Have you ever wondered what your neighborhood was like 100 years ago?
What about…100 million?
The residents of Fair Haven Heights, a hilly neighborhood on the eastern edge of New Haven, Connecticut, are lucky enough to have a sliver of their home’s prehistoric past on display just down the hill at the Yale Peabody Museum: the fossil of a Triassic reptile known as Stegomus arcuatus. Stegomus looked like a cross between a crocodile and an armadillo and are even older than the dinosaurs. About 215 million years ago, one particular Stegomus was walking around what would become Fair Haven Heights and was caught in a mudslide. Fast forward to 1895, when laborers quarrying stone at the same location noticed the impression of Stegomus’ plated back embedded in the rock. The quarrymen contacted O.C. Marsh, the renowned American paleontologist who was responsible for the founding of the Yale Peabody Museum, and the fossil became part of the museum’s permanent collection.
If you go to the Peabody today, you’ll see the fossil of Stegomus on display in the Burke Hall of Dinosaurs, but the object label doesn’t mention that it was found in New Haven. In fact, the location of the fossil’s discovery was lost for many years, until some passionate New Haven residents pieced together the story. It’s these hidden histories that have always inspired the mission of Amuse and the design of our platform, and we recently had the opportunity to speak to three of those residents — Tracy Blanford, Aaron Goode, and Rich Hayden — about this treasured source of neighborhood pride.
The site where the fossil was found, once a bustling producer of the red stone that makes up the foundations of many buildings around New Haven, is now a quiet neighborhood park called Quarry Park. Blanford, Goode, and Hayden are all members of the Friends of Quarry Park volunteer group responsible for keeping it clear of trash and invasive species. While walking through the park on a rainy February afternoon, they told Amuse about the “old timers” who remembered pieces of the story of the fossil — street names that had been changed and years when Yale paleontology students had been bussed out to Fair Haven Heights to dig around in a certain corner of the old quarry — that helped determine the exact location where the fossil had been dug up over 100 years earlier. As Hayden remarked, it is essential to “document and preserve the history since a lot of the older people aren’t here anymore to be able to tell the story.” Without them, New Haveners would never know that this scientific marvel came from their own backyard.
Inspired by this piece of local lore, Amuse, the Peabody, and the Friends of Quarry Park have together created a series of videos and other content about the Stegomus fossil that feature the voices of Blanford, Goode, and Hayden, as well as paleontologists from the Peabody. So, whether you’re standing in front of the fossil in the museum, taking a stroll along the edge of the old quarry, or in a completely different city altogether, consider what 100-million-year-old stories may be right beneath your feet, just waiting to be unearthed.
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