Fossils, Fieldwork and Fascination: Two decades in the making

By: Kristen Simpson

I t's been there 20 years - off the beaten path, away from the spotlight, in the basement of Herty Hall. It's not celebrated or revered as much as it should be, except by those privileged to walk through its doors.

Yet, it's one of Georgia College & State University's biggest outreaches to the public.

The William P. Wall Museum of Natural History has given free tours to more than 96,000 visitors since opening in November of 2004. This includes more than 37,000 visits by public school children and nearly 26,600 by GCSU faculty and students.

More than 33,000 local and statewide residents also dropped by.

"That's a lot of impact for such a small space," said Ashley Quinn, collections manager of the museum. "We've come a long way from a room with tables showing specimens to school children to something that's permanent, impactful and tells an important, educational story."

One of few paleontological exhibits in the state, the gallery is the only university museum of its kind in Middle Georgia. It also contains one of the largest assortments of fossils in the Southeast, covering the last 500 million years.

Between exhibits and storage areas - the university has a collection of more than 40,600 specimens. Unlike larger museums, which display mostly copies or replicas, up to 90% of Georgia College's bones and fossils are real.

Collections Manager Ashley Quinn. (Photo by Anna Gay Leavitt.)

More than 160 Georgia College students have used museum collections for undergraduate and graduate research over the years. Some helped dig up specimens. Others studied new angles on fossils. About 200 students have published research papers.

"Our collection puts us on the map nationally and on the world stage," Quinn said. "This huge collection is right here in Middle Georgia, kind of in the middle of nowhere in some people's minds, but impressive to global researchers."

Quinn got a recent phone call from scientists in India, who wanted to use pictures from the university's collection of 36-million-year-old sea snake fossils from the Eocene period. Marine fossils included whale teeth and spines of sea snakes dug from kaolin mines in Wilkinson County when Dr. Dennis Parmley taught here in the late 1980s to 2018.

Other scientists and Georgia Bureau of Investigation officials often call for assistance identifying bones and fossils. Museum staff and faculty also work with the National Park System.

"Yet, it's still a surprise to most people this museum is here. People seem to accidentally find us," Quinn said. "These collections are very important, because they record the entire timeline of evolutionary life on Earth from invertebrates found in the sea at the beginning of life 500 million years ago to fossils of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals."

"Nowhere else can you go to see history and specimens like this in Middle Georgia," she said.

Quinn is a bit of a hidden gem too.

It's not an exaggeration to say she came to Georgia College and never left.

From Putnam County, Quinn started as an undergraduate, getting her Bachelor of Science in biology in 2000. She stayed on to organize the university's fossil collection and got her masters in 2005.

In 2018, Quinn founded the Paleontology Association of Georgia. Archeologist and historian Stephen Hammock asked her to be president of the Ocmulgee Archaeological Society in 2020. This led to an invitation to join and chair Fort Hawkins Foundation, Inc. in Macon.

"This is one of the most dynamic ladies I know," Hammock said.

Quinn studied with the museum's visionary and founder Dr. William Wall, who retired in 2012. She was there as Wall accumulated the university's first collections in rhinoceros fossils. She was there when the first tabletop, interactive lessons on fossils were given to school children.

At the museum since its opening, Quinn helped develop exhibits and grow public outreach programs, which now include online educational resources for K-12 teachers and a page Just for Kids.

"Ever since then," she said, "we've been adding to the collection, whether it's invertebrate and vertebrate paleontology, mammalogy, herpetology, ichthyology or ornithology. We have a growing entomology collection and herbarium now too."

Joining Quinn in the operation of GCSU's Museum of National History are Dr. Bruce Snyder, ecologist and associate professor of biology and environmental sciences; fossil preparatory technician Heidi Mead, '95; and museum interpreter Rick Joslyn.

As faculty coordinator, Snyder guides efforts and plans for the museum's future. Mead prepares fossils, stabilizing them with consolidating agents, plaster or storage jackets for display. Joslyn works directly with school children on field trips, giving age-appropriate information about exhibits.

It's Quinn's job to organize the museum collection and catalogue specimens into a digital database. She also makes sure faculty, students, staff and the public have ready access to fossils and information.

In addition to 40,600 catalogued specimens, much more is backlogged, waiting to be processed. Only a small fraction is displayed in the museum.

It's a matter of personnel, time and space.

In previous years, 5,000 specimens were stored in a professor's office upstairs. Today's overflow is kept in a large collection room with moving aisles of shelves. Fossils are found in the biology department prep lab, comparative anatomy lab and herbarium. More is at the Lake Laurel bio-station.

About 100 large buckets of dirt-encrusted materials wait for processing, Mead estimates. The work requires meticulous "micro sifting" to find tiny bone fragments and larger relics that need stabilization.

Students often drop by the lab to observe or acquire preservation skills.

"It's crazy. You can't describe it. It's euphoric," Mead said, "and it doesn't matter if you find something big or a little rabbit skull. It's just as exciting. Knowing you're the first human to see this fossil from a creature that lived millions of years ago is just great."

All this stuff - invertebrate and vertebrate fossils, rhino bones from South Dakota, mammals from Australia and Africa, bird skulls and skins from South America - comes from faculty and student research.

The collection began 43 years ago, when Wall first took students to the barren Badlands of South Dakota. Heidi went with him as a student in 1994 and Quinn in 2006, when summer trips also included stops in Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. They'd bring back "truckloads of specimens," Mead said.

Over the years, other professors added their collections. Ornithologist Dr. Robert Chandler worked at Georgia College in the mid 1990s to 2016. He took students to the Santa Fe River in Ginnie Springs, Florida, scuba diving for remains of the terror bird Titanis walleri.

For 20 years, paleomammalogist and biology professor Al Mead has taken students to the swampy forests of Brunswick, Georgia, to excavate 60,000-year-old bison and mammoth bones. The ongoing project now includes scientists from other universities.

Their personalized attention leaves an impression. Like the two brothers who found the bison bone, some youngsters visit the museum, then choose Georgia College for their undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Quinn would like to bottle this enthusiasm. She wants visitors to "remain excited."

"I try to be personable to reach people and tear down the wall of separation between the public and science, especially for kids," she said. "When they come to museums or see paleontology on TV, I want them to know this could be a dream of theirs."

The molding of future scientists is also what keeps Snyder involved with the museum.

"There's the collections-based work happening behind-the-scenes," he said. "But then, all these exhibits and the thousands of students we bring through here are helping to get this information out to the public, encouraging the next generation of researchers."

In addition to hosting visitors, Quinn also does public outreach in classrooms and libraries around the state. Recently, she showed fossils to residents in Macon County.

Faculty bring their biology, environmental science, mammalogy, anatomy, history and museum studies classes. English students are assigned writing tasks there. Art classes use specimens for drawing. Students even stopped by once for a class on interpretative dance.

From 5,000 specimens and a few public visitors to more than 40,600 specimens and 6,500 visitors a year - Georgia College's Museum of Natural History has made significant strides.

"Seeing the museum grow and become popular is exciting," Quinn said. "We have a much broader reach and impact than one would think."

"We want this to be a place where communities come together and share ownership," she said. "We'd like the museum to be a place people in Baldwin County and Middle Georgia want to take care of and be proud of, a place they can treasure."

For those planning to visit, hours at GCSU's Museum of Natural History are Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. or by appointment for groups.

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