This is damn interesting.

In the spring of 1957, three schoolboys were climbing in an abandoned quarry in Charnwood Forest,

an area of rugged hills and bluebell wooded valleys not far from

the geographic center of England. One of the boys spotted something unusual.

Look at this, Richard Blatch Blatchford called out.

Fifteen-year-old Roger Mason scrambled down to the base of the cliff to join his friend.

The rock faces in the old quarry were framed by foliage, oak roots and branches arched overhead, and grasses and

ferns sprouted from crevices wherever sufficient light, soil, and water permitted growth. Blatch pointed

at something clearly imprinted on the surface of the rock

at head height, a frond-like shape several inches in length. It looked like a plant leaf and was

bisected by a curious zigzagging stalk. Mason was puzzled. Then, as now, Charnwood Forest was an anomaly, an area with its own distinctive history,

folklore, and geography, and which was folded and faulted with some of the most ancient rocks

on the planet.

A geologist in the making, Mason knew the frond pattern couldn't possibly be what it looked like, a fossil,

and more specifically, the preserved imprint of a large, complex, multicellular organism.

Because the rock dated back to a distant tranche of prehistory known as the Precambrian.

Everyone knew Precambrian rocks did not contain fossils. Charles Darwin himself

had noted this basic fact. Rock had been hewn from the quarry through most of the 19th century,

and it had become a popular spot for recreational visitors in the decades since its closure.

If the strange shape represented anything significant, someone would surely have recognized it previously.

On this last point, at least, he was entirely correct.

Later, Mason took a pencil rubbing of the peculiar pattern and brought it home to show his father.

...