LJIdol Week 3 - Coprolite (!)
Daniel knelt to examine the patch of rock below his feet. Torrential rains in the past had swept away all the soil so that the rock below had been exposed. The softer areas had been cut away and temporary streams of hill run-off had carved gently undulating paths through the sandy stone. It was an unusual landscape, and had it been on Earth it would have been called "otherworldly". Being on another world, he wasn't sure how you'd describe it. It was just as unusual and striking here as it might have been on Earth, as it was surrounded by thick, green jungle. It had stood out on the satellite survey, and so they'd camped between here and the coast, a permanent river running through a shallow ravine to the sea completed the last side of the triangle. All good places with exposed layers of stone to look for fossils. Fossils. Jem called to him, waving. She thought she'd found something.
There were ten of them altogether in the team, all palaeontologists and geologists except for one, An, who was the medical staff, and she monitored their tests for them and made herself useful with her scientific training; luckily there had been little for her to do, medical-wise. They had been supplied with metal-framed, semi-permanent field tents, but they'd modified them a bit to deal with the heat and humidity. They rolled the sides up or took them off to keep them cooler at night, and to let the air circulate - everything that possibly could went mouldy in only a few days when kept inside, and the mould was dark red and had fur ten centimetres long and creeped them all out, not to mention that it looked funny having it growing on your clothes. Alien mould. An said it wasn't poisonous. When they'd first arrived she'd tested everything in sight for toxins and other dangers, but it had all checked out fine. The plants were poisonous if you ate them, but otherwise - fine. And so An had had little to do after that.
Daniel wandered over to Jem and stooped a little to see what she was pointing at, half way up one of the taller out-croppings of stone. Parallel lines of a darker material marked the stone. They'd seen them before, in similar strata, and they thought they might be tracks, perhaps from something like a crustacean. It was hard to tell of course, on an alien planet, but the planet was similar to Earth in many ways, and rock could only behave so many ways. Of course, rock could do some mighty strange things.
"Should we take a sample?" Jem asked, looking down at him.
Daniel straightened up and took a slow breath, thinking. "Umm, no, we've seen these before. They'll be hard to sample anyway. Just take a photo."
Daniel turned away. "We've seen everything before," he said.
He kicked at some of the rocks, sweating in the heat, angry all of a sudden. Jem had taken the photos.
"Let's head back to camp," he said.
The passage through the jungle was an easy one; they'd been along this path so many times before and subdued the vegetation. The relief of the shade of the jungle was more than negated by the extra humidity trapped by the trees. Jem watched Daniel stamp his way along the path, amused; he let everything get to him. She didn't care, she was just glad to be here, amazed to be here. It was so much like Earth, but not. And that's what made it weird. Other than the little things, unfamiliar plants and strange insects, an odd glow to the sky and two small moons, there was one big thing. Part of the reason they were here, even though they studied rocks. There were no animals. Well, there were insects, and there were worms, and a few small crustaceans, but none of those things that people think of when they think of animals. No birds, no fish, no little furry things running through the undergrowth, nothing stalking the grasslands looking for prey, no prey. And, no fossils. Well, once again, there were fossils - there were impressions of plants, and there were trails, and tracks, and strange shapes in the rock - impressions and hollows that might have been some kind of animal, once. But nothing that people usually thought of when they thought of fossils - no bones (big or small) no shells, no teeth, no preserved hard body structures. There was one other type of fossil they and the other teams around the planet had found though - coprolite. Fossilised poo. It could be hard to recognise as it often looked just like any other rock, and even on Earth there were "false coprolite" that looked exactly like a dog turd turned to stone. But, there were signs - a pattern on the outside, fragments of plant found inside - and most of the team were sure that what they'd found must have come from some kind of animal, many different animals, and not even small animals, although nothing they'd found suggested anything larger than a deer - nothing like a dinosaur, for instance. The only problem was, why weren't they finding any other fossils from these animals?
She watched Daniel stride through the jungle swinging his arms, and admired his shirtless figure as he moved. They might be scientists and nerds, and they might spend half their time tied to a desk, but the other half they spent hiking though the jungle and digging up rocks and it showed on all of them. A strong ozone layer meant they didn't need protection from the sun and what with the heat they'd dispensed with any clothes not required for modesty or practicality. Daniel had developed a nice tan, and she thought that even her already dark skin had deepened a little. She caught up with him and tickled him on his bare ribs. He grumped, but she laughed at him, and eventually she made him smile, and he kissed her in the forest on the outskirts of the camp, before they went into the main shelter to see what the others had found today.
Daniel stepped up into the central shelter -the floor was raised to keep them out of the wet when it rained. This largest canopy covered the communal living area and the lab equipment that didn't fit into the "lab tent". It wasn't uncommon for people to be eating dinner or relaxing while others analysed dust composition or prepared fossil samples, everyone sharing findings and theories as they went. Around the living area the other tents were arrayed - private sleeping areas, the lab tent, the storage tent and the refrigerated unit. The power generator was set back into the jungle a little as it had a continuous hum.
Dead insects crunched gently under his feet as he crossed the floor to where Mach was sitting. Daniel felt a sharp, stinging pain on his back and went to swat away one of the small blood-sucking insect-like creatures that lived in this jungle. By the time he shooed it away, it had already tasted his blood and was falling to the ground to join the others and after a few short moments of thrashing it's 12 little legs around it would be dead. Human blood was swiftly poisonous to them, but unfortunately they never lived long enough to learn not to try and eat the scientists.
For his work this evening, Mach had eschewed the desks and was in the process of breaking open a coprolite fossil on the table. Fossilised poo on the dinner table. Daniel grinned.
"Find anything today?" Daniel asked him.
"Nothing new, but its only a matter of time, I say. There's got to be something more out there. We found some more of those oval depressions. I still reckon that's a sign of something, the shape of an animal."
"What is it though? A big shapeless blob? We haven't found anything, big or small. I don't care that this is an alien planet, the animal has to have some kind of skeleton, internal or external, and what with the veritable goldmine of fossils we've found here, we should have found evidence. I don't think there's anything here."
They'd had this discussion before, and Daniel didn't really believe there was nothing here. There had to be because nothing made sense without it - something must have produced all this poo.
"It's there, we just have to look. Maybe the evidence is subtle. Maybe the skeleton, or exoskeleton, was made of something that was dissolved by the chemical composition of the water at the time. I think the clues are there, this is what science does."
Mach examined his pieces of rock. "Gotta get these under the microscope."
Daniel moved back and watched him go. Mach, the tireless worker, ever optimistic. Jem, just happy to be alive, to be living this experience. Him, a big grump, arguing with the others and damaging morale. And he didn't even believe it, so what was he doing? Trying to make himself miserable so that when the inevitable came, he wouldn't be unhappy, because he was already unhappy. When they shut the project down and told them all to go home, he'd already be so depressed that it wouldn't make any difference.
After dinner, he was sitting in his tent, waiting for Jem. There was something of a lack of privacy here, even with the walls of the tent down, but after months of living together, they'd all got over that. Well, mostly. He still went bright red at the breakfast table, even if no one so much as smirked at him. Jem just laughed; she was like that. He heard footsteps, but they weren't the right footsteps. Too fast, too hard - he snatched back the door of the tent and stared into Jem's tear-streaked, wide-eyed face.
"They've done it Dan, it's over."
He knew what she meant, of course, but maybe he didn't. He didn't want to jump to conclusions, he'd look like an idiot. And, just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're out to get you.
"What? What's over?"
"Oh, Dan!" Jem shot out and glared at him. "You know! Don't be coy, the project, they're calling us all back, all the teams, they're taking us all off the planet. It's over. After all this time." she looked down.
She wasn't angry, she was heart-broken.
"Jem," he gathered her in his arms, "I'm sorry." It was a ridiculous thing to say, but... what else was there to say?
Daniel went into the main tent to sit aimlessly with the rest of the crew who already seemed to be drinking heavily even though the news had come in less than 20 minutes ago. But not everyone was there - Mach was missing.
"Where's Mach?"
"In the lab tent, working," someone said. And then laughed. "Not much point now," they spat bitterly.
"Does he know?" Daniel asked, confused.
"Of course he knows. But he's Mach," and any further conversation was cut off by a concentrated scull from the wine bottle.
Daniel frowned - getting drunk was not the answer. But he knew the feeling. Well, sort of. He'd been preparing himself so he was read for this. Well, sort of.
In the lab tent, Daniel was surprised when Mach turned to him wide-eyed and breathless - but smiling.
"You would not BELIEVE what I have found!"
"What does it matter, Mach?"
"It matters, believe me. Believe me, it matters." He shook his head, half smiling, staring at nothing, wide-eyed.
"Believe what, Mach? Not that it matters because they're shutting us down. I'm told you DO know this."
Daniel was suddenly angry again. Everything made him angry nowadays, but nothing could make him angrier right now that someone who was actually happy.
"In the coprolite, I have found... this. Take a look." Mach moved away from the desk, gesturing with a magnifying glass that Daniel take his place.
Daniel moved over and sat down on the stool and stared at the slices of rock in front of him. Quite clearly, as Mach had said, there was something in them. Bone. It looked like fossilised bone in the fossilised poo. A small complete bone 2 cm long, and some fragments of larger bone. It wasn't anything that could explain the animal that had generated the fossil, but evidence that something, with bones, had lived on this planet once. Daniel stared. And sat. Mouth tight, unmoving.
Until finally he said, "It doesn't matter Mach, they've been trying to close us down for months. We're the easy cut on the budget. No one gives a shit about coprolite."
LJIdol Week 3
(my comments in the first comment)
There were ten of them altogether in the team, all palaeontologists and geologists except for one, An, who was the medical staff, and she monitored their tests for them and made herself useful with her scientific training; luckily there had been little for her to do, medical-wise. They had been supplied with metal-framed, semi-permanent field tents, but they'd modified them a bit to deal with the heat and humidity. They rolled the sides up or took them off to keep them cooler at night, and to let the air circulate - everything that possibly could went mouldy in only a few days when kept inside, and the mould was dark red and had fur ten centimetres long and creeped them all out, not to mention that it looked funny having it growing on your clothes. Alien mould. An said it wasn't poisonous. When they'd first arrived she'd tested everything in sight for toxins and other dangers, but it had all checked out fine. The plants were poisonous if you ate them, but otherwise - fine. And so An had had little to do after that.
Daniel wandered over to Jem and stooped a little to see what she was pointing at, half way up one of the taller out-croppings of stone. Parallel lines of a darker material marked the stone. They'd seen them before, in similar strata, and they thought they might be tracks, perhaps from something like a crustacean. It was hard to tell of course, on an alien planet, but the planet was similar to Earth in many ways, and rock could only behave so many ways. Of course, rock could do some mighty strange things.
"Should we take a sample?" Jem asked, looking down at him.
Daniel straightened up and took a slow breath, thinking. "Umm, no, we've seen these before. They'll be hard to sample anyway. Just take a photo."
Daniel turned away. "We've seen everything before," he said.
He kicked at some of the rocks, sweating in the heat, angry all of a sudden. Jem had taken the photos.
"Let's head back to camp," he said.
The passage through the jungle was an easy one; they'd been along this path so many times before and subdued the vegetation. The relief of the shade of the jungle was more than negated by the extra humidity trapped by the trees. Jem watched Daniel stamp his way along the path, amused; he let everything get to him. She didn't care, she was just glad to be here, amazed to be here. It was so much like Earth, but not. And that's what made it weird. Other than the little things, unfamiliar plants and strange insects, an odd glow to the sky and two small moons, there was one big thing. Part of the reason they were here, even though they studied rocks. There were no animals. Well, there were insects, and there were worms, and a few small crustaceans, but none of those things that people think of when they think of animals. No birds, no fish, no little furry things running through the undergrowth, nothing stalking the grasslands looking for prey, no prey. And, no fossils. Well, once again, there were fossils - there were impressions of plants, and there were trails, and tracks, and strange shapes in the rock - impressions and hollows that might have been some kind of animal, once. But nothing that people usually thought of when they thought of fossils - no bones (big or small) no shells, no teeth, no preserved hard body structures. There was one other type of fossil they and the other teams around the planet had found though - coprolite. Fossilised poo. It could be hard to recognise as it often looked just like any other rock, and even on Earth there were "false coprolite" that looked exactly like a dog turd turned to stone. But, there were signs - a pattern on the outside, fragments of plant found inside - and most of the team were sure that what they'd found must have come from some kind of animal, many different animals, and not even small animals, although nothing they'd found suggested anything larger than a deer - nothing like a dinosaur, for instance. The only problem was, why weren't they finding any other fossils from these animals?
She watched Daniel stride through the jungle swinging his arms, and admired his shirtless figure as he moved. They might be scientists and nerds, and they might spend half their time tied to a desk, but the other half they spent hiking though the jungle and digging up rocks and it showed on all of them. A strong ozone layer meant they didn't need protection from the sun and what with the heat they'd dispensed with any clothes not required for modesty or practicality. Daniel had developed a nice tan, and she thought that even her already dark skin had deepened a little. She caught up with him and tickled him on his bare ribs. He grumped, but she laughed at him, and eventually she made him smile, and he kissed her in the forest on the outskirts of the camp, before they went into the main shelter to see what the others had found today.
Daniel stepped up into the central shelter -the floor was raised to keep them out of the wet when it rained. This largest canopy covered the communal living area and the lab equipment that didn't fit into the "lab tent". It wasn't uncommon for people to be eating dinner or relaxing while others analysed dust composition or prepared fossil samples, everyone sharing findings and theories as they went. Around the living area the other tents were arrayed - private sleeping areas, the lab tent, the storage tent and the refrigerated unit. The power generator was set back into the jungle a little as it had a continuous hum.
Dead insects crunched gently under his feet as he crossed the floor to where Mach was sitting. Daniel felt a sharp, stinging pain on his back and went to swat away one of the small blood-sucking insect-like creatures that lived in this jungle. By the time he shooed it away, it had already tasted his blood and was falling to the ground to join the others and after a few short moments of thrashing it's 12 little legs around it would be dead. Human blood was swiftly poisonous to them, but unfortunately they never lived long enough to learn not to try and eat the scientists.
For his work this evening, Mach had eschewed the desks and was in the process of breaking open a coprolite fossil on the table. Fossilised poo on the dinner table. Daniel grinned.
"Find anything today?" Daniel asked him.
"Nothing new, but its only a matter of time, I say. There's got to be something more out there. We found some more of those oval depressions. I still reckon that's a sign of something, the shape of an animal."
"What is it though? A big shapeless blob? We haven't found anything, big or small. I don't care that this is an alien planet, the animal has to have some kind of skeleton, internal or external, and what with the veritable goldmine of fossils we've found here, we should have found evidence. I don't think there's anything here."
They'd had this discussion before, and Daniel didn't really believe there was nothing here. There had to be because nothing made sense without it - something must have produced all this poo.
"It's there, we just have to look. Maybe the evidence is subtle. Maybe the skeleton, or exoskeleton, was made of something that was dissolved by the chemical composition of the water at the time. I think the clues are there, this is what science does."
Mach examined his pieces of rock. "Gotta get these under the microscope."
Daniel moved back and watched him go. Mach, the tireless worker, ever optimistic. Jem, just happy to be alive, to be living this experience. Him, a big grump, arguing with the others and damaging morale. And he didn't even believe it, so what was he doing? Trying to make himself miserable so that when the inevitable came, he wouldn't be unhappy, because he was already unhappy. When they shut the project down and told them all to go home, he'd already be so depressed that it wouldn't make any difference.
After dinner, he was sitting in his tent, waiting for Jem. There was something of a lack of privacy here, even with the walls of the tent down, but after months of living together, they'd all got over that. Well, mostly. He still went bright red at the breakfast table, even if no one so much as smirked at him. Jem just laughed; she was like that. He heard footsteps, but they weren't the right footsteps. Too fast, too hard - he snatched back the door of the tent and stared into Jem's tear-streaked, wide-eyed face.
"They've done it Dan, it's over."
He knew what she meant, of course, but maybe he didn't. He didn't want to jump to conclusions, he'd look like an idiot. And, just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're out to get you.
"What? What's over?"
"Oh, Dan!" Jem shot out and glared at him. "You know! Don't be coy, the project, they're calling us all back, all the teams, they're taking us all off the planet. It's over. After all this time." she looked down.
She wasn't angry, she was heart-broken.
"Jem," he gathered her in his arms, "I'm sorry." It was a ridiculous thing to say, but... what else was there to say?
Daniel went into the main tent to sit aimlessly with the rest of the crew who already seemed to be drinking heavily even though the news had come in less than 20 minutes ago. But not everyone was there - Mach was missing.
"Where's Mach?"
"In the lab tent, working," someone said. And then laughed. "Not much point now," they spat bitterly.
"Does he know?" Daniel asked, confused.
"Of course he knows. But he's Mach," and any further conversation was cut off by a concentrated scull from the wine bottle.
Daniel frowned - getting drunk was not the answer. But he knew the feeling. Well, sort of. He'd been preparing himself so he was read for this. Well, sort of.
In the lab tent, Daniel was surprised when Mach turned to him wide-eyed and breathless - but smiling.
"You would not BELIEVE what I have found!"
"What does it matter, Mach?"
"It matters, believe me. Believe me, it matters." He shook his head, half smiling, staring at nothing, wide-eyed.
"Believe what, Mach? Not that it matters because they're shutting us down. I'm told you DO know this."
Daniel was suddenly angry again. Everything made him angry nowadays, but nothing could make him angrier right now that someone who was actually happy.
"In the coprolite, I have found... this. Take a look." Mach moved away from the desk, gesturing with a magnifying glass that Daniel take his place.
Daniel moved over and sat down on the stool and stared at the slices of rock in front of him. Quite clearly, as Mach had said, there was something in them. Bone. It looked like fossilised bone in the fossilised poo. A small complete bone 2 cm long, and some fragments of larger bone. It wasn't anything that could explain the animal that had generated the fossil, but evidence that something, with bones, had lived on this planet once. Daniel stared. And sat. Mouth tight, unmoving.
Until finally he said, "It doesn't matter Mach, they've been trying to close us down for months. We're the easy cut on the budget. No one gives a shit about coprolite."
LJIdol Week 3
(my comments in the first comment)