seals, fish and shellfish — representa- 

 tive of times when the ocean covered 

 the Coastal Plain. Other fossils are 

 bones and teeth of land-based animals 

 — dinosaurs, sloths, mastodons, mam- 

 moths and horses — indicative of 

 periods when sea level was lower. 

 During some epochs, the shoreline 

 extended miles eastward of its present 

 location. 



Where limestone and phosphate 

 mining occurs in the state, local road- 

 ways and parking lots are often paved 

 with crushed stone and mine spoil 

 containing ancient marine fossils. 



"Eastern North Carolina is literally 

 paved with fossils," says Vince 

 Schneider, research associate in paleon- 

 tology at the N.C. State Museum of 

 Natural Sciences. 



Mary Weeks of the Aurora Fossil 

 Museum tells of three vacationing 

 French geologists who were surprised to 

 find fossils millions of years old in the 

 state's roadway gravel. 



From road maintenance crews they 

 learned that the paving material was 

 spoil from the Lee Creek Mine, a 

 phosphate mining facility operated by 

 Texasgulf Inc. just outside of Aurora. 

 Unable to get clearance to visit the 

 mine, the three scientists spent an 

 afternoon picking through one of the 

 piles of spoil that the company regularly 

 deposits in the fossil museum's parking 

 lot. They came away with impressive 

 finds, Weeks says. 



Definitions: 



Invertebrates: Animals with 

 no backbone or spine. 



Bryozoans: Tiny organisms 

 living in colonies, commonly called 

 "moss animals." Their skeletal 

 fossils consist of small boxes 

 arranged over the surface of a 

 structure. 



All fossils aren t as 

 glamorous or marketable 

 as those of trie dinosaur. 

 But all are important 

 to scientists looking 

 for clues about weather 

 patterns, ocean levels, 

 species availakikty ana 

 kakitat during ancient 

 geologic periods. 



Amateur fossil hunters have made 

 important contributions in the search for 

 clues about prehistoric life, says Mary 

 Watson of the N.C. Geological Survey. 

 Geologists, who study rocks and miner- 

 als, and paleontologists, who study 

 ancient life through fossil remains, 

 can learn much from finds made by 

 amateurs. 



In fact, last year an amateur fossil 

 hunter turned up a whale of a find in 

 Halifax County. Rufus Johnson of 

 Roanoke Rapids discovered a fossilized 

 whale skeleton. 



Although it's not unusual to find 

 scattered fossilized whale bones in 

 North Carolina, this discovery was 

 significant because the bones came from 

 the same animal, Schneider says. So far, 

 nearly 40 percent of the whale has been 

 recovered. 



Brachiopods: Known as "lamp 

 shells," these organisms lived inside two 

 calcium-based shells. Dating back to the 

 Lower Cambrian (more than 500 

 million years ago), few species re- 

 mained in the Mesozoic. 



Mollusks: From a large phylum of 

 invertebrates, mollusks have a soft, 

 unsegmented body and usually live in a 

 calcium-based shell. 



Schneider says that despite finding 

 a large portion of the whale, its species 

 is unknown because the head has not 

 been located. However, he does know 

 that the whale measured 50 to 60 feet in 

 length and lived during the Pliocene — 

 4 million to 6 million years ago — when 

 the ocean shoreline reached westward to 

 about where Interstate 95 runs today. 



To understand North Carolina's 

 Coastal Plain formations and the signifi- 

 cance of the fossils we find today, let's 

 look at the state's geologic history. 



* Tke Cretaceous period: 



The oldest animal fossils of the 

 Coastal Plain date to the Cretaceous 

 period, roughly 98 million to 66.4 

 million years ago. The Cretaceous 

 period was the final phase of the Meso- 

 zoic era, the "age of reptiles," when the 

 existence of dinosaurs was coming to a 

 close. 



In this period, North Carolina had a 

 subtropical to tropical climate. Hard- 

 wood trees were plentiful among lush 

 vegetation of the coast. Large areas of 

 swamp and woodland existed as well as 

 open-water marine environments. 



And there were dinosaurs. 



Based on fossil finds of bone and 

 teeth, paleontologists know that dino- 

 saurs, some of which were rare, once 

 inhabited the waters, shores and land 

 masses of North Carolina. Imagine 

 meeting a mosasaur, a giant seagoing 



Continued 



Bivalves: Mollusks with two 

 shells, sometimes hinged; includes 

 oysters, clams, scallops and 

 mussels. 



Cephalopods: The most 

 advanced mollusks, cephalopods 

 have a large head, a well-developed 

 brain and eyes; includes octopus, 

 squid and pearly nautilus. 



12 MAY/JUNE 1994 



