Unearthing History: Fossil found at The Hidden Gardens
When looking for hidden historical details in our built environment, we're often told to look up in Glasgow, but a new discovery at the Hidden Gardens suggests it might be worth looking down instead.
Gates leading into The Hidden Gardens…Spot the fossil!
By Devon McCole | Photo by Rob Reid
The Hidden Gardens, tucked behind the Tramway, is best known as a peaceful green space offering sanctuary from the rest of the urban environment here in the Southside.
Amid the calm and quiet setting of the green space, an ancient fossil has been hiding in plain sight, embedded in the Caithness slates which pave the meditative walking trail.
Morvern Odling, The Hidden Gardens community programme manager detailed the day the discovery was made during a routine cleaning of the pathway: “I was in on the day the guy came to clean the path with a giant power washer. It made a lot of noise and washed away a lot of dirt and grime. Business as usual really – it never occurred to me anything was out of the ordinary… and then we got a Facebook message from Katie Strang.”
Katie messaged The Hidden Gardens after visiting the Tramway for an art car boot sale. Wandering around the gardens later she made the discovery – alerting staff that a bit of a fossilised bony armoured fish had been preserved in one of their Caithness slabs.
Scale drawing of Dunkleosteus terrelli courtesy of everythingdinosaur.com | Placoderms ranged in size from bottom-dwellers of less than a foot, to predators over thirty feet long, like this Dunkleosteus. Wouldn't fancy coming across one this size round the back of Tramway
Katie happens to be the curator of mineralogy and petrology at The Hunterian museum, and using her knowledge she was able to share more about the fascinating discovery: “I'd gone over to have a look and right away, I was like ‘oh, that looks like Caithness flagstone’.
“My friend was very embarrassed; I dropped to the floor and I was inspecting this slab. I noticed it’s likely not the full fossil, probably just the bony armour of one of the placoderms from the Devonian period.”
Caithness slates pave many walking ways in Glasgow and across Scotland and it’s common to find fossils in them. That’s because the rocks used to make the slabs are around 390-400 million years old, hailing from the Devonian period, or the ‘Age of Fish’, which is when fish first emerged from the sea and moved onto the land.
One of the really fascinating things about the Caithness slates, says Katie, is that, as people walk over them, they will wear away to reveal, over time, the fossils embedded within:
“Quite often the fossils inside have a distinct greyish blue colour, or a kind of sandy colour. Anything that kind of stands out or contrasts to the colour of the slate could be a sign there’s a fossil trapped inside. The fossils tend to be quite black and dark, so it's an easy way to spot them. It's a bit harder when it's wet because the stone will get darker when it gets wet.”
Grey/bluish fossilised piece of bony armour from an ancient placoderm embedded in Caithness slab
“I just thought it'd be really cool to let them know because one of the things I love about geology and the urban environment is it's more accessible for a lot of people; I work at The Hunterian and even I feel like I shouldn't be there sometimes. If you’re going to The Hunterian it’s likely because you’ve already been exposed to that world. Working class kids don’t always get that luxury.
“I come from a working class-background and I never thought of myself as being a scientist or even going to university. I only saw it as an option when tuition fees were scrapped. That’s why it's really important to do that kind of outreach in communities, sharing that knowledge and raising awareness of those hidden, fossilised pieces of history that’s all around us.”
Fossils themselves aren’t just well-preserved creatures, they are little time capsules full of information which tell us a lot about the earth’s past; particularly how climate change affects the land and life on earth – making the discovery all the more exciting for The Hidden Gardens.
Morvern said: “Fossils are such a vivid reminder of how much time has passed. And it spurs on quite big thoughts really quickly. You're like, ‘oh my gosh, the beginning of the universe!’ We are looking at the slabs differently now because we're wondering what else is in there.”
Morvern is keen to encourage people to visit the fossil and take part in some of the citizen science projects at The Hidden Gardens: “We’re really excited to be able to share this new found fossil. We just want to remind people that we're open, we're accessible and that we're the people's back garden.
“So please continue to come and access what we're doing, like our Compost CoLab or even just to use our walking trail. Especially if you're looking for nice places to go and educate or entertain your young people. There’s still new things to uncover.”
If you want to know more about The Hidden Gardens’ Compost CoLab visit bitly.cx/ddbW to read our article from last year.