North Carolina's Triassic Terrorist

COVER STORY:

The Predator in the Stone

LINKS
 
  Dinosauria.Com's
Rauisuchians

Dr. Ron Blakey's
Geology Site

Douglas Henderson's
Triassic Earth History Illustrations

The exact location of the quarry where the rauisuchian was found is a secret, to protect the private landowner from fossil hunters. (We should also point out that the site has been thoroughly excavated, and the fossils completely recovered.) But we can tell you that the site is in an area known to geologists as the Deep River Basin, which extends from Durham south to Wadesboro. The Deep River Basin is part of a chain of such basins, called the Newark Supergroup, formed when the continent of Pangea was pulling apart. Sediments in the Newark Supergroup contain similar fossils from basin to basin. Paul Olsen of Columbia University has charted the ages of strata in the Newark Supergroup by drilling deep cores through beds up and down the chain, using electronic sensors to detect changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, which flips, on an average of about every 10,000 years.

By correlating the evidence of magnetic flips, fish fossils, and aetosaur plates—which make good time markers—Joe Carter arrives at an age of 221 million years for his fossils, plus or minus about five million years. During that period—the late Triassic—North Carolina lay on or near the equator, and probably basked in a semiarid, tropical climate. A range of high, rugged mountains—the stumps of which are the granite underlying Chapel Hill—may have focused rainfall on some locations, so there were probably pockets of lush vegetation, especially around lakes and streams.

A Namesake

North Carolina’s rauiscuhian will be named for Alison Chambers, a Chapel Hill fossil buff who died of cancer on November 24, 1998 at the age of 52. The species name will not be revealed until scientific publication.

Joe Carter met Chambers many years ago, when he was speaking to the North Carolina Fossil Club. Chambers went along on some of his field trips and sat in on a few of his classes.

“She was always so fascinated, and so anxious to share her enthusiasm for fossils,” Carter says. “Even when she knew she was dying, she traveled to schools and hospitals around the state, handing her fossils around to the children, sharing what she loved.”

At her last birthday party, Carter presented Chambers with a cast of the rausuchian’s foot, and told her of his intention to name the animal for her—forever preserving her name in the taxonomy of ancient life.

“I am immortal,” she said.

Friendships between paleontologists and amateur fossil hunters have a distinguished history. Mary Anning discovered the first complete ichthyosaur skeleton in England in 1811, when she was 12 years old. For decades, she collected some of the world’s most important fossils and became friends with Sir Richard Owen, who named the Dinosauria group.

Cover story: The Predator in the Stone

Articles by Neil Caudle
Illustration by Neil Caudle, used with permission.
Map based on Olsen, McCune, and Thomson, 1982.
© Copyright 2000 Endeavors magazine, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.

What do you think of this story?
Let us know.