My Crinoid Stem

Wednesday I finally got further insight into my pre-6th grade Earth Science class experience.

More about the experience in a minute. The more recent experience first. I went to the Carnegie Natural History museum Wednesday with my children, and remembered this time to bring along "my fossil". A volunteer was kind enough to ring up a paleontologist, who took my little specimen, examined it, and returned with the verdict. It's a crinoid stem, from the Silurian Age, which was about 443-417 million years ago. And I thought that finding it in Madison in 1978 made it old.

So, I took this Earth Science class in the summer before I started 6th grade. I guess the main idea there was to get used to my new Middle School (as dreadful as it actually was, it would have taken a lot more than a class to get used to it). One day we took a bus out to a rock quarry west of Madison with instructions to "look around until we found something fossil-like." Talk about a completely non-systematic needle-in-a-haystack type of project! I remember feeling like this endeavor was completely hopeless. The 15 or 20 of us looked through a mountain of limestone rocks which all looked exactly the same. I approached the teacher, complaining that it was useless. He, patiently or exasperatedly -- I couldn't tell the difference -- told me to just keep looking. I sighed, and went back to digging through the mountain. Suddenly I saw it -- a REAL fossil. Relatively speaking, a HUGE fossil. I brought it to the teacher. I don't remember if he then told me, but if he didn't he didn't really have to: "See, I told you not to give up!" That was the life-lesson I gleaned from that experience. All the way home I looked at what turned out to be the biggest find anyone made. Just when I wanted to give up, I kept going, and found this.

I've kept it on my desk or dresser ever since. Through high school, college, working, Japan, grad school, marriage. I've told my son the story several times. And Wednesday I finally remembered to get it identified. I did kinda wonder whether it wasn't just a mud-covered bed spring, because that's a bit what it looks like.


(This is what the thing supposedly once looked like when it lived in the bottom of the ocean where Wisconsin currently is.)

There is of course a bit of irony here, as I was raised to believe in a strict six day creation, as per Genesis. I recall telling my 5th grade teacher that I didn't believe dinosaurs ever existed, for instance. As they supposedly lived all those millions of years ago, and I didn't accept that millions of years had happened, I didn't accept that they existed.

To be honest, I haven't researched or concluded everything about how I do view claims of millions and millions of years. I do accept Genesis, but I do also accept that a six 24-hour day creation is not what Genesis teaches. (Scott Hahn's book A Father Who Keeps His Promises has been most effective for me there.) But the science, well, let's just say it's still on my to-study list.

And as my son is keen on everything scientific, I'll need to bring it near the top of my list pretty soon.