Greetings. Just a quick update to this old site if you happen to reach it.

My new website is www.geologywriter.com, which contains information about my books, other writing projects, and blog.

I am also using Twitter under @geologywriter.

Rock Versus Stone: A link to my new blog site

A few people have asked so here's a link to my most recent posting on my new blog site. It's ponders the eternal question of Rock Versus Stone, is there a difference?

http://geologywriter.com/blog/stories-in-stone-blog/rock-or-stone-is-there-a-difference/

New Blog and Web Site

Greetings all. Just a short note to let everyone know that I have moved by blog to my new web site and will no longer be posting at this site.

Here is a link to the new blog. http://geologywriter.com/category/blog/stories-in-stone-blog/

And here is a link to my new web site. http://geologywriter.com/

Thanks kindly for your interest and input in my geology writings.

If you go to the new site, you will see that I am working on a new book, about the natural and cultural history of Cairns (the piles of rock that mark trails), and that I am continuing my blog on building stone. I also hope to broaden the scope of that blog to include more aspects of geology.

Sincerely,

David B. Williams

Seattle Stone: Lobby #2, Smith Tower marble

I would like to return to Smith Tower and look at the other beautiful stone that graces its lobby. It is a classic marble, quarried from Tokeen on Marble Island, just off the west side of Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska. Tokeen was the more major of two marble quarries in the area. First to open was Calder, at the north end of Prince of Wales Island but it closed about the time that Tokeen was being more fully developed by R. L. Fox of Seattle. Marble Island was initially called Fox Island.

In the fall of 1903, Fox and several investors started the Great American Marble Company. Apparently the money men had noble aspirations or visions of grandeur. They definitely had other problems, including financial troubles and interpersonal conflicts. Turns out that one investor, Robert Ball, was actually one Charles Mains, a lawyer from Michigan disbarred for shady shenanigans.

Quarry at Tokeen, photo from Alaska State Library Digital Collections

Meanwhile, the owners of the Vermont Marble Company (VMC), in Vermont, had been hearing rumors of “mountains of marble – ‘quantities beyond calculation’ – and of a quality such that ‘no other marble in the world was superior.” Eventually representatives of VMC made it to Marble Island, verified the rumors, and noted a good potential market for the stone. D. H. Bixler wrote in 1908 to VMC “As for the future of Seattle there cannot be much doubt. It seems as though it will surely grow…The pace has been set for first class buildings and any that follow will have to have more or less interior marble.”

Men at Tokeen, photo from Alaska State Library Digital Collections

With VMC now holding the rights to the marble, they began to develop operations. The initial shipment of 101 tons of marble left Tokeen on July 18, 1909. As many as eight quarries operated with most blocks going to the VMC yard in Tacoma. During the peak years of operation from 1912 to 1915, more than 4,360 blocks were shipped to Tacoma. Cut stone went into buildings from Boston to Honolulu including post offices in Bellingham and San Diego; the Empress Theater in Salt Lake City; the county building in Pittsburgh, and the Pearl Harbor Naval Hospital. In Seattle, it went into King County Courthouse, the Hoge Building, the Bank of California and Smith Tower.

Alaska marble in the Smith Tower

The marble comes from metamorphosed layers of the Heceta Limestone, an Early to Late Silurian (430 to 420mya). Subsequent intrusion of a hornblende diorite metamorphosed the limestone into a marble. Parts of the Heceta is rich in fossils, though none are found in the marble beds. The limestone formed mostly on a shallow marine platform with some deeper water deposition, too.

Smith Tower interior and route to safety

In my next posting, I will show a few photos of the third stone in Smith Tower, a fossil-rich limestone. Very exciting!

Seattle Stone: Lobby #2, Smith Tower onyx

In continuing my short tour of Seattle lobbies, I turn to what is one of the best known lobbies in the downtown area. Smith Tower is also one of Seattle’s more famous buildings. Opened on July 4, 1914, the 462-foot tall building was the tallest building west of Ohio at the time. Over the years, the mostly terra cotta clad edifice has borne the brunt of many incorrect claims. As a fine essay on the historylink.org web site reports, it was never the fourth tallest building in the world, or even outside of New York.

Despite not meeting the aspirations of some, Smith Tower does sport a rather handsome lobby. Two stones dominate, onyx marble from Mexico and marble from Alaska. This post will focus on the Mexican rock.

Onyx is a notoriously confusing stone. True onyx is a variety of quartz. It is sometimes referred to as layered chalcedony or black-and-white agate. The onyx used as building stone is not made of quartz but of calcite and is known as onyx marble. Because such calcareous onyx became popular in the United States through stone quarried near Mexico City, it is also called Mexican onyx, as well, no matter its point of origin. Onyx marble used in ancient Rome and by early Egyptians usually came from Algeria. All onyx marble is popular because of the colorful layering and ability to be highly polished. Color variation depends on the amount of iron and manganese and their oxidation states in the deposits, which become layered as they accumulate in pools.

The Smith Tower onyx panels are from Baja California from an area known as El Marmol. Like all onyx marble, it formed layer by thin layer in springs, in this case cold water springs. Other onyx marbles form in hot springs, too. They can also form as stalactites and stalactites. First quarried around 1893, the El Marmol deposits are about 160 miles southeast of Ensenada and 15 miles from the east coast of the peninsula. (One additional note. After posting this blog, I was reminded that the onyx in Smith Tower is also called Pedrara Onyx, in reference to the company that owned the quarries.)

The Spring at El Marmol (from the Tacoma World web site)

El Marmol achieved a bit of fame for its onyx marble schoolhouse, which was supposedly the only all onyx place of education in the world. Apparently the stones were not polished and by at least the 1950s, the weathered stones were drab and brown. As you can see from this modern shot, it’s not in very good shape.

The schoolhouse at El Marmol (from Tacoma World web site)

When geologist George Perkins Merrill visited the Baja quarries in the early 1890s he found the deposits quite pleasing. “Nothing can be more fascinating to the lover of the beautiful in stones than this occurrence, where huge blocks of material of almost ideal soundness, with ever varying shades of color and veination lie everywhere exposed in countless numbers…The colors are peculiarly delicate, and there is a wonderful uniformity in quality…The rose color is, so far as my present knowledge goes, quite unique and wonderfully beautiful.”

The quarry at El Marmol closed in the early 1960s. An article by naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch theorized that it was due to plastic. He wrote “As with so much that is coming in the world, there is a cheap substitute for something dearer and more beautiful.” Fortunately, we can still see the dear and beautiful at Smith Tower.

Next time, I will look at the Alaskan marble.

Seattle Stone: Lobby #1

I am starting a series looking at buildings in Seattle. I plan to focus initially on some lobbies that I have long liked. My first is the wonderful art deco Exchange Building. Ironically finished in 1929, the building, as the name suggests, was supposed to house the Northwest Commodities and Stock Exchange. Most of the elaborate motifs feature items that represented Washington state agriculture. It is a lovely building.

For many years, I have taken people to the building on my downtown building stone tour and focused on the exterior Morton Gneiss. If we went on a weekday, I would often go inside and show them the extravagant stone, although I had no clue where the stone originated.

Recently, I was showing Dave Tucker of Northwest Geology Field Trips around Seattle to help him put together a tour for a guidebook he is writing on regional geology. When we stopped at the Exchange Building, his excitement prompted me to try and find out a bit more about the stone. Here's what I learned.

The stone is quarried in Italy near the town of La Spezia, about 14 miles west of the legendary marble quarries of Carrara. The best quarries are on the Tino islands. Initially quarried in the first century and used in religious buildings, the Romans also employed it to pave roads (now that would be wicked cool to see) and in the Luni amphitheater at La Spezia. Quarrying ramped up again after World War II but has slowed down of late. The ancient name was Portovenere and the modern name is Portoro (from Porta oro), with varieties labeled Portoro a macchia larga (large-veined), Portoro di Prima (the best variety), and Portoro a macchia fine (thin-veined).

Geologically, it is part of the vast sedimentary rocks of the Tuscan nappe. The Late Triassic Portoro Limestone is an aragonite mud deposited on a shallow carbonate platform. It is up to 260 feet and consists of black calcite with alternating layers of mixed dolomite and calcite. The complex folding and reworking of the micritic limestone during Miocene deformation, which also metamorphosed the Carrara marble, produced the distinctive and beautiful stylolitic veining that characterizes the stone. Four- to eight-inch-wide shear zones separate undeformed layers up to eight inches thick.

Sorry for the bad coloring. This stone is black. The purple is light reflected from Cherry wood paneling.

The black coloring primarily comes from small amounts of organics in anaerobic environments. Limonite and sulfides produce the yellow banding with dolomite mosaics and hematite forming more violet veins.

The building architect, John Graham Sr., did a splendid job of bookmatching the Portoro panels. He also incorporated Italian travertine and some sort of purple brecciated stone, which I know nothing about. Someday I hope to figure out that part of the story.

Curiously, the Portoro is a stone of warm places, such as northern Africa and Sicily. When weathered, it loses its brilliance and appears "irreversibly opaque, whitened and corroded," according to one study of it. You can see this in Seattle at the entrance to Shucker's Restaurant on 4th Avenue, just north of Seneca.

Next up will be the elegant lobby of the Smith Tower.

Louis Kahn and Travertine

Last night, I watched a fascinating documentary about the iconoclastic architect Louis Kahn. As the title implies, My Architect: A Son's Journey, follows Kahn's son Nathaniel as he attempts to discover the father he didn't know. Kahn was one of the greatest and most complex architects of the twentieth century. He is best known for his work in the United States, which includes the Kimball Art Museum in Dallas and the Salk Institute in La Jolla. He also designed astounding buildings in Bangladesh and India. What he was less known for was that he had three families, one with his wife and two through long-term affairs. All three produced children. The movie is well worth watching not only for Kahn's fascinating life but also for his stunning architecture.

What I like best about his work is his use of geometric shapes. He punctuates his walls with angles and arches and circles, allowing an ever changing interplay of light and shadow. Each design brings the buildings to life as they change shape throughout the day. His use of geometric shapes also connects his buildings to the landscape, not necessarily in an organic way, but in a way that continues the weaving of the ephemeral and the permanent.

And finally, Kahn appears to have been quite the fan of travertine. His use of it at the Salk Institute foreshadows and seems to have inspired Richard Meier's use of the stone at the Getty Museum. Below are some photos I found on the web that to me are some of the most notable uses of travertine. I hope you'll agree.

Kimball Art Museum (from the Southern Live Oak blog)

Kimball Art Museum detail (from flickr)

Salk Institute (from Daily Icon)

Salk Institute details (from Daily Icon)

Salk Institute seats (from Premier Green)

Yale Museum for British Art (from flickr)

The Crocodile and the Countertop

Italian paleontologists have been on a roll of late, and they haven’t even had to go out in the field. Late last year came reports of the dinosaur in the duomo. Now, comes the tale of the countertop crocodile. The new story begins in 1955 in Portomaggiore (Ferrara, Italy), when stonecutter Mr. S. Pasini observed what he thought were fossil bones in a block of yellowish-red limestone destined for a countertop. After the cutting the block into four slabs, Pasini saved the stone. A year later paleontologist Piero Leonardi described the fossil as a cross section of a crocodile he called the “Coccodrillo di Portomaggiore.”

Cross sectioned slabs from Gondwana Research (In Press, available online August 7, 2010) Scale bar = 20cm.

Two of the slabs eventually ended up at the Museo Geologico Giovanni Capellini in Bologna, where they they sat undisturbed until 2009 when paleontologists Federico Fanti and Andrea Cau studied them. They concluded that Leonardi’s crocodile was a new species and the oldest member of the Metriorhychidae, a diverse and curious group of marine crocodilians, which existed from about 171 to 136 mya. They were fierce, pelagic, piscivorous predators. Fanti and Cau named the new species Neptunidraco ammoniticus or “Neptune’s dragon from the Rosso Ammonitico Veronese Formation.”

Neptunidracos' streamlined body, Illustration by Davide Bonadonna

Neptunidraco is the oldest known member of the Metriorhychidae group and did not look like any modern crocodile. They had streamlined skulls, a vertical tail, and a hydrodynamic body, all features well adapted to a marine lifestyle. Cau describes Neptune’s dragon as “more like a dolphin than a croc.” Based on their anatomy and teeth, they ate small, swift fishes. They may have ventured onto land to lay eggs. Later Metriorhynchids were more robust and could have eaten armored fish and large marine reptiles.

Happy geologists Cau and Fanti (from Cau's blog)

Rosso Ammonitico, also known as Verona Marble, is a Middle Jurassic age, generally reddish limestone rich in ammonites, hence the name. It formed in deep water as fine grained sediments settled into the Tethys Sea on the margin of Gondwanaland. The specific quarry was near Sant’Ambrogio di Valpolicella, about 10 miles northwest of Verona. (The fossil-rich slabs come from a more yellow part of the quarries, known as “ammonitico giallo.”) Used since Roman times, Rosso Ammonitico can be found at the Arena in Verona, the Battistero in Parma, the Palazzo Ducale in Venice, the Cathedral in Cremona, and the Galleria V. Emanuele in Milan. (On the VertePaleo list serv, the reporting of this story led to some amusing anti-limestone-countertop comments. When I was in Bloomington, Indiana, working on my chapter on the Salem Limestone, I remember seeing builders touting the limestone countertops of a new rental units. To each his/her own.)

Ammonite from Baptistry (Battistero) of Parma (from Wikicommons)

The publication of the story apparently has ruffled a few feathers in Italy. On Andrea Cau’s blog, he notes that one famous Italian geologist offered critical comments on the discovery (saying it wasn’t truly a discovery since the fossil had been known since 1955) and the bigger implication that it provides a new understanding of the evolution of these intriguing marine crocodiles. Cau believes that the conflict results in part from a generational difference and a clash of paradigms, where the young upstarts are willing to reconsider, restudy, and reevaluate past concepts and specimens. He recognizes that their discovery does not change the world but it “is a beautiful piece of a huge mosaic called paleontology.” (Translation from Google Translator.)

Moreover, isn’t what Cau and Fanti did part of what makes science so appealing and such a valuable way to understand the world around us. We should applaud them for looking carefully, for struggling with understanding what they saw, for asking questions, for drawing new conclusions, and for learning from those who came before. And yes, their new discovery is a thing of beauty.

Adaptive Quarry Reuse To the North

As I noted in September, the afterlife of quarries can be varied. Recently I came across one of the more beautiful second lives of a former stone excavation site. This one is on a knoll known historically as Little Mountain and in modern times as Queen Elizabeth Park, in Vancouver, B.C. The quarries were not large and didn’t provide building stone. Instead the rock, a middle Tertiary age basalt, went into some of the earliest roads in Vancouver.

The larger of the two quarries.

Originally owned by Canada Pacific Railway, the site had been logged around 1890. The quarry, actually two small quarries, was abandoned by 1911, leaving behind a nasty gash on Vancouver’s highest spot. As so often happens in the wet PNW, plants took over the holes and few visited, but in 1928 the city of Vancouver acquired the hilltop and surrounding lands. A visit by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth prompted the area to be renamed in her honor.

Good detail of steps in quarry showing the plug and feather method of stone quarrying.

Little happened in the subsequent decade or during World War II but in 1948 park deputy superintendent William Livingstone began to clear and clean the quarries. Here is the description of what he did from the Vancouver Parks web site.

It is nearly legend at the Park Board how this self-taught individual, the son of one of Vancouver's first nurserymen, designed the new park landscape plan. Retired employees tell how the lanky figure of the Deputy Park Superintendent could be seen on-site, from dawn to dusk, directing numerous bulldozers to reshape the scarred earth, not working from drawings, but from a clear vision in his mind. Rather than reclaim the gullies left by the quarry operation, he used them as backdrop for choice plants, trees and shrubs, and for the placement of his best designs-water features.

The smaller of the two arboreta.

The first, and larger quarry opened as an arboretum in 1953 and the second one in 1961. To build the arboreta, Livingstone blasted out pools, dynamited old walls, and brought in gravel and soil. As you see from the photos they are quite beautiful with a waterfall, lush foliage, and quiet greens. They must be even more spectacular when the flowers are in bloom. The park is also well worth visiting for the panoramas of Vancouver and the distant mountains. And finally, for an historic perspective on Little Mountain, read these reminiscences published in 1952.

A waterfall in the larger site.

Written in Stone, a review and interview

To paraphrase the old saw, everyone talks about evolution but no one does anything about it. Well, Brian Switek decided to do something, at least he decided to write a book about evolution. Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature clearly shows how evolution has operated on Earth for billions of years. In doing so, Switek hammers one more nail in the Creationist coffin and provides a thoughtful account for any who want to learn more about evolution, fossils, and the cultural history of evolution.

Switek, who blogs for Wired magazine at Laelaps and the Smithsonian’s Dinosaur Tracking, takes a two-fold approach. Primarily, he focuses on the fossils and what they tell us but he also weaves in the people who have studied those fossils. This approach allows him to give readers connective tissues to the science. After all, it is far easier to understand the science when you are also following the fascinating personalities connected to the research.

What makes his book valuable is that he not only weaves in history, providing descriptions of sometimes overlooked characters and their contributions, as well as the main players, but he also brings the science into the present with up-to-date accounts of some of the biggest discoveries of recent years. You come away with a better understanding of how science and scientists work and how science is not a black-and-white field but multi-hued with many interpretations. Furthermore, he shows how scientists do not operate in a void and do respond to the culture around them.

Switek is clearly enthusiastic and passionate about evolution and the fossil record. He has thought long and hard about how to tell his stories and how each helps us see another facet of evolution. At times he is a bit dense with scientific names and details (I think this is due in part to his excitement for the subject; he is bursting with information and can't help wanting to share it) but for the most part Switek keeps his stories moving along, constantly showing us the beauty of evolution and how scientists made and continue to make stunning discoveries that flesh out the many stories of life on Earth.

Brian was kind enough to answer a few questions I posed to him. They give a good impression of his writing style and his deep passion for the wonders of science.

1. You cover many intriguing people as you delve into the history of paleontology. If you could meet any of the historical people you write about, who would it be?

Thomas Henry Huxley. Everyone knows him as “Darwin’s Bulldog,” but as I dug into his work I was impressed by the quality of his writing and how he was one of the first to popularize evolutionary transitions in the fossil record (most notably the origin of birds from dinosaur-like creatures, whales from terrestrial ancestors, and horses from small mammals).

2. What would you ask them?

I would love to know more about his quibbles with natural selection; why did he prefer large-scale leaps and why did he propose that many evolutionary transitions took place during non-geologic time? And what made him eventually shift his interests from paleontology to lab-based anatomical studies later in this career? Rather than just pelt him with questions, though, I think it would be fun to update Huxley on what we have learned since his day. I think he would be enthusiastic about the discovery of feathered dinosaurs, especially since he tried to imagine what such a creature would look like over a century before the first ones (excluding Archaeopteryx) were found!

3. If you could see in time lapse photography any of the evolutionary events you discuss, which one would it be?

The evolution of the first birds from feathered dinosaurs. Definitely. We have learned so much about the origins of birds in the past 10 years alone, yet there is still much we don’t know. To put it another way, it is fantastic that we have been able to identify so many avian characteristics in dinosaurs, but those traits are so old and widespread that pinpointing the origin of the first birds is still relatively problematic (even if we know feathered, raptor-like dinosaurs were their ancestors). Plus, on purely aesthetic grounds, I think a photo time-lapse of the origin of birds would be absolutely beautiful given the colorful plumage the animals in question probably had.

4. If you could have been there to find the first fossils of the animals you discuss, which one would you have wanted to discover?

Probably Rodhocetus, Maiacetus, or one of the other whales in the middle of the transition from land to sea (after terrestrial whales like Pakicetus, but before fully-aquatic ones such as Basilosaurus). They are just so wonderfully strange! I can’t think of anything else like them. By the time they were discovered there was already enough context to know that they were early whales, but I am fascinated by the fact that they are virtually caught in the middle of this evolutionary transition where they had a whole suite of traits related to aquatic life but still could have moved about on land. (drawing from Phillip Gingerich web site)

5. What do you think that modern paleontologists can learn from their predecessors?

Always be mindful of what is still unknown. One of the things which became clear as I documented what we have learned about each of the transitions I discussed was how many times evolutionary trees have been redrawn and major transitions have been reinterpreted. The paradox of the fossil record is that it is amazing rich but frustratingly incomplete. Even though we are tempted to fit everything into these neat little conceptual boxes there is still much left to be discovered. This doesn’t mean that we’re going to have trash everything we think we know now – I think we have a more comprehensive view of the fossil record than ever before – but we should take care when we start saying “X species was ancestral to Y species, and that shows that the transition happened like this.” That’s fine as presented as a hypothesis, but what if species Z turns out to fit in that gap and species Y represents part of a diversification which left no descendants? That sort of thing has happened before, and in talking about paleontology to the public I think we should always distinguish between the facts of the fossil record and what we are inferring from them.

6. What is the central point about science that you learned from your research and writing?

That the history of life on earth has been stranger and more wonderful than anyone could have imagined. Who could have imagined something like Pakicetus or even something as familiar as an Apatosaurus had they not heard of them first? And things just keep getting weirder. Having just returned from the annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Pittsburgh, PA, I can tell you that the more we dig into the fossil record, the stranger prehistoric life becomes. Evolution is not some mundane, straightforward march of lowly little creatures to impressive beasts. It is a wildly branching process which has been cut back by extinction multiple times and has led to the origin of innumerable creatures which have no living counterpart. I appreciated this on a superficial level when I started by research, but the deeper I dug into the science the more I was left in awe of the fossil record.

7. What surprised you most in your research?

How much quirks of history played into the development of scientific thought. The distant reach of European empires, for example, allowed naturalists to travel to far-off places which otherwise would have been inaccessible, and racist notions about the origins of humans prevented anthropologists from investigating the strata of Africa for human ancestors. Imagine what our understanding of evolution would be like today if scientists had stumbled upon the rich beds of feathered dinosaurs from China much earlier; nearly a century’s-worth of debate about bird origins might have been tossed out. Just as the history of life is marked by contingency, so is the history of science.

8. And finally, what did you leave out that you wished you could have put in the book?

I had originally written a short summary of primate evolution for the human evolution chapter, but that part of the book was overlong already and I had to lose it. It was painful to do – especially since human evolution is almost never placed into the wider context of primate evolution – but given space constraints I didn’t have much of a choice. I was able to partially make up for it by talking about Darwinius and other early primates in the introduction, but I still wish that I could have gone into a little more depth about early anthropoids, Miocene apes, and other fossil primates.

Beinecke Library, Green Stamps, and Marble

For much of the middle 1900s consumers coveted sheets of little green stamps. Known as S&H Green Stamps, they came in a variety of point values and could be redeemed for household items. Now mostly forgotten, the popularity of S&H stamps led to one of the great uses of marble as a building stone, when in 1960, the Beinecke family, owners of the Sperry and Hutchinson company, decided to donate the money for a rare book library at Yale.

Gordon Bunshaft and the Beinecke, from SOM web site

Yale hired Gordon Bunshaft of the firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, who proposed what he called a “treasure house” for books. It would have to mix storage, offices, exhibit space, and reading room. It would also have to be secure, equipped with climate control, and not allow direct sunlight to hit the books. Bunshaft’s initial plan was to use onyx, which he had seen at a palace in Istanbul. Specifically he liked how light infused an onyx-walled bathroom in a harem. (Not till later did he learn that those walls were made of alabaster.)

For two years, Bunshaft searched for onyx. He even tried to get the stone during a revolt in French-controlled Algeria, which involved contacting the American ambassador in France to see if the French would send troops to access an onyx quarry. As he noted in a later interview “we eventually gave up on onyx.”

They decided to go for marble but even then Bunshaft had troubles. For example, marble from the quarries that provided stone for the Acropolis “looked characterless, like a lampshade,” and that wouldn’t do. Finally an old man from Vermont told him about marble from a quarry in Danby, Vermont. The stone wasn’t perfect. It was a “last, desperate thing…too strongly veined when you see sunlight coming through inside. It’s too yellow and black.” But it would do.

Interior light, Photo by Richard Cheek, from Beinecke Library web site

Each panel measures 54 x 54 inches and is 1.25 inches thick. Frames of light gray granite from Vermont hold the marble panes in place. The Danby marble is one of several varieties of Shelburne marble, which formed from metamorphism during the Early Ordovician Taconic Orogeny. Other trade names include Royal, Imperial, and Dorset.

Exterior close up of marble, Photo by Richard Cheek, from Beinecke Library web site

I was lucky enough to visit the library several years ago. Although the exterior is a bit dull, warm light suffuses the interior. I disagree with Mr. Bunshaft, I like the richness of the amber hues of the stone. I didn’t know whether to be more awed by the wonderful books, such as a Gutenberg Bible, or the wonderful stone. If you do have the time, I highly recommend visiting the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale.

The Duomo and the Dinosaur: Not?

Finally we have a nice uniting of science and religion and boy has it titillated the Internet. Apparently for the past 350 years or so the fine parishioners of the Cathedral of St. Ambrose (aka Sant’Ambrogio) in Vigevano, Italy, have been praying and genuflecting with a dinosaur fossil in their midst, or so says paleontologist Andrea Tintori. The fossil has been right in their sight, in fact just to the left of the center of their altar, though there are a few skeptics who doubt Tintori's observations. (read further)

Photo from Discovery News, courtesy of Andrea Tintori

University of Milan paleontologist Tintori has determined that the early Jurassic age (~190mya)-stone slab contains the cross section of a dinosaur skull with visible nasal cavities and numerous teeth. Total length is about 12 inches. Tintori also found a second part of the skull in another slab. He hopes to get the first slab removed to do additional work.

Photo from Discovery News, courtesy of Andrea Tintori

Built between about 1532 and 1660, the cathedral, or duomo in Italian, contains a wide array of stone. The fossil-rich slab comes from quarries in Arzo, Switzerland, about 40 miles due north of Vigevano. They were first opened in the thirteenth century but didn’t become widely used till the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the stone was used primarily for altars. It is a purple-red, grey-veined limestone with skeletal grains of crinoids and goes by various names but broccatello (brocaded) is the most common. (I wonder why builders wanted this stone for altars. Is there something about its color and pattern that conveys a message suitable to getting closer to God?)

The broccatello became popular as a replacement for the legendary Portasanta stone of Rome, the rock used for the Holy Door (Porta santa) of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Builders often combined the Arzo stone with red and grey limestone from Bergamo, black limestone from Lake Como, and white marble from the Apuan Alps. You can see the broccatello throughout Italy and Switzerland. No other dinosaur fossils have been reported.

In regard to Tintori's dinosaur, one person I corresponded with wrote back. “ALERT: this seems to be a cross-section of an ammonite!”

After my initial posting, I received one more note about the fossil. "Ammonites are well known from the Broccatello Formation, which is entirely marine and devoid of terrigenous sediment derived from the continent. The Broccatello preserves a rich fauna of marine fossils, sponges, sea lilies, brachiopods, bryozoans, solitary corals and the like and has been deposited in waters near the base of the photic zone [down to 600 feet]. The preservation looks also typical for an ammonite. The test [or shell], originally composed of the mineral aragonite, an unstable form of calcium carbonate would have been dissolved and the void filled by calcite, the stable mineral form of calcium carbonate. The photograph is not good enough to see the crystal fabric of the calcite, but I have no doubt about my diagnosis. If this is the head of a dinosaur, I'll give up geology and eat my rock hammer." Perhaps the sexiness of finding a dinosaur in a church made Tintori see more than meets the eye.

If you read the comments on various sites reporting this story, you will see that many note the irony of a catholic church having a fossil in it. Hundreds of church buildings are fossil rich so this isn’t really a new irony to report in regard to religion and evolution. I can only hope though it will get more people to take notice of the stone in their religious institutions, which seems to me to be one of the best reasons I can think of for visiting a church, synagogue, or mosque.

Lions and Tigers and Walruses, Oh my!

Do you ever have the feeling that you are being watched when you stroll through downtown streets? You are probably right. Hundreds of eyes peer out from buildings tracking your actions. These observers are neither human nor electronic. Instead, a host of animals watches you. A tour of any urban core reveals a veritable Noah’s Ark’s worth of carved and molded animals stalking your every step. Since I live in Seattle, I will share some of the beasts gracing our buildings.

The Times Square building (414 Stewart) is a good place to begin a downtown wildlife safari. Built in 1916, during the height of popularity for endowing buildings with animals, the wedge shaped structure sports 61 lion’s heads and 18 eagles. You might not notice them at first glance since none are lower than the fifth story. Keep in mind that this high elevation placement of wildlife typifies many structures.

Because of their symbolism as powerful, victorious, and noble animals, lions and eagles dominate the architectural menagerie. Six massive eagles stare out from the uppermost corners of the Washington Athletic Club and another half dozen with their wings outspread grace the Eagles Auditorium. If you look carefully, you can find more lions in Seattle than on the plains of Nigeria. Sixty feline heads loom out of the Seaboard Building (Fourth and Pike) while a parking garage at 1915 Second Avenue has a lion in profile. You can even see lions toting fruit at 1221 Second Avenue and find a zoological conundrum with a pride of lion reigning 14 stories up on the Alaska Building (Second and Cherry), which was Seattle’s first steel-framed skyscraper.

Animal ornamentation peaked between 1890 and 1940 in the heyday of terra cotta cladding in Seattle. Following Seattle’s Great Fire of 1889, architects turned to terra cotta as a cheap, light-weight, fireproof medium. In addition, because terra cotta was a molded clay block or brick, animals could be mass produced easily. Only four companies dominated the local industry and many downtown beasts probably originated from the same mold.

Architects often used animals to relay information about the building’s use. Over 20 dolphins adorn architect B. Marcus Priteca’s historic Crystal Swimming Pool (now the Crystal Pool skyscraper) at Second and Lenora, while a horse head protrudes out of what was the Pike Place Market Livery Stable (2200 Western Ave.)

And, of course, the best known of these motifs is found at Third and Cherry, where a phalanx of walrus heads decorate the Arctic Building, built in 1916 by Seattle’s first round of instantly rich folk to provide a suitable locale to banter about tales of the north. (I have been told that the original walrus heads displayed ivory tusks and that city officials removed them after the 1949 earthquake when one fell. I have never been able to verify this and hoped that in sharing this story someone might reply with additional information.) The tusks were remodeled after that quake. The most recent renovation, in 1997, returned the walruses to their original splendor, with terra cotta tusks.

Other animals found downtown include a metal bison, wolf, and bighorn sheep on planters at the base of the west side of what was the WaMu tower. Two goats and one cougar, as well as a pair of sheep and lions watch you enter the old Federal Building. Priteca also decorated the Coliseum Theater (Fifth and Pine) with 47 bull heads, festooned in bucolic splendor with pomegranates and grapes.

The old Chamber of Commerce building (215 Columbia St.), constructed in 1924, houses Seattle’s most diverse collection of real and mythical beasts. Two pelicans, a duck, and the ubiquitous eagle along with a gazelle, deer, bears, dolphins, and rams share space with two griffins and two hippocamps, a mythical beast with the forelegs of a horse and the tail of a dolphin. Poseidon and his wife supposedly rode these sea horses. In regard to the griffins, supposedly back in the day, a few folks called Seattle the Venice of America. Why anybody thought that, I haven't a clue, but griffins are the symbol of Venice.

This structure was one of the final Seattle buildings elaborately embellished with wildlife. By the late 1930s, Modernism’s stark, brutish, unornamented surfaces had replaced the ornate style of terra cotta. Now, animals on Seattle buildings are only found in relict preserves. Happy hunting, no matter where you live.