The oyster fossil was stuck fast in a crevice in the large slab of rock that had been exposed by the receding tide. I noticed it as I was running past and took a brief detour to satisfy my inquisitiveness. Everything around it smelled of salt and the sea, even this strange rock with its layer upon layer of skin. It was cold to the touch and it was still wet. The strong smell of seaweed was the only other smell that had the strength to rise above the salt. The slabs of cretaceous rock didn't have a smell of their own and in my two-tone world there was surprisingly little to distinguish the oyster from the other. Everything in shades of blue and yellow, everything salty and sea weedy. The tide was new out so there were few other smells, perhaps shellfish, maybe crab?
I touched the strange rock with its onion skin of growth, chipped here and there by the action of sea and stone and over-eager fossil hunter. Not my problem though. It wasn't alive and what was once within had rotted away too long ago for my keen abilities to detect. I sniffed it once more and barked at it but it didn't run away. See. Not alive. Not food. Not a toy.
I left it there and headed back up the beach. A few million years more or less would make little difference to it, I might have guessed.
OK, so I got bored putting my point of view all the time and went for that of my dog, Gandalf... but I still don't know what this large oyster fossil is that I managed to prise out from the rocky crevices at the low tide mark on that Isle of Wight beach. The crime is that I can't remember which one.
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