BIOPHILIAC
Written in Stone Although we can’t go back in time, time comes back to us
A trilobite from Mt. Stephen in Yoho National Park.
words & photos :: Leslie Anthony As an author of more than a few books laden with autobiographical elements, I’ve often found myself wondering over the waypoints of life—those twists, turns and starting points that lead us to who and what we become, the world views we embrace and the habits, beliefs and outlooks we develop. Looking back, I can track several that led me into biology, research, teaching and eventually a career documenting issues and developments in science and the environment. Some are comically obvious: Being bitten by a harmless garter snake at a day camp in Toronto and seeing the panicked reactions of adults begat an immediate fascination with reptiles and amphibians. Others are somewhat quotidian: Living in a suburb with forests, fields and streams as a backyard, a family cottage in Haliburton, and summers spent canoe-tripping provided ample opportunity for immersion in nature. One waypoint, however, subtler and almost prescriptive in its outsized influence, was a destiny literally written in stone: fossils. Like many kids, my eyes were immediately drawn to the recognizable traces and shapes of life found in the sandstones and limestones that abounded around Toronto—whether exposed in
river valleys, along beaches and constellating the nearby Niagara Escarpment, or as driveway gravel and even the massive blocks used to erect landmark downtown edifices. The impressions of crinoids, belemnites and brachiopods I’d ferret home in sagging pockets offered once-upon-a-time reinforcement to the parade of contemporary organic life I was becoming acquainted with. With my allowance, I’d buy fossil shells, shark teeth and bone at the gift shop in the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), where I’d taken to spending Saturday mornings.
I still have the fossilized ripple marks—a reminder, any time I need, of the insignificance of human existence in the face of deep time. Journeying from Haliburton one rainy weekend to the Bancroft Gemboree—an annual gathering of rockhounds from around the continent—my eyes were opened to exotic fossils from other locales. After oohing and aahing over crystals and other mineralogical wonders, I plunked down $10—the most I’d spent in my life—for a limestone slab bearing fossilized ripple marks, worm traces and molluscs from the bottom of a ~450-million-year-old ocean that once covered Texas. 37
