Showoff


Emily Baldry is six years old. Emily has a little plastic shovel. Emily dug up a 160 million year old cephalopod.

I’m 54, I have a little plastic spoon, and I’m eyeing the backyard. There used to be cephalopods swimming around in this neighborhood…of course, there were also some annoying glaciers that scoured the landscape. But I can dream!

(Also on Sb)

Comments

  1. says

    I dug up some cat shit. Not really something that makes me want to keep digging. I know what I can find here anyhow, a bunch of boring basalt (Washington flood basalts).

    The photo caption says 140 million years, and just below it the article claims 16 million years.

    Ammonites make nice pets, just sitting there on the shelf.

    Glen Davidson

  2. says

    I dug up some cat shit. Not really something that makes me want to keep digging. I know what I can find here anyhow, a bunch of boring basalt (Washington flood basalts).

    The photo caption says 140 million years, and just below it the article claims 160 million years.

    Ammonites make nice pets, just sitting there on the shelf.

    Glen Davidson

  3. says

    The photo caption says 140 million years, and just below it the article claims 16 million years.

    Ack, one of those stupid cases where you hit “0” and it doesn’t quite go down far enough to register. “160 million” of course.

    Glen Davidson

  4. tushcloots says

    When I was three, I had a little plastic shovel, and it suddenly dawned on me that concrete was made out of sand. I decided that I would dig up the porch. I remember the mailman coming by about then and asked what I was doing.n I confidentally and matter of factly told him I was going to dig the porch up, and I was puzzled when he laughed.

  5. Vall says

    My daughter’s photo of an ammonite did pretty well over at the panda’s thumb photo contest. I wish we could have found one as big as the girl in England did. Wow.

  6. NelC says

    Tsk, just down the road from me. With envy I am green. That could have been me, if I ever went to Cotswold Water Park. And dug the ground up at random. Shame I haven’t got a backyard.

  7. TV200 says

    This makes me happy, for some reason, I just think it’s cool.
    The only thing I’ve ever excavated was a Vespa, that had been buried for about 30 years. Only a very familiar handlebar sticking out of the ground.

  8. EvoMonkey says

    Very cool!!! I tried digging out an old tree stump when I was that age, but I essentially got no where and broke my plastic shovel. Even with all my pleading to Mom and Dad, chainsaws and dynamite were out of the question.

  9. 'Tis Himself, OM says

    Even with all my pleading to Mom and Dad, chainsaws and dynamite were out of the question.

    You should have asked for a backhoe.

  10. ss123 says

    I’ve found a pretty big ammonite fossil laying right on top of the ground (mostly) while hunting on the western plains of South Dakota. They’re everywhere out there… The east side not so much as that’s where the glacier bulldozed through. I think the west side of SD missed most of the glaciers.

  11. JJ says

    I wish I would have found something like that as a kid! Although, it was pretty cool as 7-8yo and finding sharks teeth digging around the back yard. I still remember the sense of awe I had when I found one. The idea of sharks teeth inland really left me amazed and curious about geology\paleontology. But hey, it was just there ’cause of the global flood.

  12. says

    I wanted that rock pick in the gift shop at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago for many years. Finally, my dad bought it for me. It was only then that I discovered wanting is sometimes better than having. Dad’s wood chisel and a hammer worked much better at separating the rock layers.

  13. grumps says

    It’s cool, but it’s doubly cool because it may well be the event that sends Emily off to a life of science, wonder and just awesomeness. Keep digging Emily!

  14. Sili says

    Kids these days.

    No respect for the departed.

    In a civilised country she be charged with disturbing a gravesite

    Little ghoul.

  15. Rockatte says

    I’m skeptical of this story. The only 2 references I’ve found are from The Mirror and The Daily Mail – not exactly paragons of journalistic integrity. Thoughts anyone?

  16. William Papp says

    At one time had a similar Ammonite that I had painstakingly extracted from some dang hard rock. My garage was broken into and all they took was my fossil! At least they had good taste.

  17. chigau (...---...) says

    I agree with grumps.
    Poor Emily is probably imprinted and doomed to become a palaeontologist!

  18. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    I somehow picture her on a dig next to Dr. Marjanović some day, finding a missing link with her lucky shovel…

  19. illdoittomorrow says

    All I ever get to see are pyritized crinoid fragments, the odd sponge spicule, and (once) a nice brachiopod mold.

    *cries*

  20. Eric Paulsen says

    In the third grade I found a tiny bivalve no bigger than my thumbnail now (1/2 an inch more or less) and was devastated when one of the fifth grade teachers asked to borrow it and never gave it back. It was the coolest fossil I found in my young life. When I was about 16 though my family took our sailboat to the Charity islands and in waist deep water I found two, what I believe were, human molars encased in what looked like sandstone. I don’t know if those were fossils or maybe just remains encrusted from being in the water, but I lost them and my Dad sold the boat…

    Never in my life did I dream of finding anything as cool as what Emily found. I blame the fact that I never had a tiny plastic shovel.

  21. McCthulhu awaits the return of the 2000 foot Frank Zappa says

    The most recent stories about fossilized anything involved pre-adolescent children happening upon the fossil or digging it up. Voila! We can make a deduction. If we want to find all the fossils hidden in all the strata and make our evolutionary fossil history compleat (heh!) we just have to send out large contingents of kids with inappropriate digging apparatus (like spoons and little plastic hand shovels) and they will soon reveal the entire fauna history of the planet. (citation needed)

    Oh, and Glen Davidson (#9, #9, #9, #9…):

    For the amount it’s as the main ammo in the derision cannon, we almost need to keep ‘∴ Jebus!’ stored in our computer’s clipboard to paste at all times.