Last summer on a family excursion near Chapman Lake, nine year old Brody Ehrlich was out looking for materials to make a teepee when he thought he saw some kind of footprint in a rock in the mud, the curious youngster slowed down and took a closer look.
From some past experience, he knew what he had found was a bit more than just a simple footprint.
“I made my little sister stand there to guard it so I could get my mother to help me carry out,” he said.
Weighing close to 50 pounds, the rock was covered with moss and of course lots of dirt so the true nature of the find was not completely apparent until Brody home and had his father pressure wash it. Closer inspection revealed that the rock was covered with a wide variety of fossils which turned out to be from the middle Jurassic era.
Eventually Brody took the rock to the Smithers Museum where it was examined by local geologist Tony L’Orsa who was able to identify many of the fossils. Among them were trigonlid (a type of saltwater clam), and traces of belemnoids, relatives of modern day squids.
Apparently, finding so many fossils I one rock makes Brody’s discovery a rare find. In most cases, one or two will be the expected number.
While Brody received some financial offers for the piece, he turned them all down. “I wasn’t interested in the money,” he said. The youngster likes science and would like one day to be a geologist.
“I like small fossils like shells and leaves,” he said. “If I found a big bone I don’t know if I could carry it out it might be so heavy.”
Brody said he was very excited about his find, especially after seeing some of the same fossils on a TV program.