Verdigrised and old. These plates and screws once held fossils in place. They were put there by Edwardian scientists as they pieced together these giant bone jigsaws, that science then was just getting into.
Some of these pieces of bent copper are over a hundred years old.
Now in the lab of the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research at Wits university, the descendants of those Edwardian scientists are removing those screws and plates so that they can re examine the fossils they once held together.
They now have a pile of these screws, that they don’t know what to do with.
It wouldn’t be a Smillie story without a reference to Verdigris!