Images of cells preserved in stone

 Mike Viney (UK) As a child, petrified wood captured my imagination. However, as an adult, when someone taught me to look at the fossil wood at a microscopic level, I was in awe. At that moment, I like to think that I shared a joy similar to what the famous scientist, Robert Hooke, must have experienced when he examined fossil wood structure using his microscope, the first person ever to do so. The development of digital cameras and microscopes has catalysed my interest in using both technologies to zoom in on fossil wood specimens. In this respect, the purpose of this article is to stimulate this same interest among collectors. The building blocks of life In the last paragraph of The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin (1809-1882) eloquently reflects on the common ancestry of life on Earth. “There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” (Darwin, 1859, p. 490) Darwin recognised that there exists a continuity to life on Earth through his theory of natural selection. This same continuity is echoed in the work of the German physician, Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902). In his 1858 classic work, Die Cellularpathologie, Virchow enunciates an idea that would add a critical component to cell … Read More