Oct. 15, 2014 is National Fossil Day!More than 250 national parks around the country protect a variety of fossils ranging from dinosaur skeletons in Dinosaur National Monument to primitive algae in Glacier National Park.The beaches of Cape Hatteras National Seashore may not seem a likely place to find fossils but some real "treasures" are sometimes located and the National Park Service is honored to preserve and protect those treasures.
In 1989, a fossilized walrus skull, mostly intact except for its two tusks, was found on a Seashore beach between the villages of Salvo and Avon.The "Ice Age artifact" was sent to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC for analysis and was found to be over 36,000 years old!Staff of the Smithsonian Institute advised it was one of the best preserved and complete specimens ever examined and fewer than a dozen good specimens have been found in the past century making this a very rare find.
Keep your eyes open out there!You never know what you'll find!
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
