{"id":63913,"date":"2021-07-28T17:25:50","date_gmt":"2021-07-28T21:25:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/?post_type=news&p=63913"},"modified":"2021-07-28T17:25:50","modified_gmt":"2021-07-28T21:25:50","slug":"museum-paleontologist-responds-to-fossil-finding-in-brunswick-county","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/news\/museum-paleontologist-responds-to-fossil-finding-in-brunswick-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Museum paleontologist responds to fossil finding in Brunswick County"},"content":{"rendered":"

A curious and observant seven-year-old from Brunswick County named Rhett recently made a potential dinosaur discovery in his area and knew exactly who to write to in order to get the facts: the Museum!<\/p>\n

Rhett’s inquiry is transcribed below:<\/p>\n

\"Rhett's<\/div>\n

Dear Sir or Madam,<\/p>\n

Hi! I\u2019m Rhett and I\u2019m seven years old. I found something that looks like a small peace of Dinosaur skin, I don\u2019t realy know if it\u2019s real dino skin. I sent it to see if you culd tell me if it\u2019s realy is dinosaur skin. Please wright me back!!<\/p>\n

P.S. You can ceep it if you want, and the dino skin is in the papper towl packege. But if you don\u2019t want the dinosaur skin send it back!<\/p>\n

Bye!
\nFrom Rhett!
\nSorry for misspellings!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what was Rhett’s discovery? The Museum\u2019s Research Curator of Paleontology, Dr. Christian Kammerer, has the answers. Read his reply below:<\/p>\n

Dear Rhett,<\/p>\n

Thank you for sending us your discovery! I am sorry to say that it is not dinosaur skin, but you have a good eye, because it is a fossil. Or rather, a lot of fossils \u2014 this is what we call a conglomerate, which is a bunch of little fragments of rocks (and in this case fossil shells) that have been cemented together.<\/p>\n

These are the remains of animals that would have lived in the ocean \u2014 mostly seashells from things like clams and snails. The \u201cscaly\u201d texture that makes it look like dinosaur skin appears to be the imprint of a bryozoan (moss animal), a type of encrusting filter-feeder often found on shells.<\/p>\n

Finally, while this one wasn\u2019t a dinosaur, fossils from that group are found in North Carolina (mostly in the banks of the Tar and Cape Fear Rivers), so I would encourage you to keep looking \u2014 you never know when you\u2019re going to find one!<\/p>\n

Sincerely,
\nChristian F. Kammerer, PhD.
\nResearch Curator of Paleontology
\nNorth Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Rhett'sA close-up image of Rhett’s fossil find.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63799,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/63913"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/63913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}