In the footsteps of the Anastazi / Anasazi
"scenes from the Rio Cuervo in New Mexico"
TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
The first ammonite we found was exactly like the mineral and fossil shop said
it should look like. What was under my foot now looked more like a monster.
It looked nothing like any of the ammonites we had sought out as a reference.
Instead it looked like a great horny creature. The question was "Was it an
Ammonite, and if so what kind?" Instead of symmetrical suture lines or seems, this had no suture lines and instead had great horns. My research has show that
The Ammonite appeared during the Silurian Period (435 to 410 million years ago). During the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods (175 to 65 million) they evolved more streamline shells for swimming and the structure of the shell became stronger. The last ammonites show up 65 million years ago and no more. One would draw the conclusion that the horny devil I was looking at with the least streamline
shell was indeed a very early specimen.
Now we had to watch every step. Instead of looking up to the canyon walls for
caves or ruins we now were obsessed with finding these creatures that seemed
to pop up out of the rubble of broken rocks at the bottom of the canyon walls or
in the rust brown petrified clay boulders thrown through the canyon like a
handful of beads. While walking through the Cuervo just after a rain and a
strong flow of water you could not help but notice different size clay balls all
peppered with small stones. It would seam that a single stone being pushed
by the water would pick up the most sticky clay. Like a snow ball rolling out
of control it would grow larger and pick up more as the river would allow. In the canyon walls you could see balls of reddish brown clay protruding from the
sand stone. Some eroded completely and have fallen to the ground below. The sizes vary from the size of your fist to the size of my car. It was this
observation that led me to start checking these clay balls. To my surprise and
delight many held my new prize.
Now we had a new world where the Anasazi had lived and walked. What had they thought
about these creatures? Did they know they were creatures? I mean did they see
them as different than the rocks they were in. Had they the insight to know
that somehow these creatures had lived in there world a long time ago like they
had lived in ours a long time ago? And what did they think of all the shells and clams that could also be found laying about. On the way to the big water
fall the entire river bed is made from shells. On one outing we even found a
perfect curled shell un-petrified. Just as though a visitor from the ocean had
dropped this fragile sell smaller than the size of the tip of your little finger
on to the ground. We are to believe that the Ammonite evolved into the uncoiled
snail type creature.
How long had this shell been laying on the surface? The petrified one in the
picture should be at least 15 million years old. How could a fresh one be in the
same area. Had a bird visited with this shell fresh from the coast? Is this
a version of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" and the shell been dropped from an airplane
as part of a discarded dinner? And what about what I call the tube worms or
coral beds? Did every foot of canyon wall represent an entirely different world.
Did the Anasazi see it? Or were these things just different kinds of rocks
like the quartz we often found inside the Ammonite. When they looked at the
rocks in this canyon did they say to them selves "round Rock, sharp rock, white
rock" Or was it all alive. Not alive then, alive now. Are there rocks that we
are looking at that are not rocks? or deserve their own place in existence?
What ever the answers, for many months to come it was all about Ammonites.
There we were in the land that people forgot scratching our way up the sides
of canyon after canyon looking for the semi circle or coil that would be
the latest good find. We found them in the clay rocks, on the ground the
burros walked on. We found them the size of a quarter and we found them
the side of a dinner plate. We now like in a world of Ammonites.