Evelyn C. McDonald
Arts & Culture Reporter
May 25, 2017 8:18 p.m.
I have a box of bones. No, not feeding dogs, just cataloguing artifacts for the Amelia Island Museum of History’s archives. The archives work has been interesting. My first assignment was cataloguing pieces of pottery from a site in Old Town. Next, I worked on cataloguing two award certificates presented to Amelia Island historical personages by the local DAR. I had donated a few photographs of Fernandina, so that was my third effort.
I had expected to do more pottery but when I went in to do my volunteer shift, there was the box of bones. Some were recognizable bones, similar to leftover chicken bones. Others I only knew were bones because the donation letter said that’s what they were. More to the point, they were fossil bones. We know the collection contains fossil bones because the bones have been mineralized.
One fossil, pictured here, is a complete skeleton of a small bird. That seems unusual as one would expect a bird to have been killed by predators or dying and being torn apart by scavengers rather than having a skeleton with all the bones connected. The museum could really use help identifying this bird. It has long wing feathers and its tail appears to have been about 4 inches long, judging from the main shafts of the tail feathers. If anyone would like to look at the skeleton to help identify it, contact Jayne Nasrallah or Gray Edenfield at the museum.
The fossils are of interest at the moment because the museum is planning an exhibit, “It Came From The Attic – Fossils,” which will run from June 9 through August or September. Our job is to identify and label as many of the bones as we can. We want to be careful that we are reasonably sure before giving a name to a bone. For example three of the fossil bones were small, light and thin. They appeared to be arm, shoulder, and leg bones from a bird. The fossil book suggested a cormorant. While the bones are the right size, we can’t be sure so we will label them as bird bones.
Several pieces had small, round holes in them. I found something similar in the book on fossils in a section labeled “Interaction among species.” The illustrations are described as bite marks. A generally negative species interaction, I’d say. I’m still not sure about definition as most of the holes looked as regular as if they had been done with a drill. Only one of the holes had an irregular shape.
Archives work is like solving mysteries and doing crosswords. We have an amazing collection in the museum archives and it is available on the museum’s website.
Evelyn McDonald moved to Fernandina Beach from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. in 2006. Evelyn is vice-chair on the Amelia Center for Lifelong Learning and is on the Dean’s Council for the Carpenter Library at the UNF. Ms. McDonald has MS in Technology Management from the University of Maryland’s University College and a BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan.