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State Fossil Contest

In honour of July 4th, I thought I’d take a moment to praise those states that have adopted official State fossils.

Unfortunately only 78% of American states have an official fossil.

So, I think we’ve come up with the perfect wedge issue for 2006 in Arkansas, Hawaii, Indiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Texas--ballot initiatives to give these states their own official fossils.

If the Republicans are going to rally their base with gay marriage, we’ve got to throw some red meat to the core atheist constituency.

Now, we just need to come up with a shortlist of official fossils. So, in order to do that, I’m holding an 4th of July “Fossils are Winners” Contest. Write a blog post (or a comment) endorsing fossils for official-fossilless Sates. Explain why your favorite fossil species embodies the spirit of that State.

I’ll announce the winners on July 4th. 

[Cross-posted at Majikthise]

Posted by on 07/02 at 10:58 PM

  1. I was going to say Strom Thurmond, but curses, So. Carolina already has a state fossil.

    Seriously, though, I see Texas, while not having a state fossil, does have a state dinosaur:
    http://www.paleoportal.org/time_space/state.php?name=Texas

    D

    Posted by Derryl Murphy  on  07/03  at  12:07 AM

  2. Dang. Hawaii does not have any land fossils. It’s too darn new. So what can we do?

    Posted by Hattie  on  07/03  at  01:18 AM

  3. Hmm, good point. Do you have any fossilized plankton from the seabed, or anything like that? Failing that, have you considered adoption?

    Posted by  on  07/03  at  01:43 AM

  4. Now, Hattie.  We have lots of petroglyphs; had you forgotten?  Surely the rules can be bent to include petroglyphs.

    Posted by Linkmeister  on  07/03  at  01:57 AM

  5. Well, actually I am not quite correct. There are marine fossils on the older islands, but I live on the Big Island, which is fossil free. Petrogyphs could do, I suppose.

    Posted by Hattie  on  07/03  at  05:30 AM

  6. Well if you talk about Fossils that you can get them in deep dark forests or under the embedded rocks that have embedded thousands of years ago. It’s really a fun to found the fossils.

    Posted by Neel Willson  on  07/03  at  06:08 AM

  7. Clinton is clearly a fossil, so he does for Arkansas. Likewise Bush for Texas and Quayle for Indiana.

    Posted by  on  07/03  at  06:45 AM

  8. How old is the state fossil of Kansas?

    Posted by  on  07/03  at  07:20 AM

  9. Has South Carolina gotten a new one since Thurmond died?

    Posted by Arthur D. Hlavaty  on  07/03  at  07:49 AM

  10. As Texas has yet to choose a specific fossil I propose a generic: fuels.

    Captcha: man. Fossils to be.

    Posted by black dog barking  on  07/03  at  09:35 AM

  11. Sam Brownback (R-Ka.) is still a fairly young guy.

    Posted by  on  07/03  at  12:34 PM

  12. Ted Stevens should be Alaska’s State Fossil!

    Posted by Timothy Horrigan  on  07/03  at  03:36 PM

  13. Democrats are in short supply in Texas, so we could use some Democrat fossils.

    Posted by  on  07/04  at  02:14 AM

  14. I nominate Paul Greenberg, the editor of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, as the state’s official fossil.  His thinking is strictly Jurassic, or even Cretinous--er, Cretacious

    Posted by  on  07/04  at  02:25 AM

  15. Fossils are a problem here, too. The glaciers chewed everything up very recently and we don’t have big layered sediment beds due to the geography. I guess they find fossil pollen here, but that’s not very cool (as well as being microscopic.) That’s probably why NH doesn’t have a state fossil either. We’d have to borrow some of Canada’s.

    Posted by bellatrys  on  07/04  at  09:29 AM

  16. Actually Hawaii does have fossils, in the form of trees which were buried by lava, and burned away leaving a hollow mold.

    You can see an example at:
    http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/EOSslides/slides-txt/slide13.html

    Posted by  on  07/10  at  01:48 PM

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