GOSHEN COUNTY – It’s been more than 80 years since representatives from Harvard have uncovered and collected fossils in Goshen County. That is, until last weekend. Museum of Comparative Zoology Director Jim Hanken, Curator Stephanie Pierce, and Preparator Chris Capobianco spent Friday and Saturday on 80 acres of Harvard University-owned land just south of Torrington.

Because the property is landlocked, Hanken contacted adjacent landowner Jack Van Mark regarding how to reach the dig site.

“I got interested in this location, because every year I got the tax bill,” Hanken said. “Finally, a couple years ago, I looked up the papers from the 1930s.”

“Looking at the old scientific papers, they actually had discovered a lot here,” Capobianco said. “A lot of fossils in our collection have come from here.”

During the 1930s, paleontologists excavated approximately 4,000 pounds of material – some of which was freighted to Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., via train, according to Pierce.

Ancestors of camels, horses, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, turtles and birds were found at the site. Capobianco estimated the fossils are around 34 million years old – or from the Oligocene, a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period.

“The fossil layer is just under us,” Hanken explained. “Where it’s exposed, erosion has exposed that layer. Given that there are turtles here, it would have been a lot wetter.”

“We think it was a lake,” Capobianco added.

Much more recently, Van Mark said the property was once used as the Torrington City Golf Course.

“People study where their research takes them,” Hanken said of the time gap since Harvard’s last visit. He explained Pierce and Capobianco’s interest in the type of fossils found south of Torrington helped encourage the trip back to Goshen County.

“This is kind of a reconnaissance trip,” he said. “We wanted to see what it looked like and what it would be like to work here.”

Chances are, it won’t be another 80-plus years before Harvard is back again. Pierce, who regularly takes her students to dig sites in Arizona, said she believes the local fossil bed is “a good place for students to learn.”

“The way we’re finding fossils – it ensures you’re going to find something,” Pierce said.

The trio finished their work Saturday, with plans to take some of the specimens found, including multiple vertebrae, leg bones, and other fossils, back to Harvard to study.

“They’ve been wonderful hosts,” Hanken said of the Van Marks. “It’s been great.”