Our state fossil

    I'm not just interested in history, pre- history also interests me and I have done a lot of research on both. I know, we all think about dinosaurs when we hear "prehistoric". According to wv.gov, scientists have never found dinosaur fossils in the region that is currently West Virginia. There were now extinct prehistoric animals like the Mammoth and Mastodon.

     One of the animals that existed here was a huge ground sloth which was a herbivore and could reach heights of ten feet. One of these sloths became the WEST VIRGINIA STATE FOSSIL. That's right, we have an official state fossil. 
     President Thomas Jefferson acquired this fossilized skeleton back in 1797 from a limestone cave in what is now Monroe County, WV. He originally thought it was the bones of a prehistoric lion and gave it the genus name "megalonyx" (great claw) it was later described as being an extinct ground sloth from the ice age and was renamed megalonyx jeffersonii, in honor of Thomas Jefferson. West Virginia made it the officialstate fossil in 2008.
     The original fossil is on display in Philadelphia at the Academy of natural sciences. At first my opinion was that it should be at the culture center in Charleston, but if something from here in WV in significant enough to the sciences that it needs to be in Philadelphia, why not?
West Virginia's state fossil
Photo sourced from statesymbolusa.org


Sources
Wv.gov

Official state fossil of West Virginia, statesymbolusa.org

State fossil, wvencyclopedia.org

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