Yesterday on the way home I passed through VLSB, where I was approached by a rather lost-looking woman carrying a piece of rock she thought was a fossil and had brought all the way up to Berkeley from San José to get identified. The rock was clearly not a fossil but to an untrained eye it might look like a piece of coral, and she explained something about it resembling a "coral reef", although her preferred hypothesis was that it was a piece of a larger skeleton that included bones and claws. Since it did look like a fossil, but probably wasn't, I figured the best thing was to get her to a real paleontologist who could tell her more authoritatively. As I led her towards the Museum of Paleontology in the basement, she added that she had lots more with her, including a "baby gorilla" and "turtles". I told her I was pretty sure what she had shown me was not a fossil.

When we got to the Museum of Paleontology, we found that the doors were locked (since it was after 5), but a staff person was nice enough to come to the door and ask what we wanted. The "fossil" lady did all the talking, and I began to wish I had been able to politely interject that I was not with this strange woman, that I was a grad student in Insect Biology, but in any case the staff person gave her a couple URLs so she could find someone who could help. While this was going on, the "fossil" lady got out a black Yves Saint-Laurent box and showed me a misshapen lump of blackish minerals she called a "baby gorilla" and pointed out where an overactive imagination could discern the arms, legs, and head. (She had placed a photo of a baby gorilla off the Internet as a box lining.) At this point I couldn't contain myself and explained that soft parts don't usually fossilize. In response, she pointed out a white streak of "bone" (mineral) exposed when a piece of the "gorilla's back" had broken off. Fortunately by this point the Museum of Paleontology staff person had finished writing URLs on pieces of scratch paper, and I was able to take my leave of the "fossil" lady.