Spotlight

Palaeo-detectives

Martin Taylor

Geologist Dr Ewan Fordyce and Chris Gaskin, a natural history artist, have combined their talents to play palaeo-detectives, creating dramatic reconstructions of the prehistoric life and death of extinct dolphins, whales and penguins.

Fordyce embodies the stereotypical palaeontologist -- absorbed in his work, slightly eccentric, didactic, and tinder witted.

"I remember being rather turned on by fossils," says Fordyce. "I never thought about fossils as a career until someone suggested I work on them for my PhD. I thought, Great topic. Interesting. Fossils, bones, mix of geology and zoology -- perfect.' So I picked it up and went from there."

After finishing his PhD at the University of Canterbury, he won a post-doctoral research fellowship with the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC.

When searching for fossils there are several starting points.

"It isn't as though we have fossil magnets strapped to our forehead," says Fordyce. "First, I have to figure out what age interests me -- I am interested in the early history of whales, dolphins and penguins. So I know I have to look for animals that are 30, 40 and 50 million years old. We look at geological maps where certain colours correspond with that age."

In North Otago, up the Waitaki Valley, there is a big triangle (linking Oamaru, Waimate and Kurow) of limestone rock which is about 25-30 million years old.

"We go to these places and look and find fossils where others walk by.

"On an old sheep trail I saw a tiny fossilised bone. To me, it was obviously the ear bone of an extinct dolphin."

The ear bone, which looks more like a button mushroom than a fossil, lead to the discovery of a near-complete dolphin skull. with teeth protruding from the front of its nose. It was first dolphin of its kind to be found and has been named Waipatia.

Fordyce and his students spend between 30 and 40 days in the field per year. Most of the field work is sponsored by National Geographic Society. On average, the group would find approximately one hundred specimens in a season -- one or two are usually exceptional.

"There is violent yahooing when you find something good. Its very exciting. The hairs on your neck stand up and you break out the beer bottles."

Finding the specimens is the easy part -- retrieving them is difficult. Some specimens take several days to dig out of the cliffs. The slab containing the fossil is encased in plaster of paris, for protection, then transported back to the Otago University Geology Department.

"That makes it sound easy," says Fordyce, "but we are using real ancient techniques: ramps, pulleys, levers, a lot of people grunting and sweating, pulling on ropes and so on. We use a stone age sledge -- a couple of bits of timber bolted together -- tow it with a vehicle or use teams of guys to haul the stone slab along."

Back in the lab the limestone is cut away from the fossil with a pneumatic drill that resembles a menacingly large dental instrument. When the fossils resemble diagnostic bones (bones which help identify its origin), Fordyce classifies each one by species and age.

"I find fossils fascinating and I think about them most of the time," says Fordyce.

It's a fascination some might describe as an obsession. Fordyce is adamant his obsession is comparatively mild.

"I have met plenty of palaeontologists who are almost completely obsessed. They might bundle you up in a corner and tell you the most intimate details about Devonian [an era approximately 400 million years ago] fish. They provide a deluge of information. They are like a tap. A tap you can't turn off -- the details keep coming and coming.

"A lot of people become so obsessed that they don't realise they are the only people in the world working on a specific subject. So you have to get it into perspective."

The work has wide appeal -- prehistoric monsters, whales, dolphins, and penguins are a winning combination. In an attempt to bring the work to a wider audience, Fordyce and Gaskin have been working on illustrations to bring this prehistoric world to life.

"The idea was to sit down and figure out exactly what these things look like," says Gaskin. "To do that well, we realised we would need a reasonable injection of money. So we approached the New Zealand Lotteries Environment and Heritage fund and were given money to finance most of my work."

Since then, he has been employed by the geology museum to produce a sequence of pictures that journeys through the prehistoric world of creatures that lived around the New Zealand coastline 25-30 million years ago. There is talk of doing a children's book, but that will come later.

Many can reconstruct fossils in their mind. A few can sit down with a scrap of paper and a pencil and draw them without even seeing the fossils, but very few people have the specimens to work from. Access to a set of world class fossils is the cornerstone of their work.

"I have been sufficiently motivated and interested from the point of view of research to collect the specimens," says Fordyce, "Chris is the one who has done the interpretation from the original specimens. He is the one who has brought them to life."

Drama -- usually scenes portraying killing, death and general carnage -- is one technique Gaskin uses to animate his characters. For instance, one of the penguin fossils had part of a tooth embedded in it so Gaskin has painted Waipataia attacking a giant penguin.

They work as a team to produce the most accurate and real to life pictures possible. But there are limitations.

"Very rarely are you presented with the whole animal," says Gaskin. "What often happens is that you get part of an animal which is similar to a part of another animal. Which, in turn, are related to other animals that have been found somewhere else in the world and so on. You put all that together and slowly the animal begins to take shape."

"There is endless questioning," adds Fordyce. "We can't always get it right at first or second go. We use a rational approach and experience to produce a representation that, given the available information, is the best anyone could do."

Most of the animals have characteristic physiognomy and many of the fossils have recognisable anatomy which makes things a little easier. Gaskin explains that a huge amount of time was spent initially getting "my head in, and around, whales and dolphins anatomy".

"Chris' strength" says Fordyce, "is his attention to detail. He can work from the minute details and reproduce them in the larger picture."

Another aim of the pair is to lift the profile of palaeontology in the South of New Zealand. Fordyce explains, "The local record is a real strength -- a national strength. New Zealand has long suffered from a feeling that everything here is inferior and everything everywhere else is better. But we have got great stuff here and plenty of it.

"We are finding new things all the time. In North America and Europe there has been 200 years of this type of work. Most sites have been collected out. In New Zealand we have one of the last frontiers. That's exciting."

The work is like assembling a very complicated three dimensional jigsaw puzzle where you have to find the pieces. Then put it together with most of the pieces missing. After you have built the puzzle you need to go beyond it and imagine what the animals were really like. But you will never know if you've got it right. Frustration for some. Motivation for others.

"Going beyond the specimens, is what really drives me," says Fordyce. "Its like a good detective novel. You get given the clues and it's fascinating putting them together."

Martin Taylor is a freelance writer specialising in science and medical issues.