TALCOTT, W. Va. -While many kids might dig on the playground for buried treasure, very few find anything of note. However, two kids in Summers County are the exception, digging up a prehistoric find.
At Talcott Elementary, one second grade teacher shares his love of local geology with his students, encouraging them to find cool rocks so they can learn to identify them. One day, he discovered that two of his students, Liam and Wade, had found something a little more unusual than your typical gravel.
I came in my classroom and found a large rock on my back table with dirt and mud everywhere, and I said, ‘who made this mess back here?’ And I had two boys that said we think we dug up something pretty cool and pretty interesting…” says 2nd grade teacher John Ramsey.
Liam and Wade also love geology and digging around in the school’s playground, where they discovered a rock with an unusual design on it.
“Just digging for rocks… and fun…” says Liam.
“…and fossils,” adds Wade.
“But then Wade found this and…”
“We thought it was a rock.”
“…but then I pulled it out the ground, and Wade found it.”
“Yeah, I helped you dig it out.”
“…When we were kind of washing it off, I noticed it looked just like a fossil that I already had in the classroom, and I said, ‘boys,’ I said, ‘ I think you found something big here,’ I said, ‘I have one just like this and yours is way bigger than the one I had,” says Ramsey
He identified the rock as a fossil of a Lepidodendron tree, an extinct plant known to grow in wetland coal forest environments. This find is more common along rivers and is a bit unusual to find on a playground.
Ramsey says this has gotten his students excited about learning and may encourage them to start palaeontologic expeditions of their own.
“…The principal might be not too happy with me because I think every kid now is going to dig up holes all over the playground now to hopefully find some more, but they’ll find smaller pieces and broken ones in the general area here…” says Ramsey.
Ramsey says they plan on keeping the fossil in their classroom to let other students learn from as well.
If you would like to find a fossil like this one, Ramsey says to look up what rocks and fossils can be found in your area. Liam and Wade’s advice might also help: “keep digging.”
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