“But does the curator record a destroyed fossil?”
“Oh, I see,” Denise said. “Yes. The curator records everything.”
Lesson 3: Explain
“Now we try to draw conclusions based on what we’ve found,” Denise told the children. “What do we know
about the animals that left these fossils behind?”
“They were small,” one of the children said.
“Okay. What else?”
“They suffocated?” said another child.
“What?” Denise said.
“When they were pressed into the sediments.”
“Oh no,” Denise said. “They were dead before that happened.”
“How did they die?”
“I don’t know,” Denise said. “We know the animals in the La Brea tar pits died because they became trapped
in the tar. But most of the time, cause of death is a mystery.”
The children stared at her the way Garrick had at the doctor, after the tests were run. “How can you not
know how this happened? What are we supposed to do? Just try again and hope all goes well?”
Denise said now, “What can these fossils show us about how the environment changed over time?”
“It used to be covered in water,” one of the children said.
“Good. How do you know?”
“Because the deepest fossils are seashells.”
“And then what happened? How did the area change?”
“The water dried up?” another child said.
“Yes,” Denise said. “Environments are always changing, as a result of earth processes such as erosion and
weathering and deposition. It happens slowly, over thousands of years. What was once a sea can become a
desert.”
Andreas Lie is a Norwegian
artist who textures animals
with landscapes through
double exposure.