Stepping into Greenfield Community College’s North Wing geology collection instantly transports visitors back to Franklin County during the Mesozoic era. Flanking the room, towering display cases overflow with prehistoric fossils, rare minerals and ancient artifacts.
The Richard D. Little Geology Collection at the college is officially open to the public after three and a half years of renovation. Named after Professor Emeritus Richard Little, the exhibit showcases fossils that were once in unlabeled boxes and cabinets, which geology students spent years identifying and organizing.
“The biggest thank you is to the students,” said Beth Moonstone, a professor of environmental science at Greenfield Community College. She explained that the exhibit is an “educationally focused collection,” where students were able to learn through the identification process.
The collection features ichnofossils — which are rocks that capture biological activity such as dinosaur footprints or rainfall — igneous and metamorphic rocks, and a large collection of minerals from all over the world, including specimens donated from local mines.
Much of the collection was gathered by Little, who dedicated a large part of his career to studying geology in Franklin County, a place that he has deemed “the best place in the world to study geology.”
“We have a very unique collection with a hyper-local focus, and that is because we were lucky enough to have decades of a geologist who spent his career studying in his backyard,” said Moonstone, commemorating Little’s work. “People travel all over the world to do science, and he chose to study in his backyard. So we have a collection that really highlights not just our geological past, but our geological past right here, in this place.”
Moonstone said that the collection will continue to evolve, noting that “students will constantly be helping to add new samples to it, to use them as lab research [and] to collaborate with our institutions.” The collection has also been digitized, allowing anyone across the world to view it.
One of the pieces that is truly unique to Franklin County is the Jurassic armored mud ball. According to the college’s website, these “form when hard clay falls into a stream, tumbles downstream and becomes round and soft and sticky on the outside. Pebbles stick to the rim. This is the armor. Then these fragile forms have to be quickly buried and eventually turned to stone.”
While there are Jurassic armored mud balls in about 10 known locations around the world, the ones in Franklin County are the only ones that can be held in a hand or displayed in a museum.
“The armored mud balls give [Franklin County] the uniqueness, because nobody’s got the armored mud balls except right here, in this little spot,” Little explained.
Little is currently in the process of lobbying to make the Jurassic armored mud ball the official Massachusetts sedimentary structure. Little explained that they are trying to keep the bill “current, and in people’s minds,” through writing postcards and speaking to local elected officials.
Little celebrated the unique geological makeup of Franklin County and is excited at the prospect of the community being able to see it in one place.
“This is the best place in the world to study geology, and I want to open people’s eyes to the fact that, as I like to say, ‘it’s the rocks under your feet and the landscape in your view,’” Little said. “I mean, it has all that history, and people need to know about it because it’s easy, not too hard.”
