Steven C. Minkin Paleozoic Footprint Site, formerly the Union Chapel Mine, is a former coal mine that became an important fossil site in Alabama after an Oneonta High School science teacher discovered tracks in the rocks at the site while preparing for a school field trip.
The mine belonged to a family member of one of the children in his class.
According to a research paper, the site was once part of a "swampy tropical forest adjacent to a tidal flat during the Coal Age or Carboniferous Period more than 300 million years ago.
That fecund strand of sand and mud at the ocean’s edge teemed with the earth’s earliest reptiles as well as amphibians, fish, horseshoe crabs, spiders, jumping insects, and other fascinating organisms.
[4] The 2016 book Footprints in Stone by Ronald J. Buta and David C. Kopaska-Merkel is about the site and its discovery.