THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: Wednesday, March 15, 1995 TAG: 9503150459 SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS LENGTH: Short : 39 lines
A father and son walking along a James River beach found 4-million-year-old whale bones and coral that lived at least 400 million years ago in an ocean in the Shenandoah Valley.
Alan B. Flanders of Newport News and his 6-year-old son, Nicholas, were enjoying Sunday's warm, spring weather on the beach near a site being landscaped.
``We saw something that looked like petrified wood, but closer examination told us it was bone. Then we spotted the colored stone. I knew it was some kind of coral, but had no idea how old it was,'' Flanders said.
Scientists at the Virginia Living Museum in Newport News examined the Flanders' finds and established their age. They plan to go to the beach to see whether they can find more.
``It is very common to find fragments of ancient whales in the Hampton Roads area, but the coral find is much more exciting because of its age and origin,'' said Pete Money, a paleontologist who heads the museum's education department.
``The coral is pretty interesting stuff because it came from the Shenandoah Valley area of Virginia. Four hundred million years ago, there was an ocean in that part of the state, and the coral grew there.''
He believes the coral was ``rafted'' downriver in tree roots to the Newport News shore of the James, or was brought in a chunk of ice during Ice Age.
``What astounds me is that we found a piece of coral that was created before dinosaurs roamed the earth. That's really hard to imagine,'' Flanders said. by CNB