LJ Idol: "coprolite" (Week 3)
Nov. 4th, 2011 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elionwyr"This is a tooth from a carkano..um.."
"Carcharodontosaurus."
I shot a look at my coworker. "I will never be able to say that. Spell it? Sure."
"And I probably couldn't spell it," he answered with a grin, referring to his profound dyslexia.
We were staffing a table at an event advertising varied local museums, their collections, and their programs. Most of my experience was with animals when they were still stinky. Fossils? Not even close to my strong point. But Jason had invited me to help out for the day, and I was always looking for one more opportunity to make some money.
I just hadn't thought through that would mean (a) talking to the public and (b) trying to pronounce 'kar-kara-daunt-o-saurus' all day.
"This is the tooth of a dinosaur whose name means 'shark-toothed dinosaur!" I announced to the next child to walk past our table.
Jason snickered.
"Fine. I give up. Where's the coprolite?"
Without making eye contact, he handed me an oval shaped rock. Fossilized poop has never stopped being a strange thing to me. Bones..claws..teeth..scutes..the possibility of those bits of once-living critters going through the alchemic process of becoming rock makes a mystical kind of sense to me. But..poop?
We live on a very strange planet.
"Can I make kids sniff it?"
"Sure!"
"Awesome."
I turned the coprolite over in my hand. This one was cylindrically shaped. I have no idea how anyone could have spotted this rock and said, "Why look, honey, it's dino poo!" But the analysis of coprolites reveals paleo diet. As the scientific world has undergone its own transformation from trophy hunting to a quest to understand environments that used to be, the question of who was eating what has gotten more complicated.
As a zookeeper, I frankly couldn't have cared less about dinosaurs..until I held that piece of coprolite in my hand and thought about what it really signified. Once Upon a Time, an impossibly large plant-eating animal devoured grasses we have never had a hope of seeing. That food fueled ancient life. And that body passed this waste onto a landscape long since resculpted into the world we know today.
This stone, that tooth, the cast of a skull grinning back at me from the table...this had been life. This had all been roaring, stinky, consuming life.
I touched the tooth again.
"Tell me again how to say it?"
"Carcharodontosaurus."
I shot a look at my coworker. "I will never be able to say that. Spell it? Sure."
"And I probably couldn't spell it," he answered with a grin, referring to his profound dyslexia.
We were staffing a table at an event advertising varied local museums, their collections, and their programs. Most of my experience was with animals when they were still stinky. Fossils? Not even close to my strong point. But Jason had invited me to help out for the day, and I was always looking for one more opportunity to make some money.
I just hadn't thought through that would mean (a) talking to the public and (b) trying to pronounce 'kar-kara-daunt-o-saurus' all day.
"This is the tooth of a dinosaur whose name means 'shark-toothed dinosaur!" I announced to the next child to walk past our table.
Jason snickered.
"Fine. I give up. Where's the coprolite?"
Without making eye contact, he handed me an oval shaped rock. Fossilized poop has never stopped being a strange thing to me. Bones..claws..teeth..scutes..the possibility of those bits of once-living critters going through the alchemic process of becoming rock makes a mystical kind of sense to me. But..poop?
We live on a very strange planet.
"Can I make kids sniff it?"
"Sure!"
"Awesome."
I turned the coprolite over in my hand. This one was cylindrically shaped. I have no idea how anyone could have spotted this rock and said, "Why look, honey, it's dino poo!" But the analysis of coprolites reveals paleo diet. As the scientific world has undergone its own transformation from trophy hunting to a quest to understand environments that used to be, the question of who was eating what has gotten more complicated.
As a zookeeper, I frankly couldn't have cared less about dinosaurs..until I held that piece of coprolite in my hand and thought about what it really signified. Once Upon a Time, an impossibly large plant-eating animal devoured grasses we have never had a hope of seeing. That food fueled ancient life. And that body passed this waste onto a landscape long since resculpted into the world we know today.
This stone, that tooth, the cast of a skull grinning back at me from the table...this had been life. This had all been roaring, stinky, consuming life.
I touched the tooth again.
"Tell me again how to say it?"