Fossil folklore
This stone spiral is not, as the people of Arkansas once maintained, a corkscrew used by the devil, but the filled-in burrow of an ancient kind of beaver - and fossil hunters proved that by excavating this one which had the chamber at the very bottom still preserved, and in it the bones of the animal that made it. This is not the devil's toenail, it's an early ancestor of today's oyster. A thunderbolt? No, the internal skeleton of an animal like a squid which had tentacles at one end and as we now know, two internal gills. Stone snakes? No. Shells from a long-vanished sea. Such revelations are, operhaps, even more astonishing than the myths people invented to explain the strange shapes they found in rocks.
Duration:
This clip is from
Featured in...
成人论坛 Nature
Be captivated, informed and inspired by the world's wildlife.
More clips from Magic in the Rocks
-
Amber treasure
Duration: 02:42
-
Mud fossils
Duration: 00:50
-
Petrified trees
Duration: 03:17
-
How amber forms
Duration: 02:25
More clips from Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives
-
Trilobite types—Putting Flesh on Bone
Duration: 02:30
-
Missing link—The Rare Glimpses
Duration: 02:28
-
Limestone legacy—The Rare Glimpses
Duration: 03:17
-
Fossil analysis—The Rare Glimpses
Duration: 01:49