TALCOTT, W. Va. (WVVA/Gray News) – While many kids might dig on the playground for buried treasure, very few find anything of note.
However, two kids in West Virginia are the exception after digging up a prehistoric find.
At Talcott Elementary School in Summers County, 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, John Ramsey discovered that two of his students, Liam and Wade, had found something a little more unusual than 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?’“ Ramsey remembered. ”And I had two boys that said, ‘We think we dug up something pretty cool and pretty interesting.’“
Liam and Wade also love geology and digging around in the school’s playground, which is where they discovered a rock with an unusual design on it.
“Just digging for rocks and fun,” Liam said.
“And fossils,” Wade added.
“But then Wade found this,” Liam responded.
“We thought it was a rock,” Wade said.
“But then I pulled it out the ground, and Wade found it,” according to Liam.
“Yeah, I helped you dig it out,” Wade said.
Ramsey identified the rock as a fossil of a lepidodendron tree, an extinct plant known to grow in wetland coal forest environments.
“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,’“ Ramsey described. ”I said, ‘I have one just like this and yours is way bigger than the one I had.’”
The fossil is more commonly found along rivers and is a bit unusual to find on a playground.
Ramsey says the discovery has gotten his students excited about learning and he 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,” Ramsey said.
Ramsey plans on keeping the fossil in their classroom to let other students learn from it.
Ramsey suggested looking up what rocks and fossils can be found in the area.
Liam and Wade’s advice might also help: “Keep digging.”
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