Page 31 - The Restless Earth Fossils

30 Fossils

like quartz (silicon dioxide, SiO ), calcite (calcium carbonate,
2
CaCO ), or pyrite (FeS ).
2
3
Imagine a huge pine tree, say an Araucarioxylon tree like
those in Arizona’s Petrified Forest, undercut and swept away in a
flash flood. It ultimately drifts into a wide meander of the river
where sand and muck bury it. Without the oxygen that bacteria
and other decomposers need in order to feed, most of the tree’s
wood remains intact. Over a period of time, mineral-laden

The Sternbergs Find

a Dino-mummy

Though it does not happen often, fossil hunting can become a
family business. Such was the case for Charles Sternberg and his
sons Charlie, George, and Levi. In 1908, they had just collected a
Triceratops skull in Wyoming, but were short on food and supplies.
Just as Charles and Charlie got the wagon hitched and ready to take
into Lusk (the nearest town, 65 miles away), George found some
interesting bones sticking out of a high ridge of sandstone. George
and young Levi, who was fourteen at the time, decided to stay and
work on the new fossil rather than risk not finding it again. Charles
and Charlie left to get food.
George and Levi worked hard for five days until their family
returned, surviving on a few old potatoes that they boiled a few at a
time. As they uncovered the fossil from the rock, they got more and
more excited. They knew they had found something special. Finally,
George lifted a huge slab of sandstone off the chest of the fossil
animal and stared in wonder. “I realized that here for the first time,
a skeleton of a dinosaur had been discovered wrapped in its own
skin,” he wrote later. The Sternbergs had found a dinosaur that had

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