This blog is written by Liam Herringshaw. After 15 years as a university palaeontologist, Liam quit his lectureship in the middle of a pandemic to become Director of the Yorkshire Fossil Festival. Liam also works for Hidden Horizons at The Fossil Shop in Scarborough, leading Yorkshire Coast geology trips and running online fossils classes. Contact Liam on Twitter @Fossiliam.
“Fossils, fossils, a special kind of treasure…”
One of the highlights of the last year, at least in our house, was my better half’s discovery of The Fossil Song by Roots and Wings. If, as has often been the case, our mood needs lifting, we click play.
Singing the praise of fossils is logical. They are wondrous things. They are important things too: research into them drives our understanding of topics as key as evolution, biodiversity, climate change, and extinction. Study the past if you would divine the future, as Confucius advised.
Here, however, I want to focus on something often overlooked, and offered in spades by those two-and-a-half-minutes of palaeo-pop: pleasure. In times of peace, just as in times of stress, fossils bring joy to people.
On April Fools’ Day, I was tracking Jurassic dinosaurs on the Yorkshire Coast with Hidden Horizons*. We bumped into a family who’d been searching in vain for fossil footprints. When we showed them a fallen block they’d missed, and the giant, three-toed print it preserved, they were delighted. Grandpa couldn’t contain his excitement: it was as if he’d suddenly become six again; he had to be dragged away!
Showing dinosaur footprints to Bek Homer of BBC Radio York at the Rotunda Museum at Scarborough
Last week, thanks to national media interest, that very same three-toed footprint has provided joy to many other people. I’m certain fossils can serve up plenty of great moments across the unlocked summer. For me, they could be in The Fossil Shop in Scarborough, on a family fossil hunt in Runswick Bay, or at September’s Yorkshire Fossil Festival**.
If short-term happiness from deep-time encounters was all palaeontology had to offer, that would be absolutely fine. It isn’t, though. For the future, fossils can go much further, if a wise society – one that values Earth education, geoheritage, and mental health and wellbeing – chooses to let them.
A pebble geological map of Yorkshire outside the Rotunda, made during the inaugural Yorkshire Fossil Festival in 2014
Crossing divides
A great starting point is to recognise that the underground can provide common ground. We complain of political dinosaurs, yet a 2017 study of US reading habits suggests that palaeontology is one of very few topics that unites Republicans and Democrats. At a time when public dialogue is often less than civil, if fossils can cross political divides, we need them to.
There’s no reason why they can’t cross other divides too. Here in the UK, where palaeontology is overwhelmingly male, white and middle-class, initiatives to diversify the subject are sorely needed. During my five years in university admissions, we tried to address this, but higher education is too late. Fossils, and the pleasure they give, need to be brought in much earlier: in primary school, in pre-school. Children right across the country should be learning about life in deep time.
Liam and the Trowelblazers team enjoying the Crystal Palace Megalosaurus (which did not walk all the way to Yorkshire). Trowelblazers are a group who celebrate women in archaeology, palaeontology and geology. Courtesy of Dr Tori Herridge.
Later this year, thanks to funding from the Yorkshire Geological Society, I will begin the Stratum Young project. Working with primary schools in the most-deprived parts of Yorkshire, Stratum Young will use fun, fossil-flavoured activities to engage pupils, teachers and families in Earth’s prehistory. It will work with all year groups, mapping palaeontological topics onto key themes in the National Curriculum.
If some of the children go on to become fossil professionals, great. It’s not the aim, though: they’ve probably got about as much chance of becoming a professional footballer***. Instead, Stratum Young aims to inspire a lifelong interest in fossils and Earth science. If more people have that knowledge, and keep it, no matter what job they do, the world will be a better place.
Fossils for the soul
Talking of which, in December 2020, the UK Government announced a ‘green social prescribing’ scheme. Trying to improve people’s mental health by getting them out into nature sounds great. Focussing solely on plants, animals and environments, however, is to miss a trick. Go deeper, and introduce people to fossil plants, animals and environments too. Other titles are available, but I’m now pitching ‘grey social prescribing’ to the Humber, Coast & Vale project. This would offer family-friendly fossil events, some with a specific topic, some without. A morning netting ammonites at Whitby, an hour chasing dinosaurs across Scarborough’s South Bay, or an afternoon hunting rock lobsters on Filey Brigg? Good for the soul.
Until recently, a fossil-fuelled future simply meant the burning of ancient plants and plankton, and of our climate. It probably still does. But we can develop Marcia Bjornerud’s idea of timefulness and advocate for fossilfulness: knowing and valuing the depth of life on Earth. Maybe then a different future can be fuelled: one where a love of fossils is ignited early and burns throughout people’s lives. And that would really be something to sing about.
*I’ll be doing it again on May 31st, if you’d like to try it yourself: https://hiddenhorizons.co.uk/collections/expert-geology-walks/products/tracking-yorkshires-dinosaurs-with-dr-liam-herringshaw-31-may-2021
**You want to see a fossil hyena seaside puppet show called Crunchin’ Judy, right?
***There are 4000 members of the Professional Footballers’ Association in England and Wales. Are there 4000 professional palaeontologists in England and Wales?
Feature image- The eyes of Horace the Travelling Pliosaur Cinema look over Lyme Regis, contemplating time!