The Great Fossil Enigma (2 page)

Pinhead fossils.

1.1  Hinde's proof.

2.1  The solution to the black shales dispute.

3.1  Schmidt's fish.

3.2  Scott's conodont assemblages.

4.1  Hass's journey into the anatomy of the fossil.

5.1  Hass's compromise.

6.1  Walliser, Lindström, Ziegler, and Müller.

7.1  Helms's iconic evolutionary chart.

7.2  Müller's oddities.

8.1  Rexroad and Nicoll's fused conodont clusters.

8.2  Sweet and Bergström.

9.1  Modeling the ecology of the animal.

10.1  Fåhræus's choreography.

10.2  Jeppsson's oceanic models.

11.1  The beast of Bear Gulch.

12.1  Müller and Nogami's art.

12.2  Lindström's imagined animals.

12.3  Conway Morris's animal.

12.4  Conodont teeth.

12.5  Conodont filters.

13.1  The conodont animal.

14.1  Briggs and Aldridge.

14.2  Alien jaws.

14.3  The conodont animal as it is imagined today.

THIS BOOK HAS TWO BEGINNINGS. THE STORY OF THE “GREAT
fossil enigma” begins with the Prelude. However for those expecting an analytical history of science, I suggest the afterword as a useful introduction because it explains how and why I have written this book and what lies beneath the narrative of the chapters. When I began this book in 2003, I envisaged it as the second in a trilogy of monographs revealing the fossil as a cultural object. In the first book,
The Culture of English Geology
,
1815–1851
, I tried to show how fossils acted as cultural objects, shaping lives, playing a role in local politics, and leading to the founding of museums and the emergence of geology as a
cultural
field. As a museologist and cultural historian rather than a historian of science, I wanted to explain fossils and their place in society not in terms of a history of ideas but more holistically.

I took these ideas further in explorations of the politics of “English geology,” the possibilities of a cultural revolution in science, and cultural changes in geology in late-twentieth-century Britain. In this book, I turn my attention to the workings of a single community of researchers over a period of 150 years or so and consider how these men and women imagined and conceptualized the fossils that bound them together. Once again I have not attempted to write a straightforward history of ideas or to explore the contributions these fossils made to science in any detailed sense. My interest remains predominantly in culture, in the relationships between people, objects, and practices (the things people do, often formalized and institutionalized in some way). While I have long thought of this as a blend of cultural history and museology – as a branch of museum studies – I am aware that it is also a form of ethnology as it has long been understood in northern Europe (as a curiosity about one's own culture). No doubt it is this approach to the history of a science that caused a number of readers of the manuscript to consider it rather “strange.” If that is the case, I am delighted, for a study of this kind requires the author and reader to remove themselves sufficiently far from their subject to see the actions of individuals as strange rather than natural.

As I researched and wrote this book, I became increasingly aware that, as one of science's great enigmas, its subject already existed, though not in any coherent form, as a possession of all those who wondered about and worked on these fossils. If I began my research believing that I might be another user of these fossils, this time in my own analytical history, I soon understood that I had to prioritize the needs of those for whom the fossils already held meaning. Having never set out simply to tell a story, I came to understand that accessible narrative was critically important. Indeed, I felt it was an obligation. Consequently, I decided to put a good deal of my analysis into the afterword (which at various times I have considered an explanatory introduction) without making that part of the book oppressively long. I have written the narrative of the chapters broadly in chronological fashion, though some themes prevented me from adhering to this unwaveringly. I hope they retain something of the strangeness of my original outlook. I will leave the reader to decide whether he or she wants to stray into the afterword.

Finally, I should note that nowhere in this book do I assume the authority of a scientist. I am a historian. I listened to my actors and believed, as they did, in what they told me. Consequently, the animal appears in glimpses, as if through a mist. First it seems to be one thing then another, almost coming into view but then disappearing. For a long time the animal did not so much appear in the headlights of science as in its wing mirrors, implicitly present but shrouded in darkness.

Of course, books tend not to be read as they are written, and in the closing weeks before going to press, I became a little concerned that some readers might think that I am making a scientific argument, that I have a scientific opinion on the matters described in this book. I do not. I take no view on what is right or wrong, only in what is believed, and I have no preferred position regarding the biological attributes of the animal myself. I have been fascinated by all the various manifestations of conodont animal, but scientists have to convince each other of the truth of their science, not me. It was inevitable, however, given the focus of this book, that I allocated considerable space to Melton and Scott's, Conway Morris's, and Clarkson and company's animals. Given the sensational significance of the latter, I am sure supporters and critics alike will recognize that British views on the animal have shaped the course of debate over the last thirty years and warrant detailed examination. In all three cases, those who possessed the conodont animal fossils became hugely empowered but also much criticized. I will not say here whether everything has been resolved. That is for the reader to consider at the end of
chapter 14
.

Among British workers, my main contact has been Dick Aldridge. He gave me, at the outset of my research, the manuscript of a popular account of his scientific work on the animal that he had prepared for publication. Much of this was subsequently dissected by him and turned into papers that have reflected on the scientific investigation of the animals. The presence of Dick's account, with its focus on recent scientific developments and his personal program of research, encouraged me to write instead a long history of conodont research and develop a rather different approach to the discovery of the animal. Dick also gave me unhindered access to the library of conodont papers held by the Geology Department at the University of Leicester and the uncurated and uncensored correspondence between himself, Derek Briggs, Euan Clarkson, and others around the time of the animal's discovery. The manner in which these three men published the first description of the animal, their early ideas, and the criticisms made by friends are there for the reader to see. Dick was among those who read the whole manuscript, though he did so in first draft and not as it appears now. Interestingly, nearly all his comments concerned my use of English; he made no attempt to alter what I had written. My first words of thanks, then, must go to Dick. All readers of the manuscript have been equally generous. Maurits Lindström, who never saw the finished book, expressed it perfectly: “It is your book, write it as you like!”

Maurits was one of the “harbingers of spring” to whom I dedicate this book and who are introduced in full in
chapter 6
. I studied their work and lives in tremendous detail before meeting many of them. For me, these meetings were the high spots in an epic journey. It is perhaps an artifact of my writing this book at this particular moment-when the full panorama of their scientific lives is available to me – that places them at the center of this study, but one cannot deny their transformative influence. Sadly, three of them – Lindström, Müller, and Walliser – have died since I interviewed them.

I met Maurits Lindström in Stockholm in March 2007. I had flown to Copenhagen and caught the train up to Lund in Sweden as the guest of veteran conodont worker, Lennart Jeppsson, who is perhaps a decade or more younger than members of this 1950s generation. I knew I wanted to write about Lennart's extraordinary Gotland experiences, and we had long conversations about all aspects of Swedish science. I also met members of Lennart's technical team and saw his remarkable laboratory setup – a conodont factory if ever there was one. I then took that long train journey up to Stockholm to meet Maurits Lindström. It had taken a bit of effort to track Maurits down as I had been told it would be difficult to find him. This added a little mystery to the man, which I built up in my mind rather more than was necessary. Finding him was actually not so hard, and Maurits e-mailed me, asking me to meet him on “the southwest corner of Drottninggatan and Tegnergatan…. I would [sic] be passing there (parking is precarious) from 9
AM
and am driving a grey metallic Renault Megane.”

As I waited on the street corner for this man I had never met and with whom I had barely corresponded, my breath appearing in white clouds before me, I felt like Harry Palmer in one of those spy movies set in Berlin in the 1960s. This sense was not dispelled when at lunch time Maurits drove me to a canteen in the middle of an industrial area of the city. The canteen reminded me of those communist-era socialist realist posters featuring the heroic worker; I felt undressed without a gray boiler suit. Maurits himself was tall and thin, sophisticated and clever, but in that Swedish way that always makes others feel comfortable. We chatted all day about his discoveries and thinking, his worldview and his extraordinary life. He told me much more than I could include in this book. It was only on meeting him that I understood his wonderfully playful scientific outlook.

I met Klaus Müller in an up-market retirement complex in Bonn. He was the oldest of this generation, and with his large glasses and those milky eyes of old age, he reminded me a bit of my own father in his final days. Klaus was a proud German (or Berliner, he might say) who had lived an extraordinary life despite chronic health problems. His wife had been central to his being and had played an important role in helping him make the right decisions. In his company, I felt young again, for he had experienced a life during the war that I could barely imagine despite my consumption of so many war histories. From Bonn I caught the train down the picturesque Rhine Valley, a journey I had traveled many times in the 1970s, and then up to Göttingen to meet Otto Walliser. Klaus had talked of the difficulties of his relationship with Otto – the two men fell out almost on first meeting – so I was now even keener to meet him. I found Otto at the University of Göttingen, in a large room crammed with books and fossils, with giant cactuses lining the tall windows. Like Lindström, Otto was still mentally young and full of energy. He was naturally gregarious and enthusiastic, and his smile rarely left his lips. Positive and motivating, he seemed to exude happiness, and it was easy to understand why others might follow his lead. You knew you would have some fun along the way.

In May 2007, I flew out to the United States and spent long days in the science library at the University of Chicago, where I found so much written about these fossils that had rarely escaped the country. I recall that the American Association of Museums was in town at that time, so I spent my evenings partying in another world. From there I flew to Washington to work in the Smithsonian Institution's archives, and there I discovered the political controversy surrounding the black shales that led to the birth of the conodont as a properly scientific fossil. From there I flew to Columbus, Ohio, to meet Walt Sweet at his house. Walt seemed to measure moments in his career in terms of the students he had taught at the time – he was immensely proud of them all. I had corresponded a good deal by e-mail with him, so I knew he was a generous yet pretty straight-talking guy who valued precision. He took me to the Geology Department at Ohio State University, which had been the center of his life for so long. The department's building, which was now quite old and a little cramped, had been constructed with geological principles in mind, and in it every space seemed to tell a scientific story. In the vastness of the Columbus campus, it seemed rather homely.

In December that year, I spent several days in the archives at the University of Illinois in Urbana, looking through the materials Harold Scott had lodged there. It was with great delight that I discovered a big folder filled with correspondence on his and Melton's animal. In those papers I also believed I could see another Scott, not the Scott others remembered. My plan was to fly from there to Chicago and then down to Missouri to look for Branson and Mehl material. But the tiny jet did not want to leave the ground at Urbana, and by the time it did, O'Hare Airport was already under the jurisdiction of snow plows. All flights were canceled, but for how long? No one knew. My bag flew south, and the next day I flew east to Washington, D.C. The
TV
news that night showed the Midwest ravaged by extraordinary ice storms. Branson and Mehl (and my bag) remained out of reach. On the outskirts of Washington, I visited the U.S. Geological Survey, gathering the last pieces of information.

Unfortunately, I did not interview all the harbingers. Willi Ziegler had died a few years earlier, but I believe I met him briefly at the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt, when digging for fossils at Messel in the late 1980s, long before I had any thoughts of writing this book and when I was still a museum curator. I finally corresponded with Frank Rhodes when this book was pretty much finished, and he kindly agreed to read the manuscript. I would have enjoyed interviewing them both.

There are many other people I must thank. I interviewed Ronald Austin, coincidentally Dick Aldridge's former doctoral dissertation supervisor, in Swansea, Wales, quite early in the project and caught Carl Rexroad briefly, another legend from the old days, and still very active, in Leicester, England, in 2006. I exchanged a number of e-mails with Gil Klapper in 2005 and 2007, and I received materials, ideas, information, and so on from Eric Robinson, Mark Purnell, Lyall Anderson, Richard Davis, Danita Brandt, Wendy Cawthorne, Martin Langer, Irena Malakhova, Hannes Theron, Andrew Polaszek, Neil Clark, Peter von Bitter, Paul Smith, and Sandra Dudley. Dick Aldridge and my good friend Mike Taylor read the first complete, but rather different, draft in 2009. Euan Clarkson and Derek Briggs commented on
chapter 13
before a final rewrite permitted me to introduce some additional archival material. Derek Briggs and Stig Bergström reviewed the whole book in slightly different versions on behalf of Indiana University Press, and both gave me very useful corrections. Walt Sweet kindly read
chapters 8
and
9
, Chris Barnes
chapter 9
, Lennart Jeppsson
chapter 10
, Mark Purnell
chapters 12
to
14
, and Paul Smith
chapters 13
and
14
. Jeff Over, John Repetski, Eberhard Schindler, Stig Bergström, Helje Pärnaste, Dick Aldridge, Mark Purnell, and Debbie Maizels gave me additional help with images.