Fossil expert gives famous ‘butterfly of the sea’ specimen back to Newfoundland

CONCEPTION BAY SOUTH, N.L. – Riccardo Levi-Setti is now 89 and says he’s no longer “limber” enough for fossil hunting.

But the world renowned expert on trilobites — ancient relatives of modern lobsters and crabs also known as “butterflies of the sea” — still vividly recalls digging up a 500-million-year-old specimen three decades ago in eastern Newfoundland. It would be one of his greatest finds.

“I was digging on a wall of rock on a little ledge,” he told reporters Thursday as he officially gave the bright yellow fossil, its details still clearly etched in prehistoric stone, back for public display in Conception Bay South near St. John’s.

“I uncovered it a little bit at a time. I could tell that it was complete. It took quite a bit of work to get it out,” he said with a laugh.

He had the whole fossil out by the end of that morning.

“It was very exciting.”

The extraordinarily intact discovery spent the next 30 years in Chicago, in the home office of Levi-Setti, a professor emeritus of physics at University of Chicago.

“It was always meant to be a loan,” he said. Acquisition offers from the American Museum of Natural History in New York and others topped $10,000 but he turned them down.

“I knew eventually I would have to bring it back to where it came from.”

Levi-Setti hasn’t dug for fossils since a trip to Morocco eight years ago. He used a cane to walk carefully to a covered display case at the Manuels River Hibernia Interpretation Centre — not far from where he dug up the prized trilobite using a chisel and hammer.

A crowd of invited guests applauded as the fossil was revealed.

Donald Sword, chairman of the Manuels River Natural Heritage Society, said a photo of it on Levi-Setti’s standard university textbook “Trilobites” put Manuels on the map.

“It can be said that, by appearing on the cover of this book, this fossil made Manuels River famous.”

Getting it from Chicago to St. John’s was a delicate matter, Sword said after the ceremony.

Michael Mooney, the centre’s executive director, travelled to Levi-Setti’s home to collect the precious cargo and hand deliver it back to Newfoundland in his carry-on luggage.

Jan Spracklin, a member of the heritage society’s board, was among a small group that happened to be in the centre when Mooney arrived back last month. The slab of rock about 40 centimetres long and half as wide was encased in bubble wrap and cardboard.

“They had to undo all these layers and then when they opened it up, I mean everybody just said ‘Oh!’ because it was the most spectacular fossil that we’d all ever seen.”

In a brief speech, Levi-Setti made special mention of the young girl who used to accompany him on his digs along the river with his two young sons.

Ann Devlin was turning 13 the summer of 1973 when Levi-Setti stayed with her family in St. John’s. An influx of tourists had filled all the hotels, and her family was one of many who took in visitors. At the time, Levi-Setti was a physicist at the Enrico Fermi Institute at University of Chicago but paleontology was his hobby.

“He was always interested in sharing what he was doing with the boys and me, showing us: This is how you would get this piece out of the earth, how you would properly split the rock to get an intact fossil,” Devlin said Thursday.

She remembered that Levi-Setti was overwhelmed with the quality of what he was finding in Newfoundland. He was finishing the book “Trilobites,” which would first appear in 1975.

“I remember him asking: ‘May I make a long distance phone call?'” she said. “He called his publisher and said: ‘You’ve got to stop the presses. I want to put on a final chapter.'”

Levi-Setti’s most famous trilobite is expected to be on public display at the Manuels River Hibernia Interpretation Centre later this fall.

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