Teacher Walking Her Dog On Beach Finds Rare Unknown Fossil Older Than Dinosaurs
On Canada’s Prince Edward Island, a high school teacher’s daily dog walk turned into a spectacular find that has thrilled paleontologists across the world: a ...
Read moreTeacher Walking Her Dog On Beach Finds Rare Unknown Fossil Older Than Dinosaurs
Posted — UpdatedOn Canada’s Prince Edward Island, a high school teacher’s daily dog walk turned into a spectacular find that has thrilled paleontologists across the world: a rare 300 million-year-old fossil.
At first, Lisa St. Coeur Cormier saw what she thought was a tree root poking out of the sand on Cape Egmont beach as she walked her dog, Sammy, in late August.
“I was really excited to think what this could mean for the island,” she told The Washington Post.
Canadian geologist and paleontologist John Calder was also a recipient of the photos, and he felt an urgency to get to PEI to take a look at this rare fossil.
Science page PEI: Island at the Centre of the World posted photos of the fossil on Facebook, and you can see the rib cage, spine and skull Cormier found:
Calder says it will take a year or more for paleontologists to determine the species of the fossil, but for now, they know that the animal lived during the Carboniferous period and into the Permian period, making it very rare. He described it as most likely a reptile or something similar, and potentially one-of-a-kind.
Prince Edward Island is so rich in prehistoric fossils because it was one of the few parts of Canada that was not under water during these time periods, he said.
Though the island was above water during the Permian, now Calder was worried about this new fossil washing away. As the Facebook post from PEI explains, it’s right at the water’s edge, and the dig team made “a huge effort to retrieve it in a short window between tides.”
Wow, what a find!
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