

     In my opinion the most fascinating type of fossilization is what is known as (5) Unaltered Preservation.  Organic life is preserved in its original state before death and the other forms of fossilization it does not, can not happen in this way.  The evidence of organic life is there in the other forms but not the full-body organism as is in unaltered preservation.  The best example of this type of fossilization that I know of is of insects being trapped in the sap of a tree then covered while still alive by more sap. The sap from the trees hardens when exposed to air and eventually over millions of years becomes the rock (gemstone) known as Amber.  I have a beautiful example of this in my collection.

     It is fun and exciting when you happen to run across a fossil, especially if you find it accidentally as I have on a couple of occasions.  I now am searching a couple of areas I know may possibly, in all probability will produce fossil rock.  All I have to do is dig, look very carefully and I hope I will find some very nice if not very valuable and important rocks with messages left for us from the past.  I believe they are there.  The geological evidence says they should be.