This semester, a fossil owned by freshman Randi Block has been added to the Daniel M. Fisk Museum of Natural History in the Strosacker Science Center.
Randi Block, a biology major, started a fossil collection at home.
Because of Block’s fascination with rocks and minerals, her mom bought a fossil for her at an estate sale.
“She’ll pick up anything that looks like a rock and bring it home,” Block said. Once she arrives home, Block’s mother asks her to identify the rocks.
This semester, Block decided to bring a few fossils from her collection to school, including the one her mom found, since she is enrolled in a historical geology class with Professor of Biology Anthony Swinehart.
When she showed him the fossil, Swinehart got quite excited, Block said. He started flipping through books to discover the exact formation.
Block decided to donate the fossil to the museum.
“Whoever gets that excited about a fossil deserves to be the rightful owner,” she said.
In return, Swinehart gave Block a fossilized horse tooth from when horses were originally on the North American continent.
Swinehart said the fossil that Block brought in is a petrified specimen of a primitive, extinct plant called ‘Annularia Stellata.’
“This species lived approximately 330 million years ago in the geologic time period known as the Pennsylvanian Period,” Swinehart said.
The fossil is likely from the Francis Creek Shale deposit of northern Illinois, which is “world famous for fossil-bearing nodules of exquisitely-preserved plants and soft-bodied animals, including jellyfish,” Swinehart said.
Block’s donation will replace the “Annularia Stellata” currently on display at the museum.
Swinehart also added that donations to the museum, like Block’s, are welcomed and “seem to be arriving monthly, sometimes weekly.”
These donations, and the museum as a whole, serve as both a source of “edutainment” to the Hillsdale community, as well as a helpful tool in studying for laboratory exams.
Block’s donation was one of many this year, among which was the donation of Benjamin Durrington, a biology student who found fossil ammonites near his home in Texas.
Ammonites are an extinct relative of squid and nautilus, dating back to the Cretaceous period approximately 65 million years ago.
Ever since 1874, there is a tradition of both students and alumni, like Block and Durrington, in building the collection of the museum.
“Before a devastating fire and subsequent neglect, Hillsdale was known to have one of the ‘finest college museums in all the West,’” Swinehart said. “With the help of students, we are building it back up to its rightful stature.”
Block’s and Durrington’s donations, as well as many other fascinating are on display in a large room in the Strosacker Science Center where the museum collection is currently held.
