It may sound like the tag line for a not very engaging fantasy film, but read on. Some years ago I journeyed from New York to Ohio, by road, with my great friend Allan Lang, a noted paleontologist, meteorite collector and founder of the Langheinrich Fossil Preserve. Our destination was a private, working quarry in Sylvania, Ohio.

The Sylvania fossil quarry

During the Middle Devonian age (that’s about 390 million years ago to you Creationists) the area around present-day Toledo was underwater. The remains of untold billions of tiny sea creatures today form a silica-rich shale that preserves, in incredible detail, the fossilized hard parts of long-vanished aquatic creatures. The Sylvania quarries are famous for their trilobite fossils, in particular the spectacular jointed marine arthropod Phacops rana. Something about the silica preserves the trilobites’ exoskeletons in exquisite microscopic detail—a rich and shiny brown/black pasted against the dusty gray shale matrix. Trilobites did not have soft lenses for eyes, as we do. Their eyes were made of calcite, and they are the only creatures in the history of life as we know it, to have gazed upon their own world through crystalline lenses.

The fossilized remains of a 400 million year-old Phacops rana trilobite

Dr. Richard Fortey, author of Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution explains:

“Look into a crystal of Iceland spar and you can see the secret of the trilobite’s vision. For trilobites used clear calcite crystals to make lenses in their eyes; in this they were unique . . . trilobites alone have used the transparency of calcite as a means of transmitting light. The trilobite eye is in continuity with the rest of its shelly armour. It sites on top of the cheek of the animal, an en suite eyeglass, tough as clamshell.”

Quarrying is big business in Sylvania, but fossils are not officially part of the local commerce. Unfortunately for people like me, the quarries are primarily interested in producing thousands of tons of aggregates for road building. Giant cranes and tractors munch up the layers of rock, along with all those beautifully preserved trilobites. For various reasons including safety, insurance, and the demands of heavy duty industrial production, the quarries are off-limits to fossil enthusiasts. You can’t really blame the owners. If a star-struck fossil fanatic falls from the top of a hundred-foot knife-sharp shale ridge, it kinda puts a damper on the work flow.

Heavy equipment at the Ohio quarry

Despite numerous obstacles, and after some years of sustained effort, Allan managed to get a special dispensation that allowed a small band of us hardcore fossil nuts access to the undisturbed quarry face. What a spectacular treat it was! Only a handful of people have ever been able to walk up to that wall of fossil-rich rock and dig through it for mementos of an ancient sea.

The author (above right) with celebrated paleontologist Allan Lang. I thought our color coded hardhats were quite chic.

During our first two days in the field it rained continuously. On the third the sun came out and—with rays reflecting endlessly from the light colored rock at the bottom of an open pit—it became unbearably hot. I was doing pick axe duty, smashing up big blocks of shale looking for trilobites, or “bugs” as the pros call them. I got a little grumpy. I hit one oversize block a little too hard, at a weird angle, and it shattered. To my horror, the broken faces exposed a superb and brilliantly preserved trilobite, its head dismembered by my axe. Part of it was on this block of stone, part of it on that one, and . . . so on.

Paleontologist and master prep artist Leon Theissen examines the remnants of my big trilobite immediately after I atomized it with the pick axe

Leon Theissen, one of the world top fossil preparators (a specialist who cleans fossils, removes extraneous rock, and sometimes carries out repairs) happened to be on the team. “Don’t worry Geoff,” he said with a confident and reassuring smile. “I can probably put it back together for you.”

"Frankenstein's triolbite" after some TLC from Leon and Zarko

To my considerable amazement, he did. Leon, Allan, and Zarko Ljuboja—another highly talented prep artist—had combined forces, repaired this marvelous fossil, and presented it to my on my birthday. I call it “Frankenstein’s trilobite” and it is indeed a prized possession. A reminder both that even the most horribly damaged things can sometimes be fixed, and that it’s okay to take it easy with the pick axe. Even when grumpy.

All photographs by Geoffrey Notkin © Geoffrey Notkin. All rights reserved. No reproduction without written permission.

In my professional life I travel to a lot of weird places looking for meteorites, fossils and other natural history treasures. More often that not, we are working in remote areas, far from civilization, and regularly encounter unusual plants, animals, and environments.

A typical expedition might involve two or three 4WD vehicles, enough food and water to keep a small group active and healthy for a couple of weeks, maybe an ATV or two, and other heavy gear such as large metal detectors and digging tools. On one hand I am thrilled by the opportunity to experience aspects of the natural world that city dwellers rarely, if ever, get to see. On the other hand, I am always somewhat concerned by the impact our convoy might have on delicate ecosystems.

Taking the high ground

Recently, we have been exploring a zone that would have been quick and easy to scout on ATVs, but we decided to work on foot instead. What might have taken only an afternoon on a motorized all-terrain vehicle took days to explore the old fashioned way: boots in the dirt. During the past few weks we have run across numerous beautiful (and protected) horned toads. cacti with new, brightly-colored buds; intriguing millipedes with their hundreds of tiny, perfectly aligned legs; rare flowers; hummingbirds, and many other small living things that would be crushed in an instant by the fat tires on a quad.

When things go wrong: Our vehicle stranded in the Atacama Desert

When driving off-road in trucks, we try to stay on existing trails as often as possible, and I frequently make an instantaneous detour to avoid flattening a plant or pummeling a flying insect. Campsites are typically set up in a natural clearing and my team is always meticulous about packing out all of our trash, except for the very few things that are naturally biodegradable and will, in fact, provide food for our temporary neighbors—apple cores and orange peels for example.

When it gets tricky: While filming a documentary for Discovery Channel we needed to tow a large metal detector through high wildflowers in Kansas. Birds sleep in the underbrush during the day, so we drove very slowly to give them plenty of time to get out of the way.

If we need a campfire we either bring wood with us, or gather dead branches from the ground. Using a small portable gasoline stove prevents us from having to burn any natural materials at the site. When we are excavating, we avoid damaging plants as much as possible, and always fill in our holes. Team members who smoke collect cigarette butts in an empty bottle, and we even make a point of picking up other people’s trash (if there is any out there in the wilds). We try to leave a site just a little cleaner than we found it.

Tiny footprints in the sand: During an expedition to Siberia we came across diminutive white birds who nested on the ground. They lived on an island in the middle of a frigid river with no likely predators. The little birds attacked us, fiercely, when we got too close to their nests, and we gave them a wide berth, not wanting to step on eggs or get pecked!

Some things are unavoidable: We burn gasoline in the trucks, and we need batteries and electricity to power our equipment. Food and water are consumed. Weeds are run over by vehicles. But we do our best to be considerate visitors. I make my living by working with the natural world, so it is my duty and pleasure to respect its integrity.

Ten years ago today, I had just embarked upon one of the grandest adventure expeditions of my life. On July 6, 1999 I was staying in Room 639 of the Krasnojarsk Hotel, in the capital of Siberia, faced with a most difficult situation.

A few months earlier the eminent adventurer, science writer, and astronomer, Professor Roy Gallant invited me to join him on the first-ever international expedition to the Popigai Crater at the northern edge of Siberia, on the Tamyr Peninsula. This vast meteorite crater, approximately 100 km in diameter was formed about 35 million years ago by the cataclysmic impact of a large chunk of a stony asteroid. During World War II and on into the 1960s, the Russians mined great quantities of industrial grade diamonds from the crater, and those diamonds were formed by the heat and pressure of the meteorite impact.

A Russian Mi-8 helicopter lands our team inside the Arctic Circle

Planning the expedition was a logistical nightmare and would take Roy and his staff three years. Even though mining had ceased at the crater, it was still a top secret area and before we could travel there we had to be “invited” by the KGB. That was the easy part. There are no roads, trails or airstrips up there, hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle, so we were to be airlifted by ex-military helicopters. Airlifted right into the crater itself. And that’s where the trouble started. Although we held all the proper paperwork, and had paid all the proper gratuities, it seems we somehow neglected to grease the palm of one local province director. He was quite irritated by that and started leaning on the helicopter outfit to make trouble for us. Everyone on the eighteen-person team—nine Russians and nine Americans—realized that once we were dropped off at the edge of the world, the helicopter team might not come back to get us. There would be no hiking out from that spot but we voted unanimously to go anyway.

Soaring above the Arctic tundra on the way to the Popigai meteorite crater, Siberia

Before departing from the tiny, forsaken outpost of Khatanga, our team was treated to a fine lunch of red caviar and reindeer burgers, washed down with numerous glasses of exquisite Russian vodka, at the most northerly bar in the world. The team member seated next to me didn’t drink alcohol and—despite my insistent whispering in his ear: “It’s a big insult to our hosts if you don’t drink the vodka—he refused. My father’s parents were White Russians, so I felt it my honorable duty to drink his vodka as well, discretely swapping my empty glass for his, repeatedly. So, by the time we lifted off in the loud and rickety Mi-8 chopper, I was more than a little tipsy.

Our bright orange aircraft had no regular seats, just a long wooden bench on one side of the cabin. The bench was full, so I flopped down on our pile of luggage and equipment. The first officer quickly appeared and told me I couldn’t sit there. “But there’s nowhere else to sit,” I protested.

“Pliz leesten,” he insisted. “Begs are on top ov cargo door, you see? Sometimz in flight cargo door open by accident end all begs go fshhhoot, to ground. End you too.” So I got up without further complaint and eventually talked my way into standing at the rear of the flight deck.

Casting shadows on Siberia as we fly over endless pine forests

The Popigai Crater is so large that you cannot really tell you are inside it. There is a sense of being below ground level, and there are mountains of debris many miles away, but any understanding of the scale of the impact feature is difficult to grasp consciously. We spent nine days inside the crater, camping on two separate islands perched in the middle of the chilly Rassokha River that runs through it. We hiked, and we and traveled by raft. Our Russian comrades used just the one chainsaw to build a mess tent, seats, benches, a radio mast, and a cargo raft from the surrounding pine trees.

Home is where the canvas is: the warm and welcoming mess tent fashioned by our Russian comrades from Siberian pine trees

We weren’t looking for meteorites. The original impactor was rich in iron, and eroded away during the long millennia since the crater-forming event. But the meteorite’s signature was everywhere, in the form of impactites—terrestrial rocks that have been shocked, melted or otherwise altered by the effects of meteorite bombardment.

Katya, our translator and chief of staff found a marvelous fossil mammoth tooth during one of our raft trips

We also found mosquitos by the thousands. During the brief Arctic summer the sun never sets, the top few inches of tundra thaw out, and terrifying hordes of large Siberian insects appear to prey on reindeer and, in 1999, us. Despite the hardships, or perhaps because of them, it was an extraordinary adventure. I got to cross the Arctic Circle for the first time in my life, hike through the screaming wilderness with eminent Russian geologists, see the midnight sun, and spend more than a week inside one of the largest impact sites on earth. We even found some tiny diamonds, frozen forever inside melted rock.

View of the Painted Rocks from my campsite. The exposure reveals hundreds of feet of meteorite impactite that was once the floor of the crater. This photograph was taken exactly at midnight; the sun never set for the duration of our expedition.

I fell in love with Russia and will return one day, and here is the memory that sticks with me most vividly: On one of our last nights, after an arduous 14-hour voyage on river rafts, I stood with a group of Russian scientists on an unknown sandy island at 4 am, drinking vodka out of tin cups. With the assistance of our long-suffering translator, Katya, we began exchanging jokes, communicating properly, at last, through the universal language of humor. Several of those men were important researchers during the Cold War era and were denied the luxury of international travel. They had never met an American in real life, and the discovery that surprised and astonished them the most was that we—we Americans—had a sense of humor. What was the Politburo telling them about us?

We laughed long into what should have been the night (the sun never sets in July in Siberia), clinking tin cups together in the wind and understanding, at long last, that we Russians and Americans were not so very different after all.