Norwood Arbor Day and Fossil Festival April 2013
Norwood is in Stanly County, NC. The town advertises itself as a quiet community at least an hour away from any metropolitan area but on April 27,2013, it was not so quiet. Music, food, planes in formation, vendors, cars, fossil displays and a fossil dig created a lot of commotion. Ruffin Tucker, a member of the North Carolina Fossil Club, organized the fossil activities and town leaders supported him by providing all that we needed to make the day enjoyable. James Bain brought seives, shovels, and water-washing equipment, and with assistance from Mary Boulton and local volunteers, showed the crowd how to find treasures in the reject dirt from Aurora, NC. Indeed, a treasure was among the early morning finds - a rarely found symphyseal cow shark (Notorhynchus) tooth. Nearby, Ruffin, Jonathan Fain, Richard Chandler, and Joy Herrington talked about their displays and helped identify what was coming out of the dirt pile. Mastodon and wooly mammoth fossils were displayed by Vince and Judy Schneider, and Patricia Weaver of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. The Museum staff and members of the North Carolina Fossil Club made sure that big things happened in the usually quiet town of Norwood at their 20th anniversary of the Arbor Festival.