What'd You Do in School?

By Alicia Dorr in Miscellaneous on Apr 17, 2007 6:00PM

One time, a class full of UIC students were on a field trip when they wandered into a cave. Four years later, those students can say, without a doubt, that they really got their money's worth on that science credit — they are all being credited with finding a ridiculous amount of fossils.

The earth and sciences teacher, Roy Plotnick, presented findings at a meeting of the Geological Society of America that included a 310 million-year-old fossil of conifer needles that is the oldest ever found in North America. The students and their instructor stumbled upon cave that is teeming with fossils because of its formation, which trapped sediment in such a way that it was basically a limestone fossil factory. Most of the material in it was dated around 310 million years old, when the sea that covered northern Illinois during the Ordovician period may have been receding by the time these specimens existed in the Pennsylvanian. The opening is in Kendall County, on land owned by the Central Limestone Company, which allows exploration on Sundays when there is no mining.

Not only did they find the opening, however, but there is a possibility that the cave may go on for miles, and could provide scientists with samples for years to come. The question is, could the students hock any of those fossils for money to pay back their student loans?

Image via colby.edu.