This Place in Time: “Firestone Fossils” (y1969-129)

Expert Voice: Dan Linke, University Archivist

Firestone Library is a six-story building with three floors below ground, a design intended to keep the building from dwarfing the adjacent University Chapel. Before the cornerstone of Firestone Library was laid in 1947, the thirty-foot excavation for the lower floors turned up an unexpected find: fossils of a late Mesozoic era fish.  Sharp-eyed members of the Geology Department discovered Osteopleurus newarki in the exposed shale and soft clay and removed them along with students enrolled in a vertebrate paleontology course.  Ranging in size from one to eight inches, the fossils were more perfectly preserved than any similar type previously found, and ultimately the specimens were shared with museums and colleges around the country, including the Rare Books and Special Collections Department within Firestone Library.