A Mount Holyoke College professor has discovered a dinosaur fossil from Amherst, Massachusetts.
Last August, geology professor Mark McMenamin said he was at UMass Amherst with his wife, who wanted rocks for an ornamental garden. She saw some at a construction site at the university and, with permission, took them home.
The next week, McMenamin said he was splitting wood near the pile of rocks.
"One of the rocks rolled off of the pile and rolled down at my foot," he said. "And it was late in the evening, and the glancing light highlighted the texture. I recognized that texture, brought it into the kitchen, held it under the kitchen light — and I'm looking at it, and I'm saying, 'This is a piece of fossil bone. How strange.'"
McMenamin said testing and research confirmed it was the elbow bone of a predatory dinosaur about 30 feet long, which lived during the Jurassic period.
He said the fossil will likely end up in a museum. He hopes it will lead to more discoveries, and asks that people keep a lookout for unusual rocks.
