Devonian sponge find

News from upstate New York:

Wayne Myers and Paul Krohn said they nearly fainted from shock when they broke up the huge bluish-gray rock next to Michigan Creek on the Myers homestead. Laid out before them was a story of the ages -- a colony of 360-million-year-old glass sponges captured forever as fossils in the siltstone.

The big find was made last spring, but the two men have not publicized the find until now. They wanted to wait until Myers finished building a $2,000 glass-fronted display for the rocks.

"It sounds like it is better than any in any museum in the world," said Scott McKenzie, a professor of geology at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa. "This is the largest accumulation of these sponges found anywhere". . .

Glass sponges still exist today, Myers said, but his have a prehistoric bowl shape, as opposed to the modern tubular shape. This particular species, found only in the central Southern Tier, is very rare with usually only one individual sponge fossil found at a time, Krohn said.

Posted by David on May 23, 2003 6:58 PM