A local man working in a South Carolina gravel pit recently discovered a fossil estimated to date back to an age when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. It came from a time when the planet’s seven continents had just begun to separate themselves from a single land mass known as Pangaea.

Hamlet resident James Quick unearthed a petrified tree stump buried underneath 32 feet of the Earth’s crust, while working as an excavator operator at the Bennetsville sand and gravel pit of Hanson Aggregates.

He said he is planning to donate the item to the Rankin Museum of American Heritage in Ellerbe.

“We find petrified wood all the time, but it’s usually close to the ground, and it looks like wood, with bark and everything,” Quick explained during a recent interview. “This was 32 feet in the ground.”

This unique piece is some three-feet long and weighs about 100 pounds. It is hard as a rock on one side, while the other side still shows wood grain.

One may still see tree rings in the stump, as well.

“This is a very unique piece,” said Dr. Pressley Rankin of the Rankin Museum said after seeing the stump. “I would estimate it to be about 200 million years old.”

He explained the fossils that are currently at the museum are much younger than this piece.

“I think it’s the oldest one I’ve seen discovered here,” Rankin concluded.

Quick explained the crew is finishing up in the mining pit where the stump was discovered.

They have dug about three acres, and this fossil was found near an ancient river bed.

“I was digging what we call the A-1 material, it’s white sand with small pieces of gravel in it,” he said. “The water table is about 10 feet below that, and that’s where I found the stump.”

He noted the length of time it would take for that much soil to accumulate over the stump.

“There’s just something curious about finding something this old, and that was where the ground was then,” Quick commented on his finding.

According to the Web site, www.historyoftheuniverse.com, the planet’s geographical and biological composition was much different 200 million years ago than what we see today.

“About 200 million years ago Pangaea started to break up, and its bits drifted around,” the Web site reads. “The movement of continents had an effect on the evolution of life. For example Australia and South America were for a long time part of one large island, separated from the other continents. That is why we find animals called marsupials in both these places but nowhere else.”

Dinosaurs wandered the Earth preying upon the developing mammals, as well, at this point in history.

At this time, blooms started to develop from the Earth, which effected the development of insects.

“About 200 million years ago a new kind of plant evolved. It attracted insects using colored flowers, and gave them sugary nectar to eat,” the Web site reads. “Bees, butterflies and other animals evolved to eat the nectar offered by the flowers. While eating they picked up pollen on their bodies which they carried to other flowers.”

The insects were developing new ways of relating to each other, giving rise to the colonies we see today.

“Insects were also evolving new methods of reproduction,” it states. “One method involved insects living together and helping to look after their brothers and sisters instead of reproducing themselves. Colonies of bees, ants and wasps evolved in this way.”

While Quick said he has no definite timeline to donate the stump to the museum, it will eventually be on display for all to see in Ellerbe if he follows through with his plans.



Staff Writer Philip D. Brown can be reached at (910) 997-3111 ext. 32, or by e-mail at pbrown@yourdailyjournal.com.