Paleontology in Vermont

[1] Very few fossils are known in Vermont east of the Green Mountains due to the type of rock underlying that area.

[1] During the early part of the Paleozoic era, Vermont was covered by a warm, shallow sea that would end up being home to creatures like brachiopods, corals, crinoids, ostracoderms, and trilobites.

Local fossils had already attracted scientific attention by the mid-19th century when mastodon remains were found in Rutland County.

[2] At the time, Vermont was home to crinoids and cup corals that left behind their remains near Northfield and in the region north of Montpelier.

[2] Possible Silurian or Devonian life from Vermont included brachiopods, cephalopods, crinoids, cystoids, corals, and a possible trilobite.

[1] An interval of mountain building called the Acadian Oreogeny caused widespread geological upheaval during the Devonian.

The ensuing Carboniferous and Permian periods are absent from the state's rock record because local sediments were eroding away instead of being deposited during that interval.

[1] After the glaciers melted and their weight was no longer depressing the elevation of the local land compared to the sea, the area was finally cut off from salt water.

[1] More recently, in 1993, the Pleistocene Beluga whale Delphinapterus leucas was designated the Vermont state fossil.

In 1859, a single tusk was found in Richmond, which was later described by Brigadier General John W. Phelps as being situated in a mud bed about a mile and a half from the Winooski River.

This fossil was brought to Phelps, who also reported a second set of mammoth remains in Richmond in 1866, dug "from marl pit Rolla Gleason’s farm."