This is Throwback Thursday #193. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc ...), please sent them to [email protected]. Thanks!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today, we step back to a little poem called "Coal Age", which appeared in the February 1950 edition of the newsletter. The poem is attributed to Anon., so unfortunately we don't know who wrote it.
The subject of the poem is the ginkgo tree... a truly ancient line. Ginkgo biloba is a gymnosperm. They are the last living species of the order Ginkgoales. The earliest of the order date back to around 290 million years ago. That is the early Permian Period, just after the crash of the Pennsylvanian rain forests. The genus Ginkgo extends back to the middle Jurassic about 170 million years ago. Interestingly, they haven't changed much since, as fossils from the Jurassic look very similar to modern day examples.
By Joe Schneid, Louisville, Kentucky - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9488972
COAL AGE
Where, 0, Where, 0, where is the ginkgo leaf?
The pressed little, flat little ginkgo leaf.
It was always in my way
So I moved it, day by day:
It was everywhere around
But right now it can't be found!I would find it in a book
I was reading, so I took
The little leaf from there
And gave it berth elsewhere.Then I'd find it in another -
Someone felt it needed cover:
Or I'd see it on the floor!
Goodness knows it's there no more!So I spent pre-Christmas days
Figuring out the various ways.
That the little Chinese leaf
May have, somehow, come to grief;
All because a rapt Zoologist
Wants it for a PaleontologistAnon.
