Miracles beneath our feet

by Wayne Ciluffo –

I grew up in rural western NY State.  Spending a great deal of time outdoors, I developed a deep appreciation and love for the natural world.  From an early age, I was very interested in butterflies and moths, and became a serious collector for 30 years. 

When it was time for college, I enrolled as a biology major, for the fall 1975 semester at S.U.N.Y. Brockport.  Two weeks prior to starting college, my neighbor, Tom, told me about a creek in Livingston Co. that was known for fossils.  Biology and fossils are not the same fields, but I guess Tom saw them as the same stuff.  At that time I had only a vague idea of what fossils were.  However, I was curious and went to that creek to investigate.  There was a big wall of shale along the creek, and I saw this strange black thing sticking out of the wall.  I did not have any tools with me, so I drove all the way back home.  All I could find in the garage was a carpentry hammer, and a wood chisel.

I returned to the creek, and it took more than an hour to extract the fossil.  It turns out that this was a rare trilobite called Bellacartwrightia  sp., which is pictured in this article. It seems that this trilobite, which is related to crabs, lived in the ocean during the geological time period, known as the Devonian, 350 million years ago!

I was absolutely stunned by this find.  That day in August 1975 changed the course of my life.  When I started college two weeks later, I changed my major from biology to Earth Science.  One of the disciplines in Earth Science is the study of fossils, called Paleontology, which means “ancient life”.  The more I learned, the more amazed I became.  It was as though there was this secret world, which was all around us, which I had been given the eyes to see, and yet most people were not even aware of its existence!  Most people see rocks as cold, drab, and lifeless.  To me, rocks are windows into an ancient past, allowing us to see all the life that time has taken away.

Over the years I have found not only trilobites, but also many other animals that lived in the ancient seas.  Trilobites, however, have long been my focus. Some trilobites remind me of caterpillars, and perhaps that is why I like them so much.

My life-long passion has taken me all over North America. Unless you have experienced firsthand, splitting a rock, and finding some beautiful creature inside, which was alive hundreds of millions of years ago, and knowing that you are first human being to see it since God created it, you have no idea what a wondrous thing it is! I cannot imagine my life, without having explored the mysteries of our planet, and seen with my own eyes, the miracles beneath our feet. I encourage all those who read this, to explore and appreciate all the wonders of the natural world, of which fossils are a beautiful part.