It looked like an arm bone to me. Then again, I have no formal training in either anatomy or geology. The strata of Pennsylvania shale was littered with shell fossils from before the dinosaur era. Had I found a rare early animal? You see, I love fossils. In fact, I was so disappointed the first time I walked into a Fossil store that I’ve never had the heart to go back. Something about finding the remains of creatures millions of years old is inherently fascinating, and I was fortunate enough to grow up by a river that had plenty of fossils for the taking (a great pass-time for children of humble means). When I saw Peter D. Ward’s Gorgon at a local book sale, I had to get it. In addition to my love of fossils, I also have a special interest in Medusa, and the title grabbed two aspects of my attention at once.
The gorgon of the title is explained by the subtitle: The Monsters That Ruled the Planet Before Dinosaurs and How They Died in the Greatest Catastrophe in Earth’s History. As Ward explains, many in the media express surprise that there was anything before the dinosaurs. Perhaps I grew up with too much Genesis on the mind, but I knew about the Permian Extinction—the most deadly episode in Earth’s biological history. Over 90 percent of life forms died out, including some of the cooler species of mammal-like reptiles like the dimetrodon. I have to confess, however, that I don’t recall ever hearing about gorgons before. They are a South African species. Well, they were, long before apartheid and other ridiculous human foibles. Indeed, one of the charms of Ward’s account is that he doesn’t separate the human element from the paleontological. His visits to South Africa often demonstrated how the current dominant species of the planet participates in its own extinction. Valuing personal gain over social justice cannot have long-term payoffs.
This is a compelling story of people committed to finding answers in a barren land. To an inveterate fossil-hunter like me, it was a dreamy sort of read. I had my fossil “arm bone” assessed by a geologist. It was actually a trilobite trail. A trace fossil. Sometimes things aren’t what they seem. The answer of why of the Permian Extinction transpired turned out to be the most distressing aspect of the tale. Climate change, Ward demonstrates, can easily lead to mass extinction through the very act of breathing. Our evolution has favored the current atmospheric makeup of our planet. Dinosaurs, who appeared after the Permian Extinction, had evolved lungs for processing air with less oxygen than we’re used to. Greenhouse gases can shift subtle, invisible balances that are necessary for taking a breath. And I could extrapolate to a future where technology will again come to the rescue, but only of those who can afford it. And I wonder what far distant evolved intelligent species will make of a civilization where financial gain was considered the greater good than survival of an entire species? Humanity itself will have become a fossil by then. But a well-dressed one.
The Fires of Bureaucratic Porn
My hopeless naivety must show through on this blog from time to time. I mean, I once walked into a Fossil store expecting to find impressions of dead animals instead of trendy accessories. Maybe it is because I grew up in a small town, without cable, with a regular regimen of church attendance and associated activities. Being working class often means taking things at face value. You learn pretty quickly that you don’t have much control over the things around you—someone else signs the checks, and if you don’t do what they say, the checks don’t get signed. I grew up in a refinery town doing lots of dirty jobs. “Excuse me sir, but do you have any trilobites?” There’s one born every minute. Well, more frequently than that, actually.
Thus it was with a certain wonder that I first learned about another small, Pennsylvania town with an unearthly problem. David DeKok’s Fire Underground: The Ongoing Tragedy of the Centralia Mine Fire is an unsensationalized ride through the reality of bureaucratic lack of heart and the weighing of peoples’ lives in the scales of cost effectiveness. The Centralia mine fire began the year I was born (1962). It still burns today and has enough fuel, some reports suggest, to last for a thousand years. This is a hellish millennium. Accounts of elderly citizens awaking in the middle of the night with carbon monoxide clouds in their basements, ground temperatures hot enough to melt blacktop, bore-hole readings of over 800 degrees. Under what’s left of the town of Centralia, the heart of the fire is hotter than the surface of the planet Mercury. What DeKok provides is a step-by-step analysis of political side-stepping. Realizing how expensive it had become to fight this fire underground, state officials were repeatedly caught with their skirts over their heads, claiming that they were wearing full-body armor underneath. During the height of the crisis, in the Reagan and Thornburg years, cutbacks in vital services left the working people of this town in an impossible predicament. Those in positions of power would not even change their vacation plans to try to save a thousand lives. When the smoke clears, after a millennium, if there’s anyone left to write histories, we will see where unchecked greed and ambition lead. It is the only hope we have. The book reads like porn for bureaucrats.
In my hometown we worried about refinery fires when I was growing up. As a child I saw such a fire from a distance; it looked like an entire hillside (a mountain in my naive eyes) was aflame. My brothers and I went outside to gather ashes as large as dinner plates that were floating through the sky, falling like demonic snow. (We doubtless would have kept them, alongside our fossils, had my mother not sensibly put down her foot.) Later, when we drove out that way, we saw the great steel vats that held 260,000 gallons of petroleum products bent and folded over like the hem of God’s great robe in the temple. Over forty years later the image is still vivid in my mind. Those who’ve lived with fire know the danger better than plutocratic oligarchs who view human lives in terms of the bottom line. One truth of physics may come to our aid, eventually; heat does rise. Whether it will ever reach the level of those in power, however, will only be answered when I find that trilobite I’m seeking amid the expensive watches and wallets of the Fossil crowd. I’ll find one too, before the Centralia mine fire burns itself out.
Steve A. Wiggins 