Fossils found 3 decades ago on P.E.I. are returning to the Island

Fossilized footprints found in P.E.I by a visitor from Rhode Island 31 years ago have been returned to the Island.

My wife said those are chicken prints. But I refused to believe that.- Elliott Urdang

A walk on a beach along Malpeque Bay led to the scientific discovery of a lifetime for Elliott Urdang many decades ago.

Urdang found the rare fossilized footprints in slabs on sandstone on one of his visits to P.E.I. in the early 1980s.

"I brought them home and my wife said those are chicken prints," recalled Urdang. "But I refused to believe that."

He put the fossils away and forgot about them. 

• P.E.I. fossil named for boy who found it on a beach

• ROM Research: Permian trackways from P.E.I.

But when Urdang came across them a few years later, he took them to a well-known paleontologist at Yale who told Urdang that the prints were fossilized tracks. He was then referred to a specialist at Princeton.

"He was very excited about it because it was a first find of such tracks on Prince Edward Island," said Urdang.

The scientific world didn't truly know the significance of Urdang's find until 2004, when Nova Scotia geologist John Calder published a paper about the fossilized footprints.

The fossils are called tetrapod trackways, made by small reptiles from the Permian geologic period, 250 million to 300 million years ago — even before dinosaurs roamed the earth.

'Back to where it came from'

"I don't think I really realized how important they were until John Calder did his paper," said Urdang. "And situated those tracks in the history of P.E.I. geology. It has clearly been an important find."

Urdang often walks the beach with his friend Charlie Corkum from Summerside.

Corkum has also discovered small fossilized tracks at Malpeque Bay. The tracks in the fossils he found were from a larger animal.

They're little snapshots ... of a very distant past of Prince Edward Island.- David Keenlyside, P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation

"I was really surprised that it was important as it turned out to be. It's the first find on the Island of anything like that," Corkum said.

"I'm pretty near 90 years old but I won't stop looking as long as I can walk."

Urdang recently donated the fossils he found to the Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation.

"We are delighted to receive donations like this," said David Keenlyside, executive director of the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation.

"Because they're little snapshots — rare snapshots — of a very distant past of Prince Edward Island."

Keenlyside says the fossil footprints will be put on display, probably at Beaconsfield Historic Site in Charlottetown.

"So that people can appreciate what has come to us."

Urdang is pleased that the fossils have a new home in a museum setting so the public can appreciate them.

"I don't think of this as donating it to the Island but simply giving it back to where it came from," said Urdang. "My compensation is my moment of glory."

He says he will continue to walk the beach, keeping an eye out for fossils.

"It gets in your bones, so to speak," he said.