Bucktail Students, Teacher Hope to Change State Fossil
By Christopher Miller
FARWELL – Have you ever heard of the Hynerpeton bassetti? It once dwelled in the murky Susquehanna River swamps and forests some 360 million years ago.
This four-limbed vertebrate was named after the one of the co-founders of the fossil in the Red Hill Fossil site along route 120 north of Hyner.
In 1993, Edward “Ted” Daeschler and Neil Shubin found the first Hynerpeton fossil at the site while surveying rocks searching for evidence for the origin of limbed vertebrates, also known as “animals with a backbone or a spine.”
The name Hynerpeton is in reference to Hyner and herpeton, from the Greek, meaning “creeping animal.”
It is this fossil that science students in Mr. Joshua Day’s classes at Bucktail High School are hoping to introduce to lawmakers in Harrisburg in the near future in an effort to change the official state fossil.
Student Makenna Stone described the hynerpeton as an amphibian that looks like an alligator, but was small, had no scales, and was between two and three feet long.
Another student, Martin Lewis, chimed in, adding that it had shoulder blades, and that it was a strong and muscular creature with tremendous bone density. “The creature came from water onto land,” he added, “and was one of the first tetrapods to lose its gills and move to land.”
The official state fossil of Pennsylvania, named in 1988, is the trilobite Phacops rana. This creature, which was related to crabs, lobsters, shrimps, spiders, and other insects, also had large eyes. This fossil is most commonly found in the northeastern United States, and “a few other places in the world now,” said student Matti Mason.
Students in Mr. Day’s class are busy working up a game plan to introduce this idea locally, including speaking with the Clinton County Commissioners later this month, presenting it to students in local schools, the Keystone Central School Board, and then eventually meeting with state government representatives in order to amend the act for a state fossil. The original act naming a state fossil is known as The Act of December 5, 1988, P.L. 1113, No. 138.
The idea for a project came from Beth Whitty in Clinton County government as part of a way to celebrate America250PA locally, the 250th founding of the United States of America in 2026.
“We could help to change history in the state,” Day said. “Our students could one day come back and say that they did this and made it happen.”
Students hope to make contact with the paleontologists who located and recorded the Hynerpeton bassetti in the near future.
In total, around a dozen students are involved in the project.
