The Falkland Islands today are nothing like the place where the shark we seek may have roamed nearly 400 million years ago. For one thing, we can walk on the islands now. At most spots we already know we'll find fossils, as we follow the trail of explorers and naturalists who visited these islands briefly in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Each day as we head out to try our fossil luck we pass twisting streams of pale gray-white boulders spilling down the hillsides. To the West Island Beyond the one and only town of Stanley, everything in the Falklands is farmland, settlement or uninhabited expanse.
Roads are few and far between and the seas in the South Atlantic are rough.
So small planes ferry people among the islands. As we begin our journey along Fox Bay, the scientists become excited looking over the edge of the bluffs. The rock layers below are what they seek. While we look for places to strip fossils from rocks, the shearing gang strips sheep of their fleece at the farm. It's hard to imagine getting too excited about the modest fossils we seek, but they've inspired John.