Bone Collector Lung
If you are looking for something special for a gift - say, a dinosaur or prehistoric bee - Lung may be able to help. A dedicated collector of all kinds of fossils, Lung shares his passion and knowledge with us.
HK Magazine: What kind of fossils do you collect?
Lung: Personally, I love to investigate exotic species like trilobites, which can take millions of forms. Some of them look like space ships. How fascinating to see a living organism turn out looking like a space ship. It’s just like an art piece. It’s so aesthetic.
HK: How did you identify the age, type and authenticity of a fossil?
L: Fossils are formed in rock and scientists can figure out the age of the animal by investigating the age of the rock. An experienced fossil collector can figure out the type of the fossil at first sight. Otherwise, they’ll match it with photos in reference books.
It’s not hard to tell a faux fossil from a real one. Faux ones that are made by molding always have bubbly pores throughout. A real one shouldn’t have these pores. For a sophisticated fossil collector, the microscope tells everything.
HK: What kinds of prehistoric fossils exist in Hong Kong?
L: Insect and fish fossils have been found in Hong Kong, however, so far no dinosaur fossils have been found. But they may uncover some at Tung Ping Chau because fossils from the same period as dinosaurs were found there.
HK: If a woman is murdered and her corpse was lying on the ground, untouched, would the body turn into a fossil and how long would it take?
L: Everything organic can be fossilized. People have found the fossil of a dinosaur’s heart. The process of fossilization needs lots of complementary conditions like temperature, pressure, textures of the sand and mud covering them as well as erosion. Vertebrates, like humans, have a higher chance of becoming successfully fossilized. For invertebrates like jellyfish, it’s really difficult for them to be fossilized. Insects can be fossilized due to their exoskeleton, which is usually quite hard.
HK: But what about the dead woman?
L: It is hard to say if the woman could be fossilized or not. Because even if it is a vertebrate, there are a constellation of factors, like the weather and erosion, that would affect the process. The process can take a long time - it can be tens of millions of years, hundreds of millions of years or a billion years, depending on the conditions it was exposed to.
