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Old 02/12/2005, 07:15 AM
dogfacepuffer dogfacepuffer is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Naples, FL
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By ERIC STAATS, emstaats@naplesnews.com
February 12, 2005

Paige Tobye wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up. She's 9.

Her friend Jenna Llamas, 8, isn't sure what she wants to be.

For now, though, they are fossil hunters, right in their own front yards in Golden Gate Estates.

Two scientists who have seen photographs of the discovery say the two girls probably have found a fossilized coral that could be 4 million years old, a reminder of Southwest Florida's ancient past.

One theory is that the coral was dug out of a local quarry and carried to the girls' neighborhood in a truckload of fill dirt or limerock.

"We were really amazed," Paige said, standing under a clump of trees near the site of the Big Find. "We were amazed."

Jenna and Paige, who live next door to each other on 15th Avenue Southwest, were playing a game of make-believe Indians about two weeks ago when they went looking for sticks under some brush.

They found what looked like a big rock — just the right shape for a pretend bowl to put some pretend food inside, they said.

Their brothers, Quinn Tobye, 7, and Alex Llamas, 10, had found it a few days earlier, thought it was an old turtle shell, and tossed it aside.

"It wasn't like we had to dig down 10 feet or anything, it was just sitting there," Jenna said.

When Jenna's mother, Maria, saw what the girls had uncovered, she took it to the Collier County Museum for a closer look.

Curator David Southall was the first to theorize that the girls had found, not a coral, but a fossilized sponge. He estimated it could be 20 million years old.

Maria had lunch with Jenna that day at Osceola Elementary School so she could relay the news.

"I was like, 'You've got to be kidding!'" Jenna said.

Whatever its exact age or identity, the fossil is something non-geologists don't come across very often.

Local quarries are chock-full of examples of fossilized corals and other marine life, said geologist Mike Savarese, a professor of marine sciences at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Quarries are tapping into what, eons ago, was a barrier reef that ran north-to-south across what is now rural Collier and Lee counties, he said.

Nowadays, scientists call it the Tamiami formation, which dates back some 4 million years.

That's probably where the fossil came from but it might have come from younger sediments nearer the surface, Savarese said.

The object looks to Savarese like the top of a stony coral skeleton that, when it was living, supported tentacle-bearing soft parts, he said.

Maria said she plans to keep trying to pin down exactly what the girls discovered.

She keeps it wrapped in paper towels and sealed in a plastic freezer bag.

For now, it is a treasure.
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~Melissa.