Unearthing old, natural treasures

By LISA SIMPSON STRANGE
Glasgow Daily Times

GLASGOW September 29, 2008 10:47 am

— At first glance, Paul Roides’ creations are beautifully crafted jewelry pieces. Looking closer, the observer sees they are much more.
Between 400 and 500 million years ago, the area that would one day become Kentucky was submerged beneath a warm, shallow, salton sea. Marine creatures that lived in these waters died, settled to the bottom and began the long, slow process of becoming fossilized. Through time, geologic changes and just the right conditions, these fossils became hidden treasures waiting to be unearthed.
Roides, an amateur paleontologist, is the happy treasure hunter who searches exposed limestone cliff faces and other sedimentary rock locations around the Bluegrass Basin, in the central part of the state, to find these miniature time capsules.
“When I crack open a piece of limestone 30 feet up a cliff face and find a perfect fossil animal, I know that I am the first person on earth to gaze upon it since it died there some 400-plus million years ago,” he said.
If the fossil is of the right quality, he takes it through a 10- to 15-step process to clean, grind and polish the piece. Then he incorporates it into one-of-a-kind jewelry. It can take from a couple of hours to several days to complete one of his works.
“When stringing fossils on black leather cord, I use glass, hematite, semi-precious stones, metal and/or wood beads and spacers,” he said.
Roides has been creating the jewelry for almost two years. He started out just making gifts for friends and family. He began exhibiting and selling his work in April 2007 at arts and crafts fairs and he has a display at Bernheim Forest in Claremont.
Originally from Rochester, N.Y., he has made Kentucky his home since 1990, when he was both student, then teacher at Western Kentucky University and Elizabethtown Community and Technical College. He said he began studying the state’s geology and fossilized marine life extensively five years ago. In addition to exploring for fossils and making jewelry from them, he passes time doing garden landscaping, studying Greek, history and natural science and writes about his travels.
Roides said he thinks of himself as a “lifetime student” and believes “everyone should have at least three active hobbies that burn calories.”

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