“Depths of Time”

Fossils are like snapshots in Mother Earth’s photo album. These ancient images and shapes within the rocks, are memories of plants and animals, creatures great and small, that have disappeared forever from this fantastic sphere we call Earth.

The creation of these timeless images and shapes is not unlike photography. It begins when one of these animals or plants drifts down for the last time, and comes to rest on a sandy ocean floor, within the silt of an ancient lake, or upon the soft bed of a primeval forest. It is here, that their earthly bodies are slowly covered with layers upon layers of sand, rocks, and soil. Their mortal bodies are like a negative that begins to transfer its image as their body decays and disappears with the passing of time.

The process is slow and uninterrupted. Thousands of years may pass, as minerals and sediments seep into the void left by each mortal plant and animal’s passing. The minerals and sediments take on the shape and texture of the prehistoric flora and fauna. Over millions of years this developer hardens into the fossils we find today . . . snapshots of a bygone era. These fossils are for us to enjoy. They give rise to our imaginations as we gaze upon them, and trace their ancient edges with our earthborn fingers, hoping to feel the texture and energy of the plants and animals that existed millions of years ago.

These moments in time captured within the rock, cause ideas and questions to surface within our minds. Our thoughts turn to life and our existence. Questions arise. How did these prehistoric plants and animals acquire their shapes? Where did their designs originate from, and who decided which ones were to survive, and which ones were to fade away into Earth’s past? Is all this just the process of evolution, nature’s way of maintaining the Earth and its inhabitants, the natural order of things?

There must be a supreme artist at work here, making decision about Mother Earth’s color and composition, her form and function. Our present is painted upon the past. Each new brush stroke is a conscious decision to cover what once was. As the paint dries, a new world has come into existence, slightly different than the one before. The old world still exists . . . buried just under the layers of the present. As the paint of this day and age, begins to dry, the past starts its slow decay. The long process of becoming a fossil begins again.