That’s a crinoid,” a starfish cousin, Mehling said. On its surface were pinholes that a magnifying lens revealed were ringed by radiating spokes. In his hand that November day he held a piece of chert, a smooth rock that in this case looked like caramel. As collections manager for fossil amphibians, reptiles, and birds at the American Museum of Natural History, Mehling went on a personal quest to be the first person to discover naturally occurring fossils in all five boroughs in one year. Paleontologist Carl Mehling is one of many native New Yorkers struggling at the fringes of our city’s constant reinvention and real estate development to preserve glimpses of life from earlier eras. Not comforting words from a man who measures time in mass extinctions. He walked up from below the high water mark beside the old seaplane ramp at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn and called out, “That’s it! New York City is done!”
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