SEATTLE — It’s a 15-million-year-old fossilized sea star from Olympic National Park, on display at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington.
A very rare find, the sea star was picked this month by Elizabeth Nesbitt, the Burke’s curator of paleontology, as her favorite “prehistoric acquisition of 2009” for museum.
Found by tourist
The sea star — also known as a starfish — was spotted by an unidentified tourist last July embedded in a sandstone bluff at ONP’s Beach No. 4 near Kalaloch.
The visitor used a cell phone to take a picture of the fossil, then showed it to Pat Shields, a park interpreter, who in turn alerted other ONP park staff.
After consulting with scientists at the Burke and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the sea star was cut from the bluff by Olympic National Park Coastal Ecologist Steve Fradkin and other ONP staffers using a diamond-bladed rock saw.
The sea star was sent to the Burke, where it is now displayed along as part of an exhibit about the importance of national parks in the discovery and preservation of fossils.
Fradkin, however, said that park visitors are just as vital to paleontology as the park itself.
“These fossils are out there,” he said.
“If a vigilant visitor hadn’t noticed it, we would never have found it.”
Under the sea
The rock formation in which it was found in suggests the sea star was a denizen of the deep seas — and was likely preserved in sediment by an underwater avalanche and later uplifted with other marine sediment to be part of the Olympic Peninsula.
“Located in the new acquisitions case as a single display, the sea star is approximately 15 million years old, and it is the only fossil we have from that area,” said Nesbitt.
“This find is particularly significant because sea stars are exceptionally rare in the fossil record.”
The sea star was the focus of a public lecture, “Fossil Sea Star Reveals Clues to Olympic’s Geologic Past,” at the ONP’s Visitor Center in Port Angeles on Dec. 8.
It was the second monthly program in the park’s winter Perspectives series of lectures and drew a full house.
