300-Million-Year-Old Fossil Surfaces – Nov. 1960

Typical Trilobite
Courtesy www.dkfindout.com

Here’s yet another story about something old that was dug up.

Only this time, it wasn’t a skeleton – it was a three-inch-long trilobite found at a construction site by a contractor at the Plumbrook installation of NASA near Sandusky.

The fossil (estimated to be 200 to 300 million years old) ended up in the collection of the 10-year-old daughter of the Avon, Ohio man who found it.

Read all about it in the article below, which appeared in the Journal on November 19, 1960.

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This story reminded me of the huge rock covered with fossils that used to be in the vacant lot next to our house when I was a kid. The fossils were like mini versions of the trilobites mentioned above. My brothers and I would sit on the rock, and play around it with our G. I. Joes.

I wrote about all this back here in 2010. As my older brother Ken mentioned in a comment on that post, "I remember the fossils on the huge rock, too. There were so many on there that I grew up thinking that fossils weren't all that unique or surprising. 

"One day a neighbor who lived up on Temple a few blocks west came chugging up on a small bulldozer, picked up the rock and away he went! 

"I told Mom that he was stealing our rock, but she said it wasn't ours and there was nothing we could do about it. So it is probably still in his yard.”

Unless I’m mistaken, the rock is still there on Temple. It’s been painted white, but nevertheless still a symbol to me of my childhood on Skyline Drive.

Hey, that’s our rock!