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My perversion is paleontology. I lust after things long dead in tombs of rock. And this past spring I got lucky.
On a cold but sunny March day, hunting in a vacant lot behind a state liquor store in Fultondale, Alabama, my eight-year-old granddaughter Danielle and I searched through a gob pile of dark gray shale rocks for fossils. The rocks, dumped from a nearby strip mine ( the remains of the wave-washed mud flats of an estuary that covered this part of North Alabama over 320 million years ago) were a disappointment. Apparently these barren rocks were deposited in a low life zone (smile) between the Pennsylvanian forests and the Pennsylvanian epicontinental sea which held few impressions of life.
Soon I grew tired of looking at bland rocks without finding any fossils and wanted to leave, but didn’t. I didn’t want to disappoint Miss Smarty-pants - the sweet Danielle,- the blase creature who I wanted to trick into thinking that I was the smartest grandfather in all of Blount County as well as most of the civilized part of Bibb .
And, as it turned out, I was.
“Danielle, jump!” I said. “ Hurry to Paw-paw. This you gotta see!”
Sweet Danielle is not the most loquacious of grandchildren. Without a word she looked up from the rock that she was studying and raised both hands towards heaven and slowly shook her head, as if to ask - “Why , Lord, why me?”.
The sun rose and set a million times behind the liquor store. Great mountains rose and crumbled back into the sea. Still the sweet Danielle dilly-dallied the twenty feet to where I waited, stopping once to tie her shoelaces; a neat trick, she was barefooted and I had her shoes.
But all good things come to Paw-paws who wait, so one sweet fine day sweet Danielle stood before me, hands on hips and scowling, her manner spoke clearly , it said,
“ Ok, you ‘ve got fifty seconds tops, Pops, and this had better be good!”
“ Look Danielle!” I cried. “Footprints! This is great. Danielle, I’m famous!
Think deeply , O’ fair disgruntled descendant of mine, four score and three hundred million years ago a slimy low-life reptile walked upon this self- same gob-dumped ground and left behind a series of five- toed foot prints in the slimy Paleozoic mire and mud ; and today, I , your sharp-eyed and grandiloquent grandfather, have uncovered them.
Are you not the luckiest descendent on God’s green Earth?”
The Earth spun on its axis ten times until finally, the sweet Danielle wrinkled her brow and frowned. I smiled. Life is good. This was Danielle’s sweet way of showing her utmost approval.
The following weekend was bitter cold. In my company that day instead of Danielle, was the famous fossil hunter - Ashley Allen, the most knowledgeable fossil trackways expert in Alabama. Only last year Ashley had discovered the most prolific Pennsylvanian reptile track site in the world. Yes...world! This past summer, at a high ceremony at a Walker County strip mine the the US Department of Interior transferred ownership of this unique track way to the State of Alabama for the overseeing of further scientific excavation and collection. Ashley Allen is the man who oversees the overseers. Paleontologists in Alabama ask Ashley first and then they rush home and write up their papers. Ashley Allen is the top hip-hop rock star of the Alabama paleo-clans, and I am his groupie.
Unfortunately Ashley had brought his three year old daughter to the dig. I was disappointed. Important fossil digs are not a proper place for three-year-old pug- nosed little girls with a penchant to throw rocks at the important people who are doing the dig. I gave her a rock with a a worm trail in it and told her that it was a snake. She was very afraid of snakes so she kept her mouth shut for three minutes.
Meanwhile Ashley and I chipped away determinedly to remove a 300 pound slab of shale from the sandy matrix. At last the slab broke loose. Putting the slab on a piece of burlap we drug the rock out of the shallow pit and into the sunlight for a close examination. I stood back in the shadows so Ashley could have the light. He looked at the rock from different angles for five minutes or so. Then, curiously, he walked his index and middle finger across the rock. And then he looked at me with wide eyes and said, “Impossible! Milo, your damn lizard is bipedal!” I fainted.
No I didn’t but I can’t clearly remember exactly what happened afterwards. Somehow we got the fossil loaded into Ashley’s truck amid a shower of pebbles from Ashley’s kid who wanted some attention, and then Ashley and her drove my fossil off to the lab to be photographed and studied.
Whew! This was heady stuff. If what we believed was true my reptile was the first known animal to walk on two-feet, some 60 million years earlier than the previously thought oldest - a bipedal reptile from the Permian first known from a fossil nammed Eudibamus found in Germany in 1995. Wow!
___________________________________________________________
Next...a puzzle.
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What a blast that must be, Milo, amazing – congratulations! Don't keep us in suspense over the next installment...
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great story milo--i have gone on fossil hunting trips (to the slag heaps of deep earth coal mines in pennsylvian)and unearhted mostly ferns and small leaves and stems..
Still, it is miraculous to pick up a rock and slip along the cracks, and split the rock --and find encase a perfect small fern.. waiting there, for me!
i liked going to the dolomite outcrop in Herkimer NY to find 'diamonds' too-- realy just quartz crystalls. but free formed ones, not locked into a geode matrix, but double ended crystals.
Yes, please continue your story.. (I hope your granddaughter now realizes you are the smartes paw-paw on earth!)
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Thank you for your interest, Maverick, of troy, and Doctor Bill, but please be patient. I didn't interrupt my story as a literary device, I simply realized that I needed some time to gather some visuals so that you all might help me overcome some slight problems that arose in the interpretation of the tracks, namely, all six of the tracks seem to be of the left foot. But we will see...
Speaking of interpretation, Helen, if you cock your head just right and squint your brain, you'll see that those crystals that you speak of are only slightly dumber than viruses. Both replicate themselves in envioments that are conducive to their replication. Is life much more?
Don't go away I'll be back soon.
Milum
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This is fascinating. Will it be Eudibamus mili or will you go with E. neptis?
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if you need some web space to put up some pictures, PM me, and I can put them up. I would love to see them.
formerly known as etaoin...
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> Eudibamus mili
Sounds more like Eudibamus monopod so far :)
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It's common practice for the species name of a newly discovered species to be the genitive singular of the discoverer's name in Latin.
But you knew that.
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Couldn't be other than singular Milo :)
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In reply to:
some slight problems that arose in the interpretation of the tracks, namely, all six of the tracks seem to be of the left foot.
The bipod was hopping?
Do continue, please, Milo.
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The bipod was hopping?No, Wordwind, the bi pod was not hopping, the bi ped was hopping, at least I'm hoping my biped was hopping. [sigh} I give up. I was hoping to give a slick presentation that would dazzle, but no, you Awaders have the patience of a he-goat in rut. So today I'll throw together some facts and figures and conjectures and post a report tonight. And I'll even find a place for your "pods". 
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I'm fully dazzled.
How much is "...the patience of a he-goat in rut."? And for why/what would the he-goat wait?
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Oops. Sorry about the misspelling. But was the biped hopping? Or could have all the rightside peds have disappeared in a landslide--some kind of breakway of the land? Or perhaps it was some kind of primeval hopscotch? Or maybe another animal bit off the right leg of the biped and the poor thing was hopping off to its last rites. Or maybe its young had the right leg in its mouth, playing pull-away and the biped was trying to get away, hopping, of course, in the game. Or it could have been riding a scooter with its right foot up on the foothold with the left leg pushing along to propel it. Or maybe it had a right stump from a previous injury. Cats do that all the time and get around pretty well on three; an old biped lizard might be able to make it around on one.
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I'm fully dazzled.
How much is "...the patience of a he-goat in rut."? And for why/what is he waiting?
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Ah Musick wishes to know how much patience has a he-goat-in-rut got. Go young Musick and get a bottle of rum...turn it up and drink it down...look at the empty bottle - what you see is the patience of a he-goat-in-rut. () And as for you Wordwind...the reason that you were a wallflower twenty years ago when you were teenybopper in High School was that you were always smarter than your suiters. Poor form. In your post you lucked upon a possible flaw in the interpertation of bipedalism to explain my fossil. It is a wonder that you ever got a date! 
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ah, milo, are you so removed from the world to not realize how those of us in the world crave good stories?
i love Dickens, and marvel at his readers who waited week by week for each installment.. i can easily understand how his stories increases circulation.. how readers might very well buy a paper for the story--rather than risk not finding a free copy at the end of day or next day-- imagine missing an installment
POINT IS. no, we have no patience! WE want it now.. IS IT TIME YET?
how much longer do we have to wait.. Please..
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Should know us by now, Milo - when we kneed a story and we're on the right track we'll never leggo :]
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Well now, of troy, does of troy want a good story or a jumbled-up bad story to read? A true puzzle can't be toyed with. A true story must be carefully reconstructed and should not be compiled when one is dru...drinking. So far I have four URL's for interested readers to reference as well as an attachment to post somewhere (maybe on etaoin's site if possible) of the early photographs of the prints. Right now I am working on a schematic that is key to the intricacies of the puzzle and I am sleepy because I have been drinking a large amount of my not-so-hot homemade kudzu blossom wine. I grow tired but I persist. Now I must sleep. But because I have promises to keep I will get up early and finish my story before I am off to the woods with Andy. See you then. Leggo, Maverick, look! Here is a background link and a preview of my prints to come. Print #2 is the size and type of the six prints I found. http://www.westga.edu/~bpsweb/New_Items/trackways.html
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damn cool, Milo! Eudi man!
what's the attachment?
formerly known as etaoin...
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This amphibian Cincosaurus cobbi looks a bit pigeon-toed in print #2.
Well, I hope you took Chaser or something and that today you'll have time to continue Part 2 of the story.
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Don't get mad, Wordwind, at this very moment etaoin and I are testing the communication apparatus necessary to send the proper pictures. Meanwhile as a lesson in patience and a reminder of the the slow grind of the wheels of science, here is a story that will have a direct bearing on my story that took over 30 years for my friend Prescott to garner his measure of fame. Prescott has since wasted 30 years of his life by being a pediatrician and a Professor of Pediatrics at UAB while waiting for his great egg discovery to float to the top of slow-grinding Paleontology. But finally, last year, his great find was at last recognised and today oft times Prescott tours the country with his egg. The point to retain in Prescott's story is how the egg got to be buried in the sea. http://www.yenra.com/dinosaur-egg-embryo/Opps...Andy's horn blows outside and I am sitting at my computer in my socks. Later...
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formerly known as etaoin...
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Thanks, et', for posting these and, Milo, you have got to be very excited about this find. Thanks so much for sharing all of this adventure here on AWAD, perhaps the best adventure of any of us here this past year!
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Is this all there is to this story?
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Is this all there is to this story?Ah yes Wordwind, I remember when I was a very little girl, our house caught on fire. I'll never forget the look on my father's face as he gathered me up in his arms and raced through the burning building out to the pavement. I stood there shivering in my pajamas and watched the whole world go up in flames. And when it was all over I said to myself, "Is that all there is to a fire" Is that all there is, is that all there is If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing Let's break out the booze and have a ball If that's all there is. No Wordwind, this is not all there is. But I will have the rest of the story posted here by mid-week. I promise. It is hard getting the schematics just right. - Milo (This milolateral has been brought to you by the courtesy and kindness of wwh who thought it appropriate and amusing .)
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Nemmine the E. neptis story. I wanna hear about your sex-change operation.
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Yeah, Milo, there's enough confusion about whether you're a boy or a girl as it is what with various members saying that you're a girl, when you're not. You've now advanced in Milolateralness to Milolateralmythology and that's a Milomouthful.
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In reply to:
Will it be Eudibamus mili or will you go with E. neptis?
Shouldn't that be Eudibamus milonis?
But yes, congratulations Milo. Well done.
Bingley
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Thank you Bingly.
For you, as Paul Harvey always says,
I will write here later today...
...the rest of the story...Good day.
milum
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Eudibamus milonis
I thought you just went with the genitive singular of the name of the discoverer.
It is, of course, at the option of the discoverer, which is why I suggested, not knowing her name, neptis, genitive singular of 'granddaughter'.
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Bingley
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Milo -- Milonis
But, but …
It's Milum.
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>It's Milum.
David Faldage, that is your nitpickingest yet! we'll know that milum and/or themilum is in real life Milo. I'm sure he doesn't bandy about around his webconceit when he's drinking PBRs with his paleontological buds.
do you Milo? said Bob*, hopefully
*that's Bob Bakker, of course
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It's not nit-picking at all. The species name is taken from the Latin version of one's name. Milo is a Romance derived version of the Latin Milus or, as the man himself has chosen, milum.
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What about the island of Milos? Wasn't that Greek, not Roman?
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Then it would be Milou.
(By the way - congrulations, Milum! I'm slow to read the posts on the "second tier" of the forum, i.e. the ones lower on the forum index)
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Milo autem cum in senatu fuisset eo die quoad senatus est dimissus, domum venit ...Cicero's Pro T. Annio Milone Oratio (Speech on behalf of T. Annius Milo)10.28 Milo here is the nominative, subject of fuisset and venit. The genitive, as I said, is Milonis. http:// http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Cic.+Mil.+27If you wish to use his nom-de-screen, wouldn't it be themilum themili, rather than milum mili? Bingley
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his nom-de-screen
Which one, he asked anonymously? <EG>
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Wasn't Tintin's dog called Milou in French?
Bingley
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Well, that'll larn me to argufy with sommun who knows more Latin than I.
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