We offer a wide range of services to suit your needs and your pocket. The
basic package will preserve only your hard parts. Initially your body will be
buried beneath the seabed, in sandy mud too deep for worms to burrow down to
you. Over millions of years your skeleton will gradually petrify as the sediment
around it turns to rock. Minerals dissolved in ground water, seeping through the
rocks, will replace the calcium in your bones, hardening them and increasing
their chance of preservation. The site of burial will be chosen carefully to
avoid areas prone to volcanic eruptions or earthquakes.

Fossils `R’ Us offers a choice of minerals. Preservation as an iron mineral,
such as pyrite, will be relatively inexpensive. However, after the cast of your
bones has finally been exposed at the Earth’s surface, the pyrite will
eventually oxidise, leaving a pile of rust not so very different from that
occupying a cremation urn. Alternatively, for a little extra, you can choose
“silicification”—silica is basically glass, so there is a much better
chance that your remains, or those of your loved ones, will survive the passage
of time. Those of you who opt for replacement by opal, on the other hand, can
rest peacefully in the knowledge that you are not only a fossil, but a
good-looking one too.

But for the Rolls Royce of fossils, may I suggest the “Silhouette” option.
The extra cost is well worth it. The burial location, in the ocean deeps, will
be chosen for its fine-grained muds. Not only will your skeleton be exquisitely
rendered in stone, probably replaced by phosphate, but the outline of your body,
right down to your facial profile, will be recorded in the rocks as a film of
black carbon—an everlasting shadow. Care will be taken not to submerge you
under more than 4000 metres of water, or the pressure would dissolve most of
your remains, leaving only a few bits of bone.

With our “Tutankhamen” package, you can have your mummified remains
fossilised. This highly specialised programme begins in the desert, where you
will be left to desiccate. Next you will be buried in fine sands adjacent to an
oasis, where mummification and rock formation will proceed. Eventually your body
will form a cavity in the rock, lined by a complete impression of your skin.
Within the cavity your skeleton should also be fully mineralised. An arid area
prone to geological subsidence will be carefully selected to ensure that these
terrestrial deposits (of which you will form a part) are not eroded. My
suggestion is the Sahara Desert.

Finally, recent botanical discoveries in eastern Borneo will soon enable
Fossils `R’ Us to offer the “Jurassic Park” option, in which your entire cadaver
will be immersed in amber. This incredible opportunity allows every molecule to
be preserved. You’ve read the book, you’ve seen the film—now here’s the
chance to star in the remake. Your remains will be flown to the rainforests of
Borneo and then gradually entombed in the resin that seeps from tree trunks.
Preservation should be so perfect that even distant acquaintances would still
recognise you—always supposing they were still alive in a couple of
million years’ time, of course. For a small surcharge, insects or keepsakes can
be included in the amber.

And for those of you who want to achieve immortality but are too mean to pay
our highly competitive prices, we recommend that you start walking. Buy yourself
some stout shoes and carve your initials, or perhaps a short message, into the
soles. Then head for quiet, muddy, preferably coastal or lakeside environments.
The more footprints you can lay down close to the water’s edge, the greater the
chance that one of them will be fossilised and eventually rediscovered in
millions of years’ time: Kilroy walked here.

I had travelled to eastern Borneo to carry out fieldwork for my doctoral
project— examining Miocene sediments to work out what the ancient
environments were like. A sedimentologist is a bit like a detective—using
every scrap of information in the rocks to piece together a geological jigsaw
and bring the stone to life. In this part of the rainforest, I could see from
the layered patterns of the sandstones and clays that there was a big variation
in the strength of the currents that had deposited them. But to be certain of
the environment when the sediments were laid down, I needed more evidence.

I walked towards a steep scarp. The sandstone had huge ancient dunes in it,
their trough-like cross sections picked out by the tropical weathering. Only
very fast currents could have created such large features. Among the fossilised
dunes, the sinuous sand-filled burrows of long-dead shrimps occasionally
protruded from the rock face. Hundreds of sharply sculpted ripples overlaid
them, captured motionless within the rock. This was the answer: so many ripples
could only have been formed in relatively shallow water, with my birds wading
through it, perhaps in search of food. If I could find what they were eating,
then I would have a big clue to the ancient environment and climate. Just
because it’s hot in Borneo today doesn’t mean it was sweltering 20 million years
ago.

I carried on through the forest, towards a large expanse of dirty grey clay
exposed by a landslide. A gnarled log lay in a clearing, but it was only when I
got closer that I realised that it was made of stone, petrified over thousands
of years as the wood was replaced by silica. Even the individual rings were
preserved. As I picked my way through the undergrowth, more of the tree trunks
became visible, some still half-buried within the mudstone. I realised that I
was standing in the middle of a fossil forest. Some of the petrified wood was
full of holes, where enterprising molluscs had grabbed a meal as it washed past.
I prised out a lump of the hard clay and split it with my hammer: the freshly
exposed surface was covered with coal-black impressions of leaves, of all shapes
and sizes. These must have fallen from the canopy of the forest, and showed the
wide diversity of the ancient vegetation.

Brown pebbles weathering out from the clays glinted in the sunlight. Curious,
I picked one up. It felt extraordinarily light in my palm—which confirmed
that it was amber. Later I found perfectly preserved creatures within it:
spiders, millipedes, ants and many others, as well as leaves and spores. This
abundance of food would have been more than enough to keep the birds’ appetite
at bay, and spoke of a fauna typical of the tropics. Other pebbles were heavy,
iron-rich and stained red. One of them had a distinctive pattern like a rusty
breastplate, and looking closer I could see that this was exactly what it was,
the carapace of a tiny crab cast in stone. Further searching yielded a dozen
different species of fossil crab, some preserved with their pincers raised
threateningly, as well as scallops and other marine molluscs.

For the sedimentary detective, the last piece of evidence had fallen into
place. Using the structures in the rocks, and the fossils they contained, I was
able to reconstruct a picture of this area as it was 20 million years ago . . .
A tropical river tumbles through the rainforest, almost drowning out the buzz of
myriad insects. A scarred tree trunk oozes sticky resin, from which an ant
struggles feebly to escape before the log is carried away by the current. As the
river nears the coast it empties into a lagoon, which is sheltered from the full
force of the sea by a line of sandy dunes built up during storms. Logs lie in
the shallows, rolling in the surf while crabs scurry over the mud flats.
Suddenly the crabs bolt for cover as a flock of birds wheels and comes in to
land, their feet leaving snaking trails of delicate three-toed prints in the
sand.