050219c

Limestone of the Knox Group, cross-section of a gastropod shell, mostly filled with lime mud (dark color like the surrounding matrix), remaining open space filled with calcite cement (clear and pink). Thin section, Kemper County Mississippi, approximately 3 miles below the surface.

040219b

Tidal stromatolites, Pearson Cove Formation, Cambrian (more than half a billion years old), Drum Mountains, western Utah.

033019d

The Ghost Eater

The Professor's machine did exactly as promised,

hoovering up ghosts quicker than you could say Jack Rob

but he never did explain what happened to them

before he vanished, machine & all,

in full view of 1,026 citizens of Wichita, Kansas.

Ideas about the captured spectres abounded:

converted to energy and used to heat the Prof.'s home,

squeezed into a superdense ball of trans-uranics,

beamed into outer space,

sent back to the Cambrian,

when Earth was young,

and the landscape dry as dust.

That one was right.

Not much to do in a desert so barren

the sand gets lonely,

Joe, and Bill, Eileen, baby “X”, and all, they

floated around making conversation:

morning Zebu, good to see you Phyl,

day after tiresome day as a disembodied spirit,

unable to interact with matter

no one to frighten except Petra,

and she was only pretending,

being a wight herself.

“Just let me die!” the only joke,

& after 14,000 years it wasn't funny any more.

So they schemed to haunt the Professor,

haunt him somethin' fierce

from the very moment of his birth.

But you know what?

The ghosts dissipated one by one,

not a one even made it

to the conquest of land,

they changed, somehow, learned to let go,

popped like soap bubbles, unobserved.

032019b

Base camp, Drum Mountains, Utah.

030119c

The eocrinoid Gogia spiralis, Middle Cambrian, western Utah.

010318c

When the First Time Machine Needs to be Tested


no matter how many specimens
the paleontologist always wanted one more
volunteering was a natural choice
aiming for the Cambrian
arriving in the Cretaceous
no defensive weaponry beyond a sun hat
almost more than needed
half a billion years in the past
alas, an RPG launcher would not have gone amiss
as things turned out

one more anomaly
on its way
back to the future

082417

The Fabulous Phanerozoic!*

"I need to get away," Charles announced the day mandatory overtime ended. "Now!"

They thought about the Jovian moons, but Charles didn't want to be "cooped up in a metal can."

"What about the past? Peace and quiet. No cans," Sylvie suggested.

--

The Watsons marveled at the primitive landscape. Plants grew only near the shore. No animal bigger than a cricket lived on land. In the sea, trilobites like spiny pill bugs grazed on azure and emerald algae, brachiopods clacked, brittle stars writhed, and "rocks" crawled across minute stone forests. Mr. Watson questioned the pretty young tour guide about everything from the short Ordovician nights to what it was like living in the past.

And of course, soon the children were bored. The arcade sucked them in. They tossed ping-pong balls to win pet trilobites. They rode Bumper Jellies and the Amazing Flingatron. And they got hungry. Jimmy and Timmy were as picky as any kids, but somehow the food vendor talked them into trying fried trilobite. Sylvie was astonished that her children liked the leggy things.

"And they're not sold now? I mean, in the future?"

"Not available after the Permian."

That conversation took place 450 million years and two weeks before Charles ran off with the exchange student from Ganymede.

--

"Should have seen this coming," Sylvie told herself, editing Charles out of the family albums. "Hope she gives him SAIDS."

A single mother of two, Sylvie had to supplement the meager alimony payments somehow. Surely anyone could write a cookbook. Combine that with a unique import business....

"How to eat trilobite

"Boil them like crabs. The ventral skeleton is scarcely mineralized. People peel shrimp. You don't have to peel a trilobite. Grasp the legs firmly between thumb and forefinger and yank them off. Spread flavored butter, paté, cocktail sauce, or any edible paste on the ventral surface. Scrape the meat out with your teeth. You can't eat the shells, but they're great for the garden. Lots of calcium.

"This is how you eat ptychoparioids, phacopids, or any average-size variety. The tiny agnostids, which spend their whole lives swimming in the plankton, are best tossed into soup. In the soft-shell phase they can be sprinkled on salads.

Some isotelids are 2 feet long. One of these babies will feed the whole family! They are best grilled, the dorsal shell providing a natural dish to keep sauces on the meat and prevent drips. The legs are large enough to crack and eat like crab legs."

I could name that recipe after Charles, Sylvie thought.

Publ. Daily Cabal, 2009

*Eon of visible life.

From the Brochure

Time travelers to the Cambrian be warned

A shellfish allergy is a big problem

In a time before vertebrates

On the other hand, nothing beats

A Cajun trilobite boil on the beach

Under the swift early Paleozoic sun

040716

Anomalocaris

once thought a weird shrimp

made trilobites squeal like stuck pigs

as it went all Shelob

on their soft bellies

Terminator: The Obvious Solution

Proterozoic
already a machine world
Cambrian reformatting

That must've hurt!

Trilobite tail with a huge bite out of the left side. The critter lived! The bite's partly healed. It's Asaphiscus wheeleri, from the Cambrian Wheeler Shale of western Utah. This is one of my favorites of trilobites I collected from the Wheeler (when I was working on my dissertation on another rock unit out there) because it shows action.

Who attacked a trilobite? The only known candidate is this guy:




This is Anomalocaris, which means weird shrimp. Critter wasn't shrimp, and it was the top predator in the Cambrian. It was a foot long or more and its prey, Cambrian trilobites, were mostly 2 inches or shorter. I am sure it also preyed on softbodied creatures, many of which were preserved at the famous Burgess Shale locality in western Canada.

I don't know who drew this beautiful picture of Anomalocaris or I would give credit here.

Rock

Been tweeting these beauties for days. This one is pink calcite & zoned dolomite cement in a crack in Cambro-Ordovician Knox dolomite. 1/2 a billion years' non-stop fun.

Some pictures of rocks

Why Grandma, Lookit them teefs!

Pink calcite crystals buried in chert (blue).

one o them rocks

White nodular limestone and dark gray shale. Suitable for framing, perhaps. Formed on a shallow sea bed and rather deeply buried at least twice, as mountains grew & were worn away.

467 ft (142 m) below surface, Cambrian Conasauga Formation, more than 1/2 a billion years old, photo by Ann Arnold. 2-inch-wide (5 cm) drill core.

Tiny trilobite

Three views of same specimen. Trilobite about 1.5 mm long. Agnostus sp. Conasauga Formation, Upper Cambrian, Alabama. Photo by Ann Arnold.

bath time

Fossil sponge, about half a billion years old. See the little white spicules?

I tell you it's a sponge, but you don't believe me. WHY don't you believe me!!!

I'm a star now

"Every rock is beautiful...."

one moar fossil

This 0.4 millimeter diameter sphere is all that's left of some ancient critter. 500 million years, Conasauga, Alabama subsurface.

minute pyrite cubes

Field of view less than 1 mm wide. Photo by Ann Arnold.