Editorial

(From 'Charnia' Newsletter, Winter 2003/4)

Having begun to read Christopher McGowan’s ‘Dragon Seekers’ , sub-titled ‘The Discovery of Dinosaurs During the Prelude to Darwin’ (Little, Brown, ISBN 0 316 85783 1, 2001) my curiosity was aroused as to how humankind interpreted fossils way before the C18th and C19th. So, in an encyclopaedia I found a ‘Timetable of Earth Science’, that listed some very interesting facts. The earliest reference to what might be termed palaeontology is: ‘c.575 BC Anaximander of Miletus in Ionia states that fossil fish are the remains of early life’. Although there are quite a few references to discoveries and ideas about the physical aspects of the Earth the next reference to past life in the encyclopaedia is Cuvier’s discovery of giant fossil bones in the banks of the River Meuse. I knew I had seen references to Mediaeval ‘formed stones’ and that there just had to be a wealth of information somewhere out there about the missing two and a quarter millennia.

A comprehensive answer was eventually found in Adrienne Mayor’s ‘The First Fossil Hunters’, sub-titled ‘Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times’ (Princeton University Press, ISBN 0 691 05863 6, 2000). Mayor’s approach to this fascinating aspect of palaeontology is from the perspective of a classical folklorist and she convincingly demonstrates that griffins, centaurs and Cyclops had their origins not in the fictitious fancies of imagination but from the evidence in the rocks. For example, the legend of the gold-guarding griffin originates from tales told by Scythian gold miners who encountered Protoceratops remains at the edge of the Altai mountains in the Gobi Desert (‘altai’ means ‘gold’ in the original local language). This does not exclude comparatively recent myth-making; for example, texts on historical geology frequently perpetuate the idea that Empedocles studied fossil elephants in Southern Italy in the fifth century BC, relating the remains to the Cyclops killed in a cave by Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey. Modern texts also cite with authority that Giovanni Bocaccio in the C14th. was the first to publicise Empedocles’ finds. There is a valuable object lesson here in always referring to primary source material. While it is true that Bocaccio was present when peasants found a giant skeleton in a cave, circa 1371, neither he nor anyone else identified the bones as elephant. Bocaccio did write that the giant bones were of the Cyclops though never mentioned Empedocles. Empedocles himself is not known to have referred in his writings to skulls, giants, caves or Cyclops, and in any case elephants were unknown to him. In her book Mayor has traced the origin of this modern myth to an Austrian palaeontologist, Othenio Abel. Quoting from Mayor’s account:

Griffin (left) and Protoceratops (right)

‘Writing about fossil folklore in 1914, Abel hit on the idea that ancient sailors mistook the large nasal opening in unfamiliar fossil elephant skulls for the eye socket of a one-eyed giant. To support his own ingenious speculation, Abel attributed the idea back in time to Empedocles, an ancient philosopher who pondered the origins of life. With no basis in the surviving record, Abel declared that “Empedocles reported such finds in Sicilian caves and believed these to be unassailable proof of the existence of an extinct race of giants.” In the 1940s, Willy Ley, one of the first historians of paleontology to repeat Abel’s Empedocles myth, added the false claim that Bocaccio had cited Empedocles as his authority when he announced the discovery of the Cyclops. In the manner of folk legends, Abel’s and Ley’s plausible-sounding assertions were taken up and elaborated by successive writers who never bothered to check what Empedocles and Bocaccio had really said.’

The Chinese concept of dragons appears to have a basis in palaeontology. The I-Ching, compiled shortly after the time of Homer, relates in one of the ‘peasant omens’ that ‘dragons encountered in the fields’ is a good omen, if only for the fact that dragon teeth and dragon bones fetch good money! Just how many excellent fossils have been ground-up for sale in Chinese apothecaries down the centuries does not bear thinking about. In the second century BC a canal was excavated in north-central China; a chronicle of that time records ‘dragon bones were found and therefore the canal was named Dragon-Head Waterway’.

Mayor’s book is packed with examples of palaeontology, largely from the Classical times. It would be tempting to describe many of the examples here but space simply does not permit. Many cases involved assemblages of fossil skeletal material which mimicked the skeleton of man. Since many of the skeletons attracting attention were huge there was no other explanation two thousand years or so ago that they could be anything but giants. Even as recently as 1613 a skeleton of Dinotherium was found in Southern France assembled in the form of a man. This was interpreted at the time as the skeleton of King Teutobochus, a giant king of the Germanic tribe defeated in battle by the Romans in 105 BC.

Naming fossils after giants or mythical creatures is not wholly out of fashion. For example, Othniel C. Marsh (see ‘Charnia’ Editorial for Summer, 2003.) named Brontotherium, which means ‘Thunder Beast’, after the Sioux myth of the beast of that name. Other like examples are Indricotherium (= Baluchitherium) the largest ever land mammal, named after the Russian earth-shaking Indrik beast. The pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus was named after the Aztec serpent-god and one example with a really nice twist was the naming of Achelousaurus horneri. Achelous was a mythical river monster whose horn was broken off by Heracles – the horn was put back in honour of Jack Horner, the Curator of the Paleontology Museum of The Rockies.

Achelosaurus (left) and Achelous (right)

You’d think descendants of dinosaurs were making trouble in the Black Hills of Dakota. OK, there aren’t any descendants except possibly the birds twittering in the Black Hills, though the FBI were called in to raid the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in Hills City, South Dakota, in 1992. The FBI were acting on behalf of the US Bureau of Indian Affairs, which claimed that a T. rex had been illegally removed from land belonging to the Cheyenne River Sioux. You might be more familiar with this actual specimen of T. rex if I said it had been named ‘Sue’, named in honour of its finder, Sue Hendrickson. (See Elaine Smith’s article ‘Desperately seeking Suchomimus’, ‘Charnia’, Summer, 2001.). Up until 1995 Sue’s bones remained in a secure government warehouse, with the issues of collecting rights and ownership unresolved. Happily, Sue now resides in the Field Museum, Chicago, the purchase being enabled by a large fast-food company (whose logo is interpreted as ‘M’ for Mummy by my four year-old son) and a cartoon enterprise that doesn’t encourage messing about with their mouse.

This case has parallels with Kennewick Man. In July 1996, a human skull was discovered in a bank of the Columbia River in Washington State. It appeared at first to be the skull of a European who died between forty and fifty years of age. However, closer examination found a stone projectile point in the hip bone when the remainder of the skeleton was recovered. This evidence, plus carbon dating, placed the skeleton at between 9.2 and 9.6 thousand years BP. A facial reconstruction of the skull bore a remarkable resemble to the actor Patrick Stewart, aka Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek fame. The European features of the skull came about as a result of the confusion made by comparing the features of living populations with those of the past – overlaps are bound to occur. The age of the skeleton brought political implications in that the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act demanded that the remains should be handed over to the appropriate Native American Tribe. The Umatilla tribe subsequently claimed Kennewick Man as one of their own, as did the Asatru Folk Assembly. A legal battle ensued and goes on to this day. Fortunately, Kennewick Man’s remains are secure in the custody of the US Army Corps of Engineers. If, for the sake of political correctness, these remains are eventually interred as part of a traditional native custom, what knowledge of the history of mankind will be forever lost? Do we clean out anthropological specimens relating to the past few thousand years of mankind’s history from the world’s museums? How far do you go down the line of acceptance that remains are culturally affiliated with present human groups and their claims that they have occupied lands since time immemorial? Surely it is far better to enlighten the people who make these claims? Who knows what new scientific techniques will emerge in the future to reveal more of our native and aboriginal ancestry? Here lies the irony with Kennewick Man; studies of the genetic material recovered from this skeleton show that his genotype is closely linked to populations from the region of Lake Baikal in Southern Siberia, who appear to be the ancestors of Native Americans.

Something caught my eye recently in ‘The Guardian’, a newspaper not normally noted for what might be called ‘tabloid tendencies’. Under the heading ‘Well hung Scientists’ Big Find’ (there was no other punctuation in this heading) was a picture of a 425 million year old Ostracod with exceptional fossil preservation of internal structure. The organism has been named Colymbosathon ecplecticos, which apparently is Greek for ‘amazing swimmer with large penis’. The 5mm long specimen (i.e. the complete Ostracod) came from ‘an undisclosed location in Herefordshire’ and Professor David Siveter of Leicester University (one of those who discovered the organism) is quoted by ‘The Guardian’ as saying “We have won the lottery. Its basic body plan is very similar to living representatives. It has the same number of limbs, it has compound eyes, it has gills, it has a penis.”

Colymbosathon ecplecticus (as reconstructed by computer). Photo: Courtesy of David Siveter, Leicester University

Another tit-bit that came to my attention concerned the 509 million year old trilobite Elrathia kingii, found in the Middle Cambrian of Utah. It appears to have lived at the anoxic/dysoxic boundary, yet occurs in fossil densities of up to five hundred individuals per square metre. There seems a strong likelihood that Elrathia depended on chemoautotrophic sulphur bacteria that oxidised the plentiful sulphides occurring in such environments. Thus, these arthropods seem not to have been dependent on photosynthesis as their primary input of energy. Examples of such food chains today are the specialised extremophile communities living on submarine hydrothermal vents. It is not known if the trilobites existed symbiotically with the sulphur bacteria or whether they simply ingested them.

Finally, an apology to the structural geologists, geophysicists, geochemists and mineralogists; I focus on palaeontological matters in these editorials because this area of geology tells us most about our origins – perhaps the greatest and most popular area of fascination in geology. In an attempt to restore some balance I will mention that I have just finished reading ‘Uncle Tungsten’ by Oliver Sacks (Picador, ISBN 0 330 390287, 2002.). It is a fascinating autobiography of Sacks’ formative years. ‘Uncle Tungsten’ was Oliver’s Uncle Dave who owned a lightbulb manufacturing business. Sacks’ whole family background revolved around science and medicine and it was the fascination with minerals and chemistry that drew the author into an early scientific career. Chapter Six of Sacks’ book is called ‘The Land of Stibnite’ and is full of resonances surely familiar to many geologists, amateur and professional alike. It concerns young Oliver’s frequent visits to the Geological Museum in South Kensington and his fascination with not just the appearance and chemistry of minerals but their naming too – which is more or less where this editorial began – the naming of things.       

NB: Most, if not all of the titles cited in ‘Charnia’ Editorials, can be obtained from local libraries. If the title and other relevant details are passed on to your librarian the books can either be new acquisitions or they can be obtained via the inter-library loans network. If you have internet access a very interesting account of the legal battle to rescue Sue can be found at http://www.panix.com/~gmcgath/sue.html and a description of the extraction and preparation of this and other T. rex specimens (e.g. ‘Stan’) can be found at the website of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, http://www.bhigr.com/

Graham Stocks