In 1849, while digging the first railroad across Vermont, a gang of Irish rail workers came upon the bones of a strange animal. A local, self-taught, natural history expert was called in who correctly identified it as a fossil beluga whale. With two mountain ranges and 200 miles separating the discovery site from the Atlantic Ocean, the above question became a real one: "how DO you get a whale in Vermont?
In the 1990's I was the curator and collections manager of the Perkins Museum of Geology at the University of Vermont where the whale skeleton was on display. During that time I researched the story thoroughly, led a dig at the original site and was instrumental in getting the "Charlotte Whale" designated as Vermont's Official State Fossil.
I am currently writing a book on how this discovery changed the interpretation of New England geology and history. There will be much more in this space about this project, but for now, please click on the fried egg below and go to the original Charlotte Whale web site, written by Wesley Wright and I back in 1993... literally the dawn of the World Wide Web.
In the 1990's I was the curator and collections manager of the Perkins Museum of Geology at the University of Vermont where the whale skeleton was on display. During that time I researched the story thoroughly, led a dig at the original site and was instrumental in getting the "Charlotte Whale" designated as Vermont's Official State Fossil.
I am currently writing a book on how this discovery changed the interpretation of New England geology and history. There will be much more in this space about this project, but for now, please click on the fried egg below and go to the original Charlotte Whale web site, written by Wesley Wright and I back in 1993... literally the dawn of the World Wide Web.
