Not a Turtle Fossil found on the Oregon Coast

Updated from: Lori Tobias of The Oregonian Latest info on this is that it is NOT a turtle after all as it was thought to be in the story below!

William Orr, state paleontologist; Bill Hanshumaker, marine education specialist at the Hatfield Marine Science Center; and Guy DiTorrice, an avocational paleontologist, visited the site Tuesday the 15th together at low tide. They wanted to more closely study what local beach walker Carol Ritzert reported finding about a month ago. Ritzert had watched erosion reveal the rounded formation for about one year.

Scientists think this fossilized tortoise found along the beach in Lincoln County may be 20 million years old. The domed back of the stone, which measures roughly 30 inches long by 24 inches wide, suggests it was a land turtle.

"Oregon's Fossil Guy" Guy DiTorrice says the last time a discovery of this significance was made was in the 1970s, when Guy Pierson, also an avocational paleontologist, 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.

"This is big," says Bill Hanshumaker, marine education specialist at the Hatfield Marine Science Center. "I've never seen anything like it before."

Time is of the essence to preserve this fossil in order to save it before it is lost by nature and erosion or destroyed by humans, DiTorrice and Hanshumaker hope to see it displayed at the Hatfield Marine Science Center at Newport.

Editors Note: by Lori Tobias, The Oregonian Saturday September 05, 8:05 PM and Tuesday September 15, 2009, 8:35 PM.

Ernest Block, Also An Early Agate Hunter!

A couple of weeks ago an entire week here in Newport, Oregon was a celebration of Ernest Block, the composer who also was a photographer, an agate and a mushroom hunter. He lived here in Agate Beach from 1941 until his death from cancer in 1959.

According to his grandson Ernie, "He would go down to the beach hunting for agates, then he would polish the agates that he found on the beach, one at a time. Bloch apparently believed in a theory that keeping the hands busy allowed musical ideas to germinate and mature."

It must have worked. He wrote about one-quarter of his works at Agate Beach, including by some accounts some of his best pieces, such as the Jewish-themed Suite Hébraïque in 1950 and the second Concerto Grosso in 1952.

Bloch relished the beach. He used to read Walt Whitman there. Which is why, on the Ernest Bloch Memorial at the Newport Performing Arts Center are lines from Whitman saying, "Give me solitude, give me Nature ... "