Folklore of fossil molluscs
The ultimate article of this sequence on fossil folklore focuses on molluscs, excluding the ammonites, which had been lined earlier (see Fossil folklore: ammonites in Deposits, Concern 46, pp. 20–23). Molluscs are second solely to arthropods within the variety of species residing in the present day and the resistant calcareous skeletons possessed by nearly all of species accounts for his or her extraordinarily wealthy fossil document. Most fossil molluscs belong to one in every of three main teams – bivalves (oysters, clams and so forth), gastropods (snails and slugs) and cephalopods (ammonites, belemnites and so forth). Added to those are a number of minor teams, such because the monoplacophorans and scaphopods (tusk shells).
Fossil molluscs are normally recognisable immediately as belonging to this phylum due to their shut similarities with the shells of acquainted species of recent molluscs. Some, nonetheless, aren’t fairly so easy. These usually tend to have been the sources of fanciful tales about their origins and significance. Among the many extra obscure historical molluscs are these dubbed ‘tough fossils’ by Martin Rudwick within the context of the early historical past of palaeontology and doubts over the origin of fossils. They embrace the strong inside casts (steinkerns) fashioned by lithification of sediment enclosed by the shell and subsequent lack of the defining shell itself. As well as, there are some mollusc fossils – notably belemnite guards – that bear little resemblance to any residing species, including to their enigmatic nature.
Belemnites: thunderbolts and Satan’s Fingers
The primary fossils I ever got here throughout had been belemnites from the Jurassic Kellaways Rock, collected whereas on a boyhood journey following the course of the disused Hull and Barnsley Railway that ran at one level alongside South Cave Station Quarry. I took them dwelling not figuring out what they had been and was instructed by my father that they had been ‘thunderbolts’. Like a lot of his era who had not been educated about fossils, he believed that belemnites had been hurled to the bottom from the sky throughout thunderstorms. The streamlined, missile-shape of belemnite guards appears in keeping with this concept (Fig. 1). And so as to add credence to this notion, the heavy rain related to thunderstorms does often wash away the topsoil and produce fossils equivalent to belemnites to the floor, nearly as if they’d come from the sky, as recounted by Oakley (1974). Certainly, the title belemnite is derived from the Greek Belemnon, that means dart or javelin. In line with an East Anglian horseman, “Because the solar attracts up water so the clouds draw up substance from the earth – sulphur and so forth. When there’s a clap o’thunder, down all this comes as thunderbolts” (Evans, 1966, p. 131).
The placing shapes of belemnite guards, coupled with their robustness that imparts a excessive fossilisation potential, has led to a plethora of folkloric names along with thunderbolts. In some areas of England, they’re often called Fairies’ Fingers, Satan’s Fingers or Saint Peter’s Fingers (Bassett, 1982; Duffin and Davidson, 2011). The earliest point out of belemnites in Scotland dates from 1703, wherein they’re known as botstones (Martin, 1703). Belemnites are recognized by quite a few completely different names in German folklore, together with Alpschoß (nightmare shot), Fingerstein (finger stone), Gespensterkerze (ghostly candle) and Katzenkegel (cat’s skittle) (Hegele, 1997). Scandinavian folklore envisages belemnites as candles belonging to elves, gnomes and pixies, therefore the Swedish title Vetteljus (Gnomes’ Lights). They had been believed to guard unchristened youngsters from being remodeled into changelings by trolls (Duffin, 2008). In Chinese language folklore, belemnites are often called Jien-shih (sword stones).
There are a number of information of belemnites recovered from archaeological websites. Oakley (1974) described a Bronze Age burial web site in Yorkshire the place a belemnite was discovered with a feminine skeleton, seemingly a testomony to the cult standing of those fossils. Fragments of altered amber-coloured belemnites with high quality perforations, which can have been used as charms, had been discovered at a 20,000-year-old archaeological web site often called Kostenki 17 on the Don River in Russia (Boriskovskii, 1956). Objects resembling belemnites seem in historical Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions symbolising the god Min. In line with Newberry (1910), fossil belemnites and sure arrowheads had been cult-objects within the Egyptian Center Kingdom, representing thunderbolts and, by affiliation, Min.
Belemnites had been as soon as believed to have medicinal qualities, and had been used as cures for each rheumatism and sore eyes in people and horses. The therapy for horses concerned crushing the fossils right into a mud that might then be blown into the eyes of the animal. In Scotland, they had been steeped in water and employed to treatment horses of the worms that induced distemper (Oakley, 1974). They had been additionally used to maintain an individual from being struck by lightning or bewitched by demons from the sky (Kennedy, 1976).
Belemnites are actually the interior shells of an extinct group of cephalopods resembling fashionable squid, however differing in having hooks quite suckers on their arms. Their true affinity is unclear from the bullet-shaped guard alone – the coarse, radiating calcite crystals forming the belemnite guard may very well be taken to recommend an inorganic origin just like the crystals in a geode. Extra full specimens protect the phragmocone (Fig. 2). This chambered shell, which is constructed of the readily dissolved mineral aragonite, suits right into a conical melancholy within the blunt finish of the guard and intently resembles the chambered shells of such cephalopods because the residing nautilus, offering essential proof for the true affinities of those Jurassic and Cretaceous animals.
Pagoda stones
Longitudinal sections by means of Palaeozoic orthoconic nautiloids are recognized in China as Pagoda Stones (bao-ta-shih), due to their obscure resemblance to the tiered towers discovered in lots of temples (Fig. three). The abundance of those fossils explains the origin of the title Pagoda Formation for an Ordovician deposit in South China.
Satan’s toenails
‘Satan’s toenails’, shells of the Jurassic oyster Gryphaea, are among the many most ample fossils discovered within the British Jurassic (Fig. four). The calcite shell of Gryphaea is thick and survives weathering and erosion of the sediments wherein it’s fossilised. Additionally it is sufficiently resilient to have endured transportation by rivers and Pleistocene glaciers – eroded specimens of Gryphaea are sometimes present in river gravels and glacially deposited boulder clays in areas of England, equivalent to Suffolk and Gloucestershire.
The strong, curved left valve of Gryphaea, marked with distinguished progress bands, superficially resembles a thick toenail. It’s unclear whether or not Gryphaea shells had been as soon as believed to be the precise toenails of devils or simply that they corresponded with the favored conception of what a satan’s toenail should appear like.
Satan’s toenails are significantly widespread within the Decrease Jurassic rocks round Scunthorpe, previously quarried intensively for the iron ore that was economically necessary for this Lincolnshire city. They characteristic within the city’s coat of arms, adopted in 1936 (Fig. 5). Knell (1988) quoted a passage from a diary written on 10 April 1696 by a neighborhood man, Abraham de la Pryne, which says that powdered Gryphaea was used to treatment ‘… a horse’s sore again …’.
In Scotland, fossil Gryphaea shells are recognized in Outdated Gallic as clach crubain, translated as ‘crouching shell’ (Oakley, 1974). They had been apparently used within the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to treatment ache within the joints. Oakley made the attention-grabbing level that their contorted look is suggestive of painful joints, an instance of sympathetic medication (‘like cures like’).
Stone cores
The fossil moulds of bivalves had been puzzling objects to early naturalists and customary folks alike. This preservational model is especially attribute of species of bivalves that had aragonitic shells. In contrast to the extra secure calcite shells discovered, for instance, in Gryphaea, aragonite is routinely dissolved by pore waters passing by means of the rock, leaving areas the place the shell was previously situated surrounding a hardened sediment core. This core is an inside mould, typically recognized by the German title ‘steinkern’. Steinkerns are strong objects which will fall out of the rock cleanly when it’s damaged open. The usually weird and vexing look of bivalve steinkerns led to misconceptions about their origins, and spawned the names ‘Osses ‘Eds and Bulls’ hearts by which they’re recognized in folklore. Glørstad et al. (2004) described a outstanding steinkern of the Ordovician bivalve Cyrtodonta from a Mesolithic web site in south-eastern Norway that had been intentionally collected and subsequently sculpted to emphasise its feminine human ‘attributes’.
‘Osses ‘Eds
Steinkerns of a gaggle of bivalves widespread within the Jurassic of southern England when considered in a selected orientation vaguely resemble the heads of miniature horses (Fig. 6). The ‘eyes’ of the horse are literally moulds of scars left by the muscle tissues that initially closed the valves collectively, and the ‘ears’ are the pointed beaks of the 2 valves. The Oxford naturalist Robert Plot (1677) referred to examples of those fossils from Headington close to Oxford as ‘Hippocephaloides’ alluding to their horse head-like form (Fig. 7). They’re now recognized by the scientific title Myophorella hudlestoni.
Steinkerns of a associated trigoniid bivalve (Myophorella incurva) are conspicuous within the Portland Stone of Dorset, significantly in a stage known as the ‘Roach’, which is incessantly used decoratively as a dealing with stone on buildings, for instance, the Economist Buildings within the Metropolis of Westminster. Quarrymen on the Isle of Portland talking in native dialect knew them as ‘Osses ‘Eds.
Bulls’ hearts
One other kind of bivalve steinkern from the British Jurassic has been known as a Bull’s coronary heart (Fig. eight). Like ‘Osses ‘Eds, these had been discovered by Robert Plot at Headington, who referred to them as ‘Bucardites’. They’re now recognized by the scientific title Protocardia. Their resemblance to a coronary heart turns into obvious when the fossils are considered from the aspect, with the mould of the left valve on one aspect and that of the precise valve on the opposite.
Proof that fossils of the identical kind have lengthy been recognized to humankind comes from the invention of a Protocardia steinkern in a Bronze Age barrow (burial mound) at Aldbourne in Wiltshire (Oakley, 1974). This barrow was constructed on the Chalk and but the fossil comes from the underlying Higher Greensand, and will need to have been collected and brought to the location of the barrow.
References
Bassett, M.G. 1982. Shaped stones, folklore and fossils. Nationwide Museum of Wales, Cardiff, 32 pp.
Boriskovskij, P I. 1963. Essays on the Paleolithic of the Don Basin (in Russian) Mater. Issled. Arkheol. SSSR, 121: 80-124.
Duffin, C. 2008. Fossils and folklore. Moral Report 113: 17–21.
Duffin, C.J. & Davidson, J.P. 2011. Geology and the darkish aspect. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Affiliation 122: 7–15.
Evans, G.E. 1966. Patterns underneath the Plough. Points of the Folks-Lifetime of East Anglia. Faber and Faber, London.
Glørstad, H., Nakrem, H.A. & Tørhaug, V. 2004. Nature in Society: Reflections over a Mesolithic Sculpture of a Fossilised Shell. Norwegian Archaeological Evaluate 37: 95–110.
Hegele, A. 1997. Donnerkeil und Teufeflsfinger: Belemniten in Voldsglauben und Volksmedizin. Fossilien 1/97: 21–26.
Kennedy, C. B. 1976. A fossil for what ails you. The outstanding historical past of fossil medication. Fossil Journal 1: 42–57.
Knell, S. J. 1988. The Pure Historical past of the Frodingham Ironstone. Scunthorpe Borough Museum and Artwork Gallery, Scunthorpe.
Martin, M. 1703. A Description of the Western Isles of Scotland. Andrew Bell, London.
Newberry, P. E. 1910. The Egyptian cult-object and the ‘thunderbolt.’ Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology three: 50–52.
Oakley, Okay. P. 1974. Folklore of fossils. Half I. New York Paleontological Society Notes 5 (1-2): 9–17.
Plot, R. 1677. The Pure Historical past of Oxfordshire: being an essay in the direction of the Pure Historical past of England. Oxford.
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