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The Associated Press A tortoise fossil embedded in 20-million-year-old rock has been found along the Oregon coast and a researcher is trying to remove it before the sea claims it. "This is big," said Bill Hanshumaker, marine education specialist at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. "I've never seen anything like it before." Hanshumaker said he is seeking permission to remove the fossil before it is lost to the tides and the sea. The stone measures about 30 inches long by 24 inches wide, suggesting it was a land turtle. It was found along a beach in Lincoln County by Carol Ritzert, the owner of a Lincoln City spa. "It didn't look like a regular rock. It looked organic," she said, adding it was her sister, Mary Jo Michaels, who first described it as a turtle. "Once she said it," Ritzert said, "I stood back and said, 'Of course.' I was so excited." Hanshumaker is awaiting the state paleontologist's report on the find. Meanwhile, he has begun the task of getting the state to grant permission to extract the fossil. "It's extremely fragile," Hanshumaker says. "I'm positive we will lose it if we don't extract it. It's only going to take a couple of storms to knock it off." How the tortoise wound up buried in mudstone is a mystery. "It had to get buried very quickly in deep water," Hanshumaker said. "What was it doing out there? How was it buried so rapidly?" He says it may have been entombed in an underwater landslide, common during earthquakes. Guy DiTorrice of Newport, known as "The Fossil Guy" and credited with winning Oregon its own state fossil, says the tortoise also could have died inland and ended up in a river before floating out to sea. The fossil was found in rock that is estimated to be about 20 million years old "but we won't know for sure how old it is until we get it out," he said. DiTorrice said the last time a discovery of this significance was made was in the 1970s, when Guy Pierson found a seal or sea lion of similar age near Newport. Parts of that fossil are at the University of Oregon museum and the Smithsonian.
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