Near a riverbank in central Illinois, amateur paleontologists swing picks and shovels as they sift through the fossilized remains of a vanished world some 309 million years old. Zachary Goelman produced this report. - REUTERS
00:00Dr. Arjun Man is a paleontologist and assistant curator at the Field Museum in Chicago.
00:08And on a nice day in June, he says he only needs to drive an hour out of the city to reach one of the most fossil-rich sites found on Earth.
00:16Mason Creek represents one of the most accessible and fossil-abundant localities in the world where you can easily find plants, animals, insects as an amateur coming out here, so it's a good way to get involved in natural history.
00:31But more than that, the fossils preserved here are exceptional.
00:35Mason Creek offers a glimpse back through 309 million years when Illinois was a lush, tropical, coastal swamp teeming with ancient life.
00:45Before you get too excited, there are no tyrannosaurs or velociraptors here.
00:49Instead, Mason Creek holds a dazzling array of ancient plants, insects, jellyfish, and squid-like cephalopods.
00:56Basically this could have a number of animals in it, shrimp, it could have like jellyfish.
01:00This is like, this is what you come here for, you know?
01:03A lot of what the folks here uncover is this.
01:06It looks like a piece of wood and some type of fern.
01:12The site's accessibility means it, in a way, collects the collectors.
01:17My name's Rich Holm. I've been collecting Mason Creek fossils for the last 20 years.
01:23Part of the fun of doing the collecting is that it's a bit of a treasure hunt.
01:29If there's a holy grail here, it might be an enigmatic creature known as the Tully Monstrum, or Tully Monster.
01:35No discussion about Mason Creek fossils is really complete without talking about the Tully Monster.
01:41This is a partial one, unfortunately.
01:43It's an extinct marine creature, soft-bodied like a squid, with a long protruding mouth-like appendage.
01:49The largest specimens ever found here were about 14 inches in length.
01:53Mason Creek may not be famous yet, but to those who know it, it's a prehistoric paradise hiding in plain sight.
