I retired from the Falls of the Ohio State Park on the 32nd anniversary of my being hired. (That’s Nov. 8, 1993.) Over the last 31 years, I filled a niche that included education, collections (as in specimens and artifacts, not money), developed the volunteer program, writing, special events and programs, and more.
The Falls of the Ohio is one of those unique places on our planet. It’s a one-of-a-kind location where you can walk on a Devonian sea floor (I call it dry snorkeling) when the river is low. My self-taught interest in corals enabled me to identify most of the ~150 species documented in the Devonian around the Falls. That’s the greatest in diversity, equal only to the Eifel Valley in Germany, which is the same age.
This website explores the wondrous diversity on my “Fossils” pages. Now that I’ve got more free time, I will flesh out the contact with more species photographs. I will explore fossils in blogs and articles. And yes, I will add content in astronomy, writing, family history, and more. So welcome to what I hope to be an informative collection of resources across a spectrum of interests.
I’m standing at ‘chicken rock,’ a Devonian boulder only accessible a couple of days a year at the Falls of the Ohio.
Meet the Paleontologist and Paleontology Explorer were designed to introduce visitors to a wide variety of paleontology-themed programs beginning in 2015. I hope Dale Brown continues it until my replacement is hired. After that, who knows?
What can you do with those heavy, solid geodes? How about geode bowling? This activity was invented for the Indiana State Fair and adopted for Digging the Past. Rather than knock them all down, one just has to topple one driftwood pin to get a prize.
I met all sorts of interesting people over the last 40 years (almost 8 at the museum/science center in Louisville). Certainly, one of the most colorful was ‘Bluey’, the Indianapolis Colts mascot. On Christmas Day, 1993, I gave a tour of the new Interpretive Center to Diane Sawyer and her mother. Walter Cronkite visited on my day off… oh, well.