A decade of discovery at the Gray Fossil Site

From STAFF REPORTS
The Gray Fossil Site commemorated its 10th anniversary last week with a three-day symposium that looked back at the discovery of the site and the subsequent research activities at the facility during the past decade.
The three-day event included a lecture by award-winning professor and paleontologist Dr. Chris Bell from the University of Texas at Austin, who presented “The Gray Fossil Site in Review — An Outsider’s Perspective” on Saturday.
On Sunday, the public was invited to an open house at the Fossil Site that included free fossil identification assistance and opportunities to talk one-on-one with a variety of paleontologists. A tour of the facility’s collections was also included in the open house tour.
“It was 10 years ago when the ‘story’ of the Gray Fossil Site officially began as road construction workers discovered the first fossils,” said Dr. Blaine Schubert, assistant professor of Geosciences and director of the Center of Excellence in Paleontology. “Studying fossils from the site is especially exciting because it is one of the only Mio-Pliocene localities in the world that preserves plants and animals, giving us a rare and unique glimpse of an ancient ecosystem during a dynamic time of Earth’s history.”