007 : Fossils & an Interview with Andy Chua

Fossils are formed in different ways, but most are formed when a plant or animal dies in a watery environment and is buried in mud and silt. Soft tissues quickly decompose leaving the hard bones or shells behind. Over time sediment builds over the top and hardens into rock. It is when the processes of erosion occur that these secrets in stone are revealed to us.

A fossil of a fern from Pittsburgh USA.

The term fossil refers to any trace of past life. A fossil may be an organism remains, such as plant, shells, teeth or bones. A fossil record can also be of the activity of an organism such as footprints, burrows and faeces.

A fossil of a fern from Pittsburgh USA. The fossil was purchased from a collector from carousell.

Types of Fossilization

1. Permineralization occurs when dissolved minerals carried by groundwater fill the cellular spaces of plants and animals. The dissolved minerals crystalise and produce rocks in the shape of the animal or plant. This is the most common type of fossil preservation and examples include teeth, bones, shells and wood.

2. Natural casts form when flowing water removes all of the original bone or tissue, leaving just an impression in sediment. Minerals fill in the mold, recreating the original shape of the organism. these are common marine invertebrates like shells.

3. Amber preserved are organisms that become trapped in tree resin that hardens into amber after the tree gets buried underground. Examples include insects, pollen, lizards and frogs.

4. Trace fossils record the activity of an organism. They include nests, burrows, imprints of leaves, footprints and poo.

5. Preserved remains record intact remains of animals, often including preserved skin, muscle, bone, hair and internal organs. Fossils form when an entire organism becomes encased in material such as ice or volcanic ash or buried in peat bogs. This is a much rarer form of preservation than the other forms above. Examples are mammoths,

Interview with Andy Chua

Your name please!

Andy Chua Koon Hong

Describe yourself (what do you do etc)

I am a 3d artist. I also author dinosaur storybooks for children, and give paleo-talks to schools, museums and libraries,

How did you get into collecting fossils and what made you get into fossils?

I have always loved dinosaurs since young. My interest took a backseat in my teenage years, but when I realised Kinokuniya at Takashimaya was selling real fossils, I bought two and instantly fell in love again.

How does fossilization occur?

When a living thing, whether it be a plant or animal, is quickly buried by sediment instead of rotting away or being eaten up, there is a chance that its remains will be preserved. This is often a process of its organic compounds e.g. bones, leaves, shell being replaced by minerals. Other times, the organic remain of the living thing would have dissolved away, leaving a perfect mold or imprint behind. In both cases, what remains is now a fossil.

Is it possible to find fossils in Singapore?

Yes, I have personally found fossils in Singapore in the Jurong Formation which consists of sedimentary rocks.

Do you know of any history behind Singapore's prehistoric landscape?

Yes, the middle-West of Singapore is the Gombak norite, formed in the Early Palaeozoic. The middle part of Singapore is the Bukit Timah Granite, formed in the Early to Middle Triassic. The most important of all, the Jurong Formation, found in the West part of Singapore, is where we might find Late Triassic to Early Jurassic fossils.

What do you think Singapore would look like during the Triassic period?

I believe Singapore would be a coastal area (judging by the high number of marine fossils that can be found in the Jurong Formation) with many bivalves, ammonites, cephalopods and other marine invertebrates. It would be hot and humid, not unlike Singapore today. There is a chance that dinosaurs might have prowled the coastal shores. However, we have yet to find any verified dinosaur fossils.

You can find some of Andy's works here :

Fossil Finders #1:

https://www.bubbly-books.com/product-page/fossil-finders-mesozoic-mission

Fossil Finders #2:

https://www.bubbly-books.com/product-page/fossil-finder-2-cretaceous-crisis?fbclid=IwAR1r6adxdZjLwq_gqq1atAmoOcxkCVJGKNLmW0fDS11wP-Nr6qSNSI-exHY

Fossil Finders #3:

https://www.bubbly-books.com/product-page/fossil-finders-3-triassic-trouble?fbclid=IwAR2hhSFUvcEFXaEfpdpMfKl9kRYxhMFpo5F3iJXGQv5P8Ut-4iNa5YnCzOQ

Fossil Finders #4:

https://www.bubbly-books.com/product-page/fossil-finders-4-mosasaur-madness

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/thefossilfinders/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/fossil_finders/

006: The Triassic Flora Connection

The Triassic period (248 - 206 million years ago) followed the biggest mass extinction in the history of the Earth, the Permian extinction. This left the Earth relatively unpopulated (especially the seas) and ready for a new life. During the Triassic period, the first dinosaurs and the first mammals appeared. Many plant families were culled; giant club mosses and horsetails also went extinct during the late Permian, and new forms evolved during the Triassic. The Triassic was the beginning of a boom in conifers and cycadophytes.

Modern-day cycads are the direct descendants of cycadophytes.

Triassic land plants included a diverse assortment of plants characteristic of the "Mesophyta" ("middle flora" - from Late Permian to Middle Cretaceous). Calamites-like forms were however still important, perhaps fulfilling the ecological role of bamboo today, with Neocalamites reaching fifteen meters in height. Ferns also continued to flourish and dominated Triassic floras.

Ferns flourished during the Triassic period.

The drier climate - especially the arid interior - encouraged the evergreen conifers and other gymnosperms, which reproduced by exposed seeds and wind pollination. These include conifers (including many modern families), pteridosperms, cycads, Bennettiales, and ginkgos. Xeromorphic (dry adapted) characteristics were common, such as scale-leaved conifers and thick-cuticle pteridosperms and cycads. Moister conditions meant plant life was more abundant in the coastal regions. There were also several main biotic provinces, determined perhaps by climatic factors.

The Laurasian Flora is made up of; a mixture of primitive conifers - Voltziaceae and Lebachiaceae - along with cycads, Bennettitales, ginkgos (especially in northern latitudes), ground and tree ferns, and sphenopsids. The conifers and ginkgos seem to have been medium-sized to large trees that formed diffuse canopies. The northern part of Pangea was lusher, with forests of tree-ferns and gingkoaleans, and forest-floors covered in luxuriant fern growth. Araucariaceae conifers were the predominate large trees in Laurasia, with primitive gingkoaleans (e.g. Sphenobaiera and Glossphyllum) and cycads as a lower story and underbrush. The equatorial region was less favourable for much of period and the forests down here were sparse, consisting of conifers especially Araucariaceae) and cycads. The situation improved during the late Triassic, with moist conditions that encouraged cynodont herbivores.

Suggested reconstruction of the various organs of a Triassic Telemachus conifer from present-day Antarctica. For a detailed explanation, see ‘‘Habit Reconstruction.’’ The figure of Thomas N. Taylor (;180 cm) is provided for scale. Excerpt from "Whole-Plant Concept and Environment Reconstruction of a Telemachus Conifer (Voltziales) from the Triassic of Antarctica. Published in 2013"

References :

https://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/plants/Triassic.shtml

https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/mesozoic/triassic/triassic.php

http://palaeos.com/mesozoic/triassic/triassic.html

Benjamin Bomfleur, Anne-Laure Decombeix, Ignacio H. Escapa, Andrew B. Schwendemann and Brian Axsmith.International Journal of Plant Sciences

Vol. 174, No. 3, Special Issue: Conceptual Advances in Fossil Plant Biology Edited by Gar Rothwell and Ruth Stockey (March/April 2013), pp. 425-444

Lexicon :

Conifers

They are cone-bearing seed plants with vascular tissue. All living conifers are woody plants, and most are trees. Typical examples include cedars, cypresses, firs, junipers, kauris, larches, pines, redwoods, spruces, and yews.

Cycadophytes

Cycads are seed plants with a very long fossil history that were formerly more abundant and more diverse than they are today. They typically have a stout and woody trunk with a crown of large, hard and stiff, evergreen leaves. They usually have pinnate leaves.

Calamites

Calamites is a genus of extinct arborescent horsetails to which the modern horsetails are closely related. Unlike their herbaceous modern cousins, these plants were medium-sized trees, growing to heights of more than 30 meters. They were components of the understories of coal swamps of the Carboniferous Period.

Gymnosperm

The gymnosperms, also known as Acrogymnospermae, are a group of seed-producing plants that includes conifers, cycads, Ginkgo, and gnetophytes. The term "gymnosperm" comes from the composite word in Greek: γυμνόσπερμος, literally meaning "naked seeds". The name is based on the unenclosed condition of their seeds.

Pollination

Pollination is the act of transferring pollen grains from the male anther of a flower to the female stigma. The goal of every living organism, including plants, is to create offspring for the next generation. One of the ways that plants can produce offspring is by making seeds.

Bennettitales

Bennettitales is an extinct order of seed plants that first appeared in the Permian period and became extinct in most areas toward the end of the Cretaceous, although some Bennettitales appear to have survived into Oligocene times in Tasmania and eastern Australia.

Pteridosperms

The term Pteridospermatophyta refers to several distinct polyphyletic groups of extinct seed-bearing plants. The earliest fossil evidence for plants of this type is the genus Elkinsia of the late Devonian age. They flourished particularly during the Carboniferous and Permian periods.

Xeromorphic

(of plants or plant parts) having characteristics that serve as protection against excessive loss of water

Voltziales

Voltziales is an extinct order of trees related to modern conifers. In the fossil record, the most common member of the order is Walchia, known originally for its leaf form genus, and the order is commonly called Walchian.

Lebachiaceae

Lebachia, a genus of extinct cone-bearing plants known from fossils of the Late Carboniferous and Early Permian epochs (from about 318 million to 271 million years ago). A tree of uncertain size with pinnately arranged side branches (like the barbs of a feather), Lebachia apparently had a growth habit similar to that of the present-day Norfolk Island pine. It bore both pollen-bearing and seed-bearing cones (the latter, as detached fossils, are called Gomphostrobus) at the ends of the side branches.

Laurasia

Laurasia, a portmanteau for Laurentia and Asia, was the more northern of two minor supercontinents that formed part of the Pangaea supercontinent from c. 425 million years ago to 200 Mya.

005 : Finding Nilam

Nilam is a 1949 Malaysian film, produced by director B. S. Rajhans.

The film tells the story of a young Javanese man, Ahmad, who leaves his village with a magic protective dagger given to him by his mother. He takes to the seas, eager to discover the world. He reaches the exotic Arabian coast, and travels all the way to Egypt, encountering belly dancers, harem women, etc. He meets Princess Nilam and falls in love. Nilam's father will allow Ahmad to marry her only if he brings back a blue diamond guarded by monsters at a faraway location

A scene from Nilam was shot in some of Singapore's granite quarries. Below are stills from the film showcasing the granite quarries. The location of these quarries was not officially archived thus, it was a challenge for us to relate it to our project but it was also a very important finding as it showed how the quarries looked like before they were converted into nature parks.

The ridge in the background is roughly 15-20 metres tall. This is similar to the ridges around Dairy Farm Nature Park.

"Quarries appear to have begun operating successively between 1900 and 1920, for which latter year a map is available showing some of the quarries already of a large size. Granite was required for the reconstruction of Singapore Harbour, at Tanjong Pagar, for construction of the Causeway at Woodlands, for railway ballast, and for road chippings (Lum & Sharp, 1996). There were three main quarries nearby, now known by the names Singapore Quarry, Hindhede Quarry and Dairy Farm Quarry. " (Davison, and Chew)

This excerpt raised the possibilities of "Nilam" being filmed at Bukit Timah Quarry and the possibilities of using archived stills from the scene as reference images for our work.

Survey Map showing the presence of a quarry. 1890 -1943 (National Archives)

Aerial photograph of PWD Quarry ( currently known as Dairy Farm Quarry) in 1963 by RAF Far East Command. (National Archives)

Work-In-Progress

We are currently in the midst of building a 3D landscape using the rock samples taken from Dairy Farm Quarry. More samples will be collected from the other two quarries next week.

A view of the "summit"

Workflow in Unity3D

References :

Davison, G.W.H., and P.T. Chew. "Historical Review Of Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, Singapore". Gardens' Bulletin Singapore, vol 71, no. suppl.1, 2019, pp. 19-40. National Parks Board, doi:10.26492/gbs71(suppl.1).2019-03.

"THE HUNTER". THE HUNTER, 2020, https://sgfilmhunter.wordpress.com/.

"Singapore Film Locations Archive". Singapore Film Locations Archive, 2020, https://sgfilmlocations.com/.