Overview
- Touren Pope discovered the fossil last autumn in southwest Wyoming’s Greater Green River Basin while searching for stones with his grandparents.
- The family reported the find to the Bureau of Land Management, and the Rock Springs Field Office verified the site and coordinated a professional excavation.
- Specialists from the Tate Geological Museum fully removed the specimen, allowing the boy to assist during recovery under supervised conditions.
- Museum staff identified a mostly intact turtle shell, likely from a softshell species, and dated it to roughly 48–50 million years based on the surrounding rock layer.
- The specimen, nicknamed Little Timmy, is now being prepared and analyzed in Casper, contributing new data on the basin’s Eocene, near‑tropical ecosystem.