Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 14, 1994 TAG: 9411140045
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE LENGTH: Long
So does the Virginia Museum of Natural History, the Martinsville-based "museum without walls" that fought successfully to keep its state funding after a government reform task force recommended that its funding be cut.
Fraser, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the museum, is digging for fossils at the quarry, which was the bed of a lake 180 million years ago.
The lake was 130 miles long and 25 miles wide, and Fraser says he may have just scratched the surface at the site on the Virginia-North Carolina border.
A colleague of Fraser's, Columbia University geology Professor Paul Olsen, knocked a fossil - believed to be evidence of the oldest flowering plant in the world - off the quarry's rock face. Fraser has discovered fossils of unusual insects and long-extinct reptiles.
And Fraser has found dinosaur tracks - but no dinosaurs to date.
The news of the recent discovery in the Gobi piques Fraser's hopes that a similar discovery will be made at the Solite Quarry or at another site in Virginia.
"It's possible," he said. "Virginia has a lot of potential."
Fraser should know. He said he has found fossilized skin and muscle tissue of some reptiles - but, again, no dinosaurs.
If the preserved skin and muscle tissue of a dinosaur were found, it would be a first.
"It could show us if dinosaurs were warm-blooded," he said.
In an article published this month in the scientific journal Nature, Fraser describes the Gobi discovery. Nature asked Fraser, an expert in the field, to write the piece several months ago when scientists were forming their theories on the find.
A nest of fossilized dinosaur eggs was found at a remote site in the part of the Gobi that is in Mongolia. An embryo inside one of the eggs - and two tiny skulls found among eggshell fragments in the nest - have shed new light on the behavior of the prehistoric creatures.
"It's the biggest find in quite some time," said Fraser, who was working on his computer in his basement office at the museum Thursday.
Pulling out a picture that adorns the back of a dinosaur calendar, he smiled.
"A lot of textbooks and other materials are going to have to be changed," said Fraser, a Scot who grew up near Loch Ness.
The picture shows a velociraptor, one of the meat-eating, ostrich-type dinosaurs made famous in the movie ''Jurassic Park,'' stealing the eggs of a protoceratops, a plant-eating dinosaur that resembles a hippopotamus.
For years, scientists believed fossilized dinosaur eggs found in different parts of the world belonged to the protoceratops.
But the embryo turned up in the Gobi is of a species called oviraptor, a long-necked, two-legged meat-eater similar to the velociraptor.
It's the first known embryo of a predatory dinosaur ever found, Fraser said.
The egg itself was studied and is of the same shape and configuration as the ones scientists thought belonged to the protoceratops.
"So all the eggs that were always thought to belong to this guy," said Fraser, pointing to the picture of the protoceratops, "we now know belong to this guy [the oviraptor]."
In addition, the two newborn skulls found in the nest belonged to a predatory species of dinosaurs, probably velociraptors.
Theories abound from the discovery:
Was an oviraptor parent caring for the newborns of another species?
Or did the oviraptor steal another species' newborns to feed to its own young?
Either way, according to Fraser, the discovery proves that dinosaurs practiced more advanced parental care than they had been given credit for.
"We should not underestimate the degree of development of the dinosaur," he said. "That's the key thing that should come out of all of this."
On Friday, Fraser returned to the Solite Quarry site. A reporting team from National Geographic was to meet him.
The magazine, which has supplied grants for work at the site, is planning to do a story on the scientific finds being made in Virginia, focusing on the quarry, Fraser said.
Solite, owned by the Virginia Solite Corp., mines shale that contains a special silica makeup that allows it to be heated to high temperatures and made into blocks used for construction. Solite allows Fraser to work on its property and even provides equipment and manpower from time to time.
The company also allows the fossils found on the site to become property of the museum and the state of Virginia.
Most of those fossils are stored in three large, white metal cabinets that take up much of the space in Fraser's office. They're filled with specimens from around the world - all now the property of the museum, Fraser said.
The fossils include many from a site in Britain that are being used for comparison with those found at the Solite quarry.
Using the theory of Pangea - that all of the world's continents were aligned into one landmass before splitting - the Solite and British sites were less than 500 miles apart, Fraser said.
Many of the findings at the two locations are similar, he said.
The tracks of a unique pre-dinosaur creature also were found at the Solite site, Fraser said. Fossilized remains of the creature were found earlier in Argentina.
"What we have here at the quarry is a living ecosystem that was preserved,'' ha said. ``Everything that was living around that lake seems to have been preserved. I think the possibilities could be limitless."
So, Fraser plans to stick around for a while. But when Gov. George Allen's government reform task force decided state funding for the Martinsville museum should be cut, Fraser got a little nervous.
After a mass public outcry, a subcommittee for the task force rescinded the recommendation.
Fraser said it is almost certain that work at the quarry site would have ceased if the state funding were eliminated. The state money covers Fraser's salary, equipment and other major expenses.
"What would the state do with all the specimens it now owns?" Fraser asked. "That's what I was wondering."
Fraser envisions a branch of the museum being built on or near the quarry to house the fossils.
Several world-renowned paleontologists say the importance of the Solite quarry site - like the development of the dinosaur - should not be underestimated.
"There's not many sites like the one in Pittsylvania County that's in such close proximity to a museum. It's of tremendous importance, especially for things like insects," said Mark A. Norell, a leader of the American-Mongolian expedition that discovered the nest in the Gobi desert.
Norell is a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Dave Grimaldi, the chairman of the entomology department at the New York museum, has made several visits to the Solite quarry site.
"It's a real important chapter of fossil history," he said. "And the Virginia Museum of Natural History is in a prime position, because the site is one of the most interesting areas in North America."
by CNB