Anuncios
Elecciones México 2024:

Cobertura Especial | LO ÚLTIMO

Little girl digs up 160-million-year-old fossil

There's nothing new about children digging in the dirt, but most of them only find new ways to add to parents' laundry pile.

However, 6-year-old Emily Baldry has loaned a fossil she uncovered to the Gateway Information Centre in Gloucestershire.

The rock, which the little girl nicknamed "Spike" in reference to the fossil's defensive spikes, is no small thing.

Emily's plastic spade hit a massive 130-pound, 160-million-year-old fossil, identified as a deepwater ammonite known as Rieneckia (Collotia) odysseus, during a fossil hunt at Cotswold Water Park last summer.

After a year of careful restoration, the 40-cm-diameter rock is now on display to the public.

"This is the first ammonite of this kind to be discovered whole in Britain. The rest have all been fragments," Dr. Neville Hollingworth, who restored the fossil, told The Daily Mail.

The transformation met owner Emily's approval.

"It is so exciting to see him. I was very happy when I first saw him and now he looks very shiny. I bring him into school and all of my friends like him too," Emily said.

The spiral-patterned-shelled fossilized mollusc lived in the oceans during the Jurassic period.

Emily plans to keep digging for more fossils.