Fossils of the Sixth Day
Weekend Edition April 18-20, 2014
South Carolina's Pre-Historic Dilemma
Fossils of the Sixth Day
by CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land.
– Christina Georgina Rossetti, Remember (1862)
The news is out! All it will take for South Carolina to join 47 other states in having an official state fossil is agreement on whether it is important to let people know how old the fossil in question is. The idea of having a state fossil in South Carolina came from eight-year old Olivia McConnell.
Olivia was dining in a restaurant whose menu included not only food selections but also interesting facts about South Carolina. She noticed that the state had no state fossil. Olivia sent a letter to two members of the legislature asking them to introduce legislation designating the wooly mammoth as the official state fossil. She gave the legislators three reasons to designate the wooly mammoth including the fact that one of the first discoveries of a vertebrae fossil in North America was in South Carolina where in 1725 slaves dug up wooly mammoth teeth on a plantation.
Given the tradition of state fossils one might have thought that it would be a no brainer for the South Carolina legislature to designate the wooly mammoth as its state fossil. Lots of states have them. Colorado named the Stegosaurus its state fossil in 1982. Less than a month ago Kansas designated the flying pteranodon and the sea-roaming tylosaurus as official state fossils. In 1981 by concurrent resolution, rather than legislation, Mississippi designated the prehistoric whale as the state fossil.
Designating the wooly mammoth as South Carolina’s state fossil proved to be a no brainer, but not in the usual sense. It was a no brainer because two senators of limited capacity but of religious fervor and legislative clout, insisted that if South Carolina were to have an official fossil, the state should at the same time affirm that the wooly mammoth and the other creatures of the world were created on the sixth day. Senator Kevin Bryant who, among other things, believes climate change is a “hoax”, wanted the bill amended to include three verses from the Book of Genesis that explain how the wooly mammoth and the rest of us came into existence.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/18/fossils-of-the-sixth-day/
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