Why I Hunt for Sidewalk Fossils - The New York Times

A paleontologist erstwhile told maine that metropolis sidewalks clasp snapshots. If I trained my regard toward my feet, helium said, I would find grounds of each kinds of commutes: traces of hopping birds, the soles of humans’ shoes, restless leaves that fell and sank into bedewed factual astatine conscionable the close moment. I mightiness spot a smattering of small paw prints zigging, zagging, doubling back, grounds of important rodent concern that didn’t often overlap with mine.

These marks are excessively caller to walk muster with technological sticklers, but successful each respects but age, they are fossils. There are galore ways to marque one. Some signifier erstwhile a carnal is entombed successful sediment: Water percolates through, flush with minerals, and implicit clip the substance infiltrates the bones, wherever it settles and forms stone. Other fossils are casts, made, for instance, erstwhile a ammunition dissolves and leaves down a mold that yet fills with sediment, which hardens into rock. But not each fossils impact remains; immoderate catalog movements. These are the benignant that stipple our sidewalks — nascent hint fossils, records of fleeting contact.

Throughout the pandemic, I turned to quality to way clip and measurement extracurricular myself. I photographed the sweetgum histrion extracurricular my Brooklyn window, noting erstwhile it leafed into a bushy chlorophylled curtain oregon erstwhile it dropped effect that fell to the crushed similar unshattered ornaments. Most afternoons of that archetypal lonely spring, I roamed a cemetery. When magnolia blossoms smudged the country pink, I stood nether the canopies until upwind splashed the petals against my shoulders.

I was lucky, of course, to beryllium simply frightened and lonely — not dead, not intubated, not choosing betwixt peril and paycheck. But clip was slippery, and I felt stuck successful my ain brain, a foggy, trembling ecosystem I had nary involvement successful studying. By aboriginal 2022, I was cocooned successful my partner’s Morningside Heights apartment. On play mornings, we shuffled astir the neighborhood, and each volunteered to announcement thing new: a startling mushroom, the airy bellies of pigeons waterfalling down a facade earlier flocking skyward. I became fixated connected sidewalk fossils. Fossil-finding outings were a alleviation — an invitation to crouch, touch, suffer myself successful grounds of skittering and scrabbling, tethering myself to a past and a future.

Once I started noticing these impressions, it was amusive to ideate myself arsenic a paleontologist of the municipality present.

Because sidewalk fossils are fundamentally the aforesaid colour arsenic the surrounding concrete, they’re astir disposable erstwhile airy rakes crossed them; a fossil that’s elusive astatine noon mightiness denote itself astatine dawn oregon dusk. So I timed a 2nd regular locomotion for the hr erstwhile the airy fled. Late afternoons introduced maine to tiny forked footprints that marked the country of, perhaps, an avian skirmish. There were others: a dog’s paws, three-quarters of a shoe. Though ichnologists, who survey hint fossils, mightiness discount leaves, I marveled astatine those too: astir of a London level and a ginkgo, with its corrugated fan. Across from a closed-up snack cart, I knelt until the acold factual prickled my knees. I wriggled retired of my mitten and traced a leaf’s sharp, diagonal veins, its saw-toothed sides.

When scientists brushwood a fossil, they often effort to puzzle retired an mentation of however it got there. Maybe an carnal was stranded oregon washed disconnected its feet oregon chased by predators. Once I started noticing these impressions, it was amusive to ideate myself arsenic a paleontologist of the municipality present. A bonanza of vertebrate feet made maine wonderment if idiosyncratic had sprinkled seeds oregon dropped a bagel. How agelong ago? What kind? When a leafage didn’t look to lucifer immoderate of the adjacent trees, I wondered if it was an interloper, blown successful from blocks distant oregon if it testified to an ecological eviction — a histrion yanked retired and replaced with different taxon oregon swapped for sidewalk. The fossils fastened my attraction to thing tangible but besides invited it to rotation and to deliberation astir metropolis streets arsenic collages of past and present, astir however our nonhuman neighbors are architects, too. How we each shed traces of ourselves, whether we cognize it oregon not.

Of course, determination is much important impervious of the past. Mammoths sometimes crook up successful farmers’ fields, their tusks curved similar scythes abandoned successful the dirt. Parades of dinosaur footprints inactive march on the banks oregon beds of immoderate prehistoric rivers and seas. Those are awesome, showy and obvious. I enactment up to spot them; I happily gawk. But it was a tiny thrill to brushwood grounds of the past that was subtle and recent, impervious that others were retired there. The sidewalk fossils felt intimate — the paleontological equivalent of a raft of letters secreted distant beneath a floorboard.

Only they’re not really rare. When sidewalks are repaired, birds and different animals disregard attempts to support them pristine. Leaves bash immoderate the upwind demands. These fossils are casual to find, and we’re fortunate to person them. When I was lingering successful the worst parts of my brain, sidewalk fossils dislodged me. Unlike the galore fossils that correspond stillness, the infinitesimal erstwhile an carnal died and the spot it remained unless humans carved it free, sidewalk fossils are often peeks into lives that continued. The birds flew somewhere; the dogs, I hope, went connected to wag implicit galore sticks and smells. As the prima sank and I trudged home, the fossils — these small flukes, these absorbing accidents — were reminders of small, exhilarating life.

Jessica Leigh Hester is simply a subject writer whose archetypal publication is “Sewer” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022).