Curio Folio: Petrified Pop Tart

In the 19th century it was trendy to have a 'curio cabinet', that is a collection of odd objects from the world assembled on shelves and cabinets. Assorted curiosities, or 'curios' were a wonder to behold. Nowadays, it is increasingly difficult to find anything new, truly odd and curious to learn about considering the internet and things like Wikipedia. As a scientist, I come across oddities from time to time, and this new series is a collection of artwork...a folio... of curios. I call it the curio folio. Everything in these blogs will be based on real science*. 

The first entry is something that was recently discovered in an ancient peat bog in Estonia. Pop tarts, which are fruit-filled pastries with sprinkles on top that you cook in the toaster, were thought to have been invented in 1964, but this recent discovery challenges that theory. Controversially, this petrified pop tart was carbon dated to 1.6 million years ago. This data likely puts it in the time of Homo erectus, the proto-humans who first learned to control fire, as seen in the movie "Quest for Fire". Petrification is the process of replacing organic material, like wood, with minerals and deposits so that the object becomes stone. Since the Estonian archaeologists would not let me take a picture of the petrified pop tart, I made a highly realistic painting instead. You can see the mineralization by chromium which created green streaks, and the red filling which is fossilized strawberry. Yellow sprinkles were replaced by pyrite, otherwise known as fools gold. Thus, pop tarts were likely invented by Homo erectus people about the same time that they learned to control fire. Archaeologists now think they found a primitive toaster made of chiseled stone in the same location. 

 Curio Folio: Petrified Pop Tart, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, June 2025

 *and AI... artistic idiocy