400+ million-year-old brachiopods. Yep! You read that right!
The HOMS has so many details that we find interesting and will keep on sharing them. When we purchased the house, one of the features pointed out to us was the fossils in the sandstone walls of the house (inside and out). A special thanks to my Minnesota Geologist cousin, Jason "Jay" Richter, for digging up this gem of info on the dating and history of the stone.
The exterior and interior walls have several stones that are peppered with fossils, and this is probably the detail of the house that is the most fascinating to our visitors. I don’t think one of them has looked and not touched (LOL) as if they need to confirm in their brain that they are real.
We are able to enjoy seeing the fossils in the dining room (original kitchen) and sunroom. The sunroom was built on to an exterior wall in the 1980’s and that wall became an interior wall. The dining room wall was uncovered by Robin Bardo during her renovation of the house. She was trying to paint the wall, and the paint would not stick (too much moisture in the stone) so she started peeling the lime plaster off of the wall to expose the stone. She hired a local Amish gentleman to complete the project and re-mortar the wall. It made a beautiful focal point of the dining room.
Did you know we have hundreds (or maybe thousands!) of fossils in the stone? Look closely and you can see them clearly!
From Jason: “Pretty sure I’ve nailed down your stone. Based on the location and age of the house, how the house was built (hewn into the hillside) and the description/pics of the stone, I’d say it’s likely the Old Port Formation, specifically the Ridgeley Member. The brachiopods are the key identifier of the Ridgeley. I found a paper which states that age dating was done in ash beds in an underlying member and were found to be about 420 MY old. There is nothing in your stone that can be reliably dated so you can assume the stone is a little younger, about 400 MY old. I’d need to see pics of the stone but since there is a limestone facies with the sandstone I’d guess it came from the same member."
He included a link to Penn State University Libraries and I have posted a full map, a map zoomed in to Pennsdale and the description of the layers in Pennsdale and on the HOMS property under the Historical Documents section on the website. Super interesting and I think more or less confirms that both of the structures were likely built from stone quarried on the property as reported.
The “newer” half of the house is made of limestone and so far, we have not been able to find any fossils, however we have not really looked either! It is my understanding that sandstone can preserve smaller, more delicate fossils than limestone, and maybe that is why we can’t “see” them as easily in the limestone.
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