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Oregon Paleontologist Pushes for Naming of State Fossil

Posted on: Wednesday, 23 February 2005, 15:00 CST

NEWPORT, Ore. - For four years now and counting, amateur paleontologist Guy DeTorrice has been crusading for Oregon to adopt an official state fossil, alongside state icons like the Douglas fir and the chinook salmon.

DeTorrice is backing the metasequoia, more romantically known as the dawn redwood. It's a species of tree that lived in Oregon 30 million years ago, and is still found in the state today.

DeTorrice's efforts in 2001 and 2003 ended without a bill ever being introduced to the Legislature.

But this year Rep. Alan Brown, R-Newport, is giving the metasequoia its shot in House Joint Resolution 3.

DeTorrice said Oregon is the only Western state in the Lower 48 without a state fossil, and he thinks it's about time to fix that. "We have a state mineral, we have a state rock, we have a state square dance, we might as well join all the other states and have a state fossil," he said.

A couple of things make the metasequoia a worthy candidate, DeTorrice said. For one thing, it's one of those rare conifers that sheds its needles every fall, like the Western tamarack.

Even more interesting, though, is the tree's status as a "living fossil."

When its fossil remains were first identified in Japan in the 1920s, the tree was believed to have been extinct for at least 3 million years. But 20 years later, foresters discovered a grove of metasequoias tucked away in a mountain-ringed valley in China that had preserved their ancient habitat for millions of years.

Then, in 1948, University of Oregon paleontologist Ralph Chaney traveled to China and collected samples of the tree and announced to the rest of the world that here was an ancient fossil come to life.

Since then, the tree has been propagated by commercial nurseries and is in wide use.

But it's the ancient image of the tree's needles and branches that make an impression on paleobotanists. Fossils of the dawn redwood are among the most common plant fossils in the state and are found west and east of the Cascades.

Ted Fremd, a paleobotanist at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, calls it "exquisitely abundant."

"It is one of, if not the, most abundant fossils we pick up," he said.

DeTorrice is trying to make this a no-cost deal for the state. He's taking it upon himself to get information to legislators and testify at a hearing in early March, and he said about the only expense for the state will be to add the metasequoia to the Blue Book the next time it's updated.

Source: Columbian

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