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Post by hallucygenia on Apr 26, 2005 7:08:03 GMT -5
What fossil would you most like to find? Dinosaur? Perfect trilobite? Something soft-bodied?
Personally, I'd like to find a graptolite with soft tissue showing some detail - the ones that have been found up till now don't show much, beyond that there is soft tissue there. However, that sort of thing wouldn't show up well in the field, so it probably wouldn't be very exciting until I'd got the specimen under the microscope.
For the thrill of finding something good in the field - I haven't found a starfish yet. However, some days that I've been out I've been very pleased to find anything fossily!
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Post by Joe Botting on May 3, 2005 11:24:14 GMT -5
Do you really expect a single answer to that one, Lucy..? In the realms of the plausible, I'd be very happy indeed with a complete eiffelliid (heteractinid) sponge. These little beauties have spicules with six rays in one plane, their tips forming a hexagon. Many heteractinids had a fused skeleton, and they can be fairly common in ancient reefs, but the earliest and most interesting ones are very fragile. There are hardly any complete specimens known from younger than the Cambrian, but they're of great interest in evolutionary terms. We've got quite a few isolated spicules from the Builth sequence, but nothing even slightly articulated yet. Ann odd choice, you might think... but then, I probably am. A brittle-star would also be great. In the realms of the possible but distinctlly unlikely, it would be really good to find an unmineralised arthropod of some sort, legs and all. Requiring slightly less exceptional preservation, something from any of the numerous groups of really bizarre echinoderms, like the ophiocystioids, leptocystids or bothriocidaroids. Stretching the limits of probability just far enough for the Heart of Gold to make a quick jaunt around the galaxy, I'm also going to be asking Santa for either an octopus or a Tully Monster. They're both soft tissue, but at this stage I really don't care. Probably neither of them were around by the Ordovician, but they're distinctly cute, and one can but hope (see www.isgs.uiuc.edu/servs/pubs/geobits-pub/geobit5/geobit5.html for a little bit about Tully monsters). Obscure? Oh, yes. That's just the way I like 'em. Joe
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Post by Roy on May 3, 2005 18:05:42 GMT -5
Now that's a good question... If you had asked me about 26 years ago when I first encountered the wonders of the Builth inlier during (usually) wet and windy walks with my sister and her two young children, I would definitely have said: perfect Trilobite. The perfect Trilobite seemed at the time to be a quest akin to the search for the holy grail and I remember feeling a captivating fascination for the 'near' perfect fragments I discovered. I thought of them as a link or portal to a long lost world - very much as I see the 'hand' in the cave art of Pech Merle - as a 'hello' from ancient history. One of the clearest memories I had whilst scrambling around in the scree though, was the thought: 'it would be wonderful to learn about the palaeontology of the area and put these amazing creatures into their true context....' I can now say that every discovery is fascinating. For example today there is an article on the BBC's news pages detailing the discovery of fossils of an ancient fish - dating back 450 million years. news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/sci/tech/4498049.stmThe more I learn the more the image of the ecosystem in which these creatures existed forms in my imagination. Rather like pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle a living picture is emerging - rich in atmosphere and detail. I know it's cheating a bit, but my ideal 'find' (and perhaps my new 'grail') is to create an evocation of those ancient seas and their amazing fauna - I wish I had a time machine to pop back and take a few pics, but until we invent one I suppose my watercolours and pencil we have to do!. Roy.
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Post by hallucygenia on May 5, 2005 3:39:49 GMT -5
Hi Roy,
Did you ever find a perfect trilobite? I'd love to see some of your artwork - will you be putting any on the website?
Lucy
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Post by Roy on May 5, 2005 16:44:45 GMT -5
Hi Lucy, I think the nearest I came to finding a complete specimen was this one: img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/Leroi/BestTrilobiteB.jpgLooking through the collection of specimens I have from all those years ago from Llandrindod though, with the benefit of the understanding I now have every one has something I had not noticed before. A fragment of a Graptolite here, a Brachiapod there... I no longer feel that the perfect Trilobite is the main prize - I think it is now the gaining of understanding and knowledge of the subject which is important. Yes as soon as I have some finished paintings I will add them to the gallery section of the Old as the Hills website. It would be great to see other peoples' work too. I would like to think of us all as a team working together to achieve an accurate 'artist's impression' of the Cambrian and Ordovician seas and hopefully at length put together an exhibition of the results. Roy.
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Post by Joe Botting on May 6, 2005 4:42:35 GMT -5
Ah, a lovely little Trinucleus fimbriatus! One of the first trilobites ever described, you know - as Trinucleum Fimbriatum, by Edward Lhwyd in 1698. It was described as a 'figured stone' representing three nuts, since the idea of fossils being the remains of once-living things hadn't yet sunk in...
As for the artwork, I agree entirely about getting both your and other peoples' reconstructions online. I suspect that once we see some attempts, there will be lots of people thinking, "yes, but that should be more... and this is a bit... and... oh, I might as well do one myself rather than explaining it!" Artistic ability is less important than a clear view of what was going on. With all the different perspectives that this website will hopefully attract, we might hope to end up converging on something truly 'realistic.' The idea of an eventual exhibition is also very appealing... I've got a few little reconstructions that Lucy and I have been using in presentations, so they can go on as well.
Joe
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Post by hallucygenia on May 7, 2005 3:42:21 GMT -5
How on earth do you see a Trinucleus as being three nuts? I can understand Ogygiacarella as a flatfish, but nuts?
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Post by Joe Botting on May 7, 2005 4:31:00 GMT -5
I guess it's because most of the distinctive specimens are just the heads, with the middle glabella (where the stomach was) and the two lateral 'nuclei.' Maybe the fringe around the top reminded him of the cup of an acorn, or something. The rest could be passed off as random bits stuck on the end.
It's difficult to imagine having to give names to things that were either divine carvings or random expressions by Nature along the lines of sympathetic magic... for one thing, inconvenient details could be ignored, since who are we to know the foibles of the forces of nature..?
Joe
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