One Old Turtle
Persistence pays off. That’s the case with retired farmer Bernard Kuehn of Accokeek.
After 30-plus years combing the stream bed running through his farmland for fossilized sharks’ teeth, Kuehn hit the jackpot this month.
He discovered the soft-shell turtle fossil that lived over 58 million years ago in the Paleocene epoch.
Heavy rains this spring exposed new layers in the creek bed, revealing the significant paleontological find on Kuehn’s farm, which was under water millions of years ago.
The reptile would have inhabited fresh water near the ocean.
Kuehn’s rare find, which he donated to Calvert Marine Museum, is one of only three known specimens of this species.
Paleontologist Peter Kranz from Dinosaur Park in Laurel investigated the fossil, then asked Calvert Marine Museum for help in quarrying it.
Joe and Devin Fernandez from Diamond Core Drilling and Sawing Company had the special equipment, a diamond-blade chainsaw, to cut the turtle out of the rock while preserving most of its shell. The turtle was delivered to the museum wearing a coat of rock.
Unlike a normal turtle’s smooth shell, the fossilized soft-shell turtle’s shell is bumpy from a skin over the living shell.
The ancient two-by-two-foot reptile appears to be whole.
The inch-thick hard shell — like a coat of armor — would have protected the turtle from most predators all those millions of years ago.
It will take many hands — and months — to remove the rock from around the bones as Calvert’s marine paleontologists study the rare specimen.
Stop by to see the fossil and the work in progress in the Museum’s Prep Lab.