Rare Fossilized Crocodile Found in Quarry, Sold for a Quarter-Million Dollars

You wouldn't expect to find a crocodile in the high sagebrush desert of southwestern Wyoming, but that's just what Jerome Montgomery, quarry manager and geologist for the Green River Stone Company, discovered last summer at the company's private quarry.

Crocodiles existed in Wyoming since the Eocene Epoch - some 50 million years ago - when the climate was tropical, much like that of Florida today. It was also during this time that a large inter-mountain basin formed what geologists now call Fossil Lake. The lake was home to tropical plants as well as a large variety of fish and reptiles.

While moving pieces of stone, Montgomery noticed the outline of something that was not a fish - as was the usual fare - but something much larger and more unusual, perhaps a rare and valuable find. What he initially saw turned out to be two large eye sockets and a very long snout. He immediately gathered all the stone from that layer and took it back to the fossil preparation laboratory in Logan, Utah.

Fossil crocodiles are extremely rare finds in the Green River Formation. In fact, in the entire 150-plus years of fossil digging in the area, only four complete crocodile specimens were known until Montgomery's find. The specimen measures 57 inches from snout to tail and was recently sold to a collector for more than $250,000.

(Excerpted from an article published in the March/April 2010 edition of Sporting Classics Magazine)