Petrified Sea Gardens not only place to see fossils

Reprinted with permission from the Daily Gazette, August 99, 2007

By Lee Coleman

Up until a year ago, the place to go to see some late Cambrian period "sea cabbage," or stromatolite fossils, was the Petrified Sea Gardens in Saratoga Springs.

The privately owned park had been open to the public for many years until this year, when a combination of things, including storm damage, closed the tourist stop.

Now, the focus of paleontologists and tourists who want to study the 490 million-year-old fossils is on a 3-acre site owned by the New York State Museum in the town of Greenfield, which also contains the unique "sea cabbage" fossils.

Scientists are interested in stromatolites because they are the oldest evidence of life on Earth, going back almost 2.5 billion years. The Britannica Concise Encyclopedia states that stromatolites are layered deposits, mainly of limestone, formed by the growth of bluegreen algae, known as cyanobacteria, and they still exist in parts of the world, most commonly in Shark Bay in Western Australia. Their numbers dwindled as the chemical compositions of the oceans changed and fish populations increased. The fish browsed on the microbial mats that formed the stromatolites.

	Richard Lindemann

"Lester Park is world famous," said Richard H. Lindemann, chairman of Skidmore College's geosciences department.

"When anybody writes a major paper on stromatolites, they always refer to the Hoyt Limestone [site]," Lindemann said.

DeWitt Hoyt was a Greenfield farmer whose property was eventually purchased by Saratoga Springs lawyer Willard Lester. Lester donated the land to the state museum in 1914.

Lindemann said the type of stromatolite at the park "superficially resembles a large cabbage head in both vertical and horizontal sections,"

They are examples of marine life, now fossilized in limestone, that existed when a shallow tropical sea covered most parts of upstate New York.

Lester Park is about two miles from the better-known Petrified Sea Gardens on Petrified Sea Gardens Road, which turns into Lester Park Road at the Greenfield-Saratoga Springs border. The small park is on both sides of the road.

Lindemann said that he has been bringing his Skidmore College geoscience and paleontology students to Lester Park for 30 years.

He said colleges and universities from throughout the Northeast and Midwest also include Lester Park on their regular paleontology field trips.

Lindemann himself has taken scientists from Russia and Germany to the location to observe and take photos of the fossils.

Lindemann, in a scholarly paper about the discovery of the special fossils, said the earliest reference to the Lester Park fossil site is 1825.

Back then, naturalists weren't sure if the unusual formations were just an act of sedimentation or actually the fossil of something that was once alive.

Hoyt first owned the property and farmed it. He also established a small limestone quarry there and a limestone kiln. The limestone powder Hoyt sold was used for plaster and mortar back in the 19th century.

Lester purchased 3.4 acres of the property to protect it. He donated it to the state museum because the local attorney knew the importance of the fossils found there, Lindemann said.

Lester was also influential in persuading the state Legislature to protect the mineral springs in Saratoga Springs from private companies that were drawing the springs dry at the turn of the century. This legislation and future protective laws eventually led to the Saratoga Spa State Park.

Lester Park has no parking lot, but there is room to pull off Lester Park Road and park along both sides, Lindemann said.

He said the site is attractive to paleontologists because "it is available for public access every day of the year."

Skidmore College and D.A. Collins Companies of Mechanicville, which owns the Petrified Sea Gardens site, plan to discuss ways to protect the large stromatolite outcropping at this location. No final agreement or any detailed discussions on the Sea Gardens have yet occurred, according to college officials.

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2007 the Daily Gazette