Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Storm Uncovers Fossil in Scientist's Yard

Storm Uncovers Fossil in Scientist's Yard AP
posted: 4 DAYS 20 HOURS AGOcomments: 207filed under: Hurricane News, Science NewsPrintShareText SizeAAACAPLEN, Texas (Oct. 3) - A paleontologist whose beachfront home in Texas was destroyed during Hurricane Ike has found a football-size tooth in the debris.
Dorothy Sisk and Jim Westgate are scientists at Lamar University. They discovered the fossil tooth in the front yard of Sisk's home in Caplen on the devastated Bolivar Peninsula. Westgate believes the fossil is from a Columbian mammoth common in North America until around 10,000 years ago.
The tooth looks like a series of boot soles or slices of bread wedged together. It is expected to be sent to the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin.
“This is the first one I’ve found in 19 years,” Westgate is quoted on the Lamar University Web site. “People bring in pieces and parts from the beach for me to identify, and I haven’t seen one in this good a condition."
The official location of the fossil will be recorded as Sisk's address, Westgate told the university.
"Normally we don’t have house addresses for our fossil localities,” he said.
More than 1 million people fled the Texas coast because of Hurricane Ike.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2008-10-02 21:16:31


---obviously Ike was pretty bad, but this is interesting.

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