“The inconspicuous whorl of a graptolite hieroglyph, shiny like a Paleozoic pencil sketch, is the “writing on the rock” so named in Greek. Like messengers from deep time, they are used as index fossils to date rock beds. The fixed spiral that today we see and interpret was once inhabited by a cooperative colony of zooid architects that built their delicate skeletal home to float and feed in the ancient seas, a feat accomplished by the division of labour among the individuals. I came across this particular graptolite-cooperative when involved in a project to clean and catalogue the vast mess of the Beaty fossil collection. This was the favourite fossil of my fellow volunteer and fossil enthusiast David Turner. We remarked on the whimsy of returning the creature to the water under the tap, after so many years of thirst, and then of entering its vitals into the computer matrix of the fossil catalogue. I felt the strange lick of time.”

Mia Glanz, Odd Society Spirits.