11-Year-Old Rock Hunter Makes 48-Million-Year-Old Discovery

Last year, Touren Pope made the discovery of a lifetime—and he’s not even a teenager yet.

The 11-year-old Nevada native was visiting his grandparents, Patti and Tom Patterson, in Wyoming. The Pattersons are rockhounds—collectors of interesting rocks—and that fall day, they headed out to public land in the Greater Green River Basin to hunt for stones. 

The trio was in an area with fossilized clam shells when Pope got bored and started wandering around. Then he spotted something strange...