Attending a sibling’s sports game can get boring, which is why seven-year-old Naomi Vaughan began digging in the dirt while at her sister’s soccer game in Bend, Oregon last fall. She stumbled upon a shiny rock that looked like something out of a Disney movie, but her mother suspected it might be a fossil.
Her hunch was confirmed earlier this month when paleontologists revealed the rock was actually a fossil of a marine invertebrate called an ammonite, which went extinct some 65 million years ago. The scientists suspect the fossil could be up to 100 million years old, and likely originated at a site 100 miles away, or perhaps was lost or discarded by someone. The fossil is only estimated to be worth about $20.
