Thursday, July 06, 2006

The skeeter in the dirt stack

This is a pretty cool story out of Chetek, Wisconsin:
According to Davis, the well-diggers had to create an eight-foot-deep trench from the well to the house to install a new water line. It was in the dirt removed from this area that Zeltner and others began finding some interesting artifacts while playing Wednesday, June 21.

"I walked over and picked up an arrowhead, and then I picked up this petrified shell of a crab," says Davis, pointing to the relics gathered in the center of a table. "Matt started looking, and a little bit later I heard him say, 'Grandma, look at this rock.'"

Admitting he thought it was just a cloudy-white rock at first, Zeltner says he brought the rock in the house and washed it off. That's when the stone's secret bounty was revealed.

"I was amazed," Zeltner says of his reaction to his discovery. "After I saw the blood, I knew exactly what it was."

Inside the rock, which appears to be a piece of petrified sap, the form of a well-preserved mosquito is clearly visible. Also visible in the stone is a swirl of dark red, which appears to be blood.

"If you look at it under a microscope, you can actually see drops of blood near the stinger," says Zeltner's aunt, Deanna Humphrey. "[The preservation] had to have happened fast, because the blood is actually petrified with the mosquito."

Zeltner is 8 years old. That is a heck of a find for a kid.

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