Today is National Fossil Day and the Dietrich School has some bone-afied fossil history of our own!
In 2004, then undergrad student Adam Striegel, a senior pursuing a liberal studies major, was on a field trip with the Department of Geology and Environmental Science. The group was walking near a freshly cut road near the Pittsburgh International Airport when Striegel picked up a strange-looking rock and initially thought it had an imprint of a fern on it. He tossed it back on the ground, but as he passed by that same spot later in the trip, he found the “rock” again and grabbed it. He showed it to their then-class lecturer, and current teaching professor in the Department of Geology and Environmental Science, Charles Jones. Jones quickly realized that this was no fern imprint, it was teeth, and upon turning the fossil in his hand, Jones came face to face with the eye sockets of the amphibian.
“I knew immediately that we had a 300-million-year-old fossil skull of an ancient amphibian, so I was excited,” said Jones about the discovery.
Striegel had unknowingly discovered a new species of reptile.
The creature is described as salamander-like in appearance with a head that is slightly larger than that of a cat, but with more crocodile-like teeth that would have aided in devouring its prey. The reptile is believed to have lived more than 300 million years ago, according to paleontologists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, who took the fossil for further analysis. As reported by the museum, this was only the third amphibian skull from that period to have been found by 2004.
Jones says the reptile has no descendants, though it might be a distant relative of frogs or toads. This critter shows the evolution many species of that time went through by changing from mostly aquatic to terrestrial. Many of the rocks and fossils found around Pittsburgh help tell this story of evolution and tell us that this area has the world’s earliest herbivores.
“So, vegetarianism was invented right here in Pittsburgh” Jones joked.
Why is this important? Once herbivores landed on the scene it created a new base for the food chain. The more herbivores you had, the more food you had for the carnivores, and thus led not only to population growth but also the evolution of new species.
The amphibian was eventually named after Striegel, using his name as the Genus, Fedexia Striegeli. The fossil is currently on display at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and a cast, which can be seen in the photos above, was made of the fossil which is also on display on the fifth floor of Thaw Hall for any Pitt staff, faculty, and students to view.