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Paleontolgy
Paleontology is the science dealing with life of past geological periods by studying fossil remains. I never knew it but there used to be such animals as mammoths and giant sloths on Whidbey Island. Mammoths are elephant like animals with long hair and long tusks. Giant sloths aren’t like the sloths we know today; instead they are cow like animals that spent their time grazing.
I interviewed John Elverum, an amateur paleontologist that lives on Whidbey Island. He has been working as a paleontologist for about ten years. He received a minor degree in paleontology from the University of Washington. Mr. Elverum went into paleontology because he loves history, and finding fossils fascinated him. He said being a paleontologist was a lot like being a detective, you have to use clues to find fossils. Mr. Elverum finds a variety of different fossils. He finds shells, clams, plant material, mammoths, and giant sloths. He finds some of his fossils by beach combing. Some of the fossils he has found were from the ice age and date back two to thirteen million years ago. A plant fossil that Mr. Elverum showed me when I interviewed him was about fifty million years old. Mr. Elverum’s favorite find was some dinosaur eggs, but he said that other than that his favorite fossils are the ones that he finds on Whidbey Island. Mr. Elverum said that volcanic activity and the ice age formed Whidbey and the San Juan Islands.
Walking along the beach, looking like any other beachcomber, Mr. Elverum finds fossils because he knows what to look for. Anyone can find some of the fossils that he finds; you just have to know what to look for. He has found parts of bones that have been worn down by the water and weather that look just like a piece of driftwood. There are so many neat things to find from our past. If we would just open our eyes we could see the history and fossils in front of us.
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