Swimming in Stone: The Amazing Gogo Fossils of the Kimberley

  • John Long
Fremantle Arts Centre Press: 2007. 320 pp. $26.95 1921064331 | ISBN: 1-921-06433-1

Palaeontology is essentially a science of serendipity. Most of biology rests on the planning and execution of experiments that may or may not work; palaeontologists plan and carry out expeditions to look for fossils that may or may not be there. Of course, this base of collected specimens supports an analytical superstructure as organized and strategically constructed as any other. But behind the meticulous published analyses there lurks the faintly thrilling — or unsettling — realization that a loose rock left unturned, or a lunch break taken in a different spot on the hillside, could have caused a specimen or even a whole locality of critical scientific importance to remain undiscovered.

In Swimming in Stone, John Long tells the story of one of these critically important localities: Gogo in Western Australia. Here, at Go Go Station near Fitzroy Crossing in the tropical north of the state, yellow limestone nodules weathering out on a plain backed by oddly abrupt hills yield 380-million-year-old fossil fishes of such extraordinary perfection that, in some specimens, the jaws can be smoothly opened and closed without grating on their hinges. The whole landscape is, in fact, a gigantic fossil: the hills were once a barrier reef with outlying atolls, and the black soil of the plain is the mud that accumulated on the fore-reef slope. Limestone nodules formed around animal carcasses in this mud, preserving them perfectly to the present day. The locality was discovered in 1940 when the first fossil fish was collected by geologist Curt Teichert, a refugee from Nazi Germany. Long, currently head of science at Museum Victoria in Melbourne, has been collecting fossils there for more than 20 years.

Credit: JOE MAGEE

After opening with a brief scene-setting introduction, including an imagined dive on the Gogo reef, the first main section of the book charts the history of the site from its discovery, through collecting trips by British and Australian teams, to the period since the 1980s when Long became the driving force behind the collecting programme. Intertwined with this narrative of hard slog and lucky chance are vivid thumbnail portraits of the major players, such as Teichert, Harry Toombs and George Kendrick. There are also accounts of technical advances (crucially the development of fossil preparation using acetic acid, which revealed the full glory of the Gogo fishes) and scientific controversies over the Gogo material. These included not only issues of anatomical interpretation, but also a rather tense dispute between the Western Australian Museum in Perth and the then British Museum of Natural History in London over the ultimate repository of type specimens, which, thankfully, was resolved amicably.

Long's writing style is breezy and engaging, showing the skill of an experienced writer. If you ever wanted to know what can befall you on a fossil-collecting expedition, it's all here — everything from broken-down vehicles, to dingoes trailing you in hopeful expectation of your death, to sharing the remote and isolated collecting area with an armed serial killer on the run. Helpful marginal notes explain scientific concepts such as phylogeny (the science of family trees) and fieldwork trivia such as death adders (beautifully camouflaged and extremely venomous snakes).

The second section of the book continues in the same accessible vein with an overview of the scientific importance of the Gogo fossils and their place in the emerging story of early vertebrate evolution. This is not a comprehensive account — for that I would recommend Philippe Janvier's Early Vertebrates (Oxford University Press, 1996) — and different researchers in the field will no doubt have their own disagreements with parts of it, but for those new to the subject it is an excellent introduction. It also demonstrates how progress in vertebrate palaeontology depends on the discovery of top-quality specimens, fossils so well preserved that anatomical and functional questions can be answered without ambiguity.

Of course, there are quibbles: giant dragonflies are not known from the Devonian, and Erik Jarvik and Erik Stensiö were not directors of the Swedish Museum of Natural History, although they did head the palaeozoology section. There is also one serious omission: nowhere can I find a discussion of why the Gogo fossils are so exceptionally well preserved. Nodular preservation of fishes is common in the Devonian, but the specimens are usually nowhere near as perfect as these. Any future second edition of the book should certainly be expanded to include a chapter on this topic. But in the end these are the minor blemishes of a delightful book.

My first ever contribution to Nature, 18 years ago, was a News & Views piece on John Long's Gogo fish research (Nature 337, 511–512, 1989). I ended it by saying that the scientific value of the Gogo fossils is incalculable, This remains just as true today, and Swimming in Stone is a worthy testament to the fact.