Students unearth dinosaur

From the Commrercial Appeal (Memphis, Tennessee): Students unearth dinosaur
Far from the green wooded landscape of West Tennessee, 11 college geology students stared across a seemingly infinite expanse of plateau dotted with short spurts of grass. They were some of the same students who had worked at Coon Creek, an paleontological dig site in McNairy County owned by the Memphis Pink Palace Family of Museums.

It was May 2011 when the geology students from the University of Tennessee at Martin arrived at the Dighton, Kan., farmland, this time they were joined by two faculty members.

It was hot as they assessed the dry crumbly earth, their eyes were constantly tilted toward the ground, searching, searching -- and then there was the discovery.

"They uncovered fossils buried for millions of years, some of which are new and significant finds to science," said Dr. Michael Gibson, UT-Martin professor of geology.

He was referring to the mosasaur, a prehistoric marine lizard, and two prehistoric fish fossils from the Cretaceous period that the group found and excavated to be displayed in a museum (a similar fossil, the skull of a mosasaur, is on display at the Memphis Pink Palace Museum that was excavated by a former curator who worked for the museum).

"I mean, to walk along these weathered chalk layers and to find an ancient creature fossilized in time is really just awesome. To think that these specimens were from the Cretaceous period and would date at around 73 million years old; it's nuts!" said UT-Martin senior geoscience major Aaron Scott, who was part of the excavation group.

Ironically, and perhaps appropriately, the great prehistoric discovery was for and financed by Discovery Park of America, the large educational and entertainment complex being erected in Union City, Tenn. It is funded principally by the Robert E. and Jenny D. Kirkland Foundation, and upon its scheduled opening in 2013, will feature an expansive array of exhibits including an extensive natural history section where these fossils will be featured.

"Mr. Kirkland really wanted to be able to have some real fossil specimens," Gibson said. "So the idea I pitched to them was rather than go buy everything, why don't we go and collect some things that would then be on display, and they would own the originals."

By the following spring the trip was a go and the hunt on.

"The first day, I couldn't even see the dig site from where we stopped. We were all set up on a ridge that overlooked a lower valley, but there were plants covering most of what I could see, so I assumed the site was somewhere else," said senior geoscience major Angela Reddick.

Gibson chose the site in Kansas, rented by Triebold Paleontology Inc., for its reputation as a large fossil hot spot. Still, the first two days of the dig were slow as the students only came across small insignificant fossils.

"I believe it was on the third day we were out there, everyone was starting to feel a little let down because we hadn't found very much," Reddick said. She then described the excitement she felt when she found out that other members of her group found the first large specimen, a huge fish. "It was so exciting then. I just wanted to be a part of digging it out."

Scott, however, was lucky enough to be one who originally spotted a large fossil.

"As I was topping a rise in the chalk I saw jaws sticking out of the ground, called over our group leader, and we began the excavation process.

The three fossils are worth roughly $250,000 in their jacketed form but will be worth more after they are finally prepped, which is the second part of the project. In March 2013, Discovery Park will pay for several of the same geology students to fly to Triebold's laboratory in Colorado to finish readying the fossil samples.

"A vast majority of paleontologists will go through their entire career and never find these," Gibson said.

"The difference of a trip like this and a classroom experience, it is huge," Scott said.

The ocean-way for the group's fish finds is the same time frame and ocean as that of Coon Creek, and the University of Tennessee at Martin's Selmer Center and ECOS (extended campus and online studies) is UT Martin is currently negotiating a partnership with them regarding the site.

If you are interested in trying your luck at unearthing a fossilized treasure, you can stake your claim at Coon Creek by becoming a member of the Memphis Pink Palace Museum this month. Once a year, the museum offers members a full-day visit to the site. Guidance from museum staff is available to assist with digging, collecting, cleaning, and preserving any found fossils. This year's event is going to take place at the end of April.

For more information, call the museum's membership office at (901) 636-2406.