FISHERSVILLE, Va. (WHSV/Gray News) -A fossil found by a landowner in Virginia has left even the Smithsonian completely stumped.
Three years ago, Taylor Endres was tilling her garden when she found an object seven inches down in the dirt.
Endres recognized what she found was a fossil but it was unlike anything she had ever seen before. She took it and put it under her kitchen sink before starting a mission to find out what it was.
Endres took the fossil to the Virginia Natural History Museum, which then directed her to the Smithsonian.
Even there, experts could not tell exactly what the fossil was.
Experts determined the fossil was of a plant, but that was as much as they could tell.
“So far, we do not know what it is,” Endres said. “It’s not extraterrestrial. I asked the paleontologist, so we can mark that one off. It’s not bone. It’s nothing we’re supposed to find here.”
Endres has already taken it to James Madison University for inspection and plans to take it to more schools across Virginia to hopefully get it carbon dated.
Endres said she hopes one day she’ll get an answer, even if it’s when she’s 80 years old.
In the meantime, it will be put in the Virginia Natural History Museum’s Waynesboro campus once the facility is built.
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