Back in late March, Dale Gnidovec gave a talk for the North Coast Fossil Club in Cleveland.

He had just arrived and barely had time to take off his coat when he was approached by one of its members.

The man looked familiar because he is a long-time member of that club (where Gnidovec speaks about once a year) and because he has family in the Columbus area and sometimes visits the Orton Geological Museum where Gnidovec is curator.

In the man’s hand was a print-out of an eBay sale offering a large Ohio trilobite—for $15,500. Gnidovec thought he was going to say something like, "Look at the outlandish prices some people will pay for fossils," but instead he said he wanted to buy it for the Orton Museum.

Gnidovec said he almost fell over.

Right after the talk they contacted the seller (Tom Johnson, a famous trilobite collector from southwestern Ohio) to have him remove the sale from eBay.

The man, who wants to remain anonymous, is a retired chemist with his own collection.

“He travels all over to collect,” Gnidovec said, “but his wife told him that ‘this specimen is too nice for you’ and he agreed that it should be in a museum.

“Unfortunately, a lot of things that should be in museums do not end up in them.”

But this is a case of two collectors who are in it not just for profit or the ego-boost of owning something unique that no one else on the planet can have.

Johnson, who had spent two years reconstructing it, agreed to sell it for about $14,000, as it was going to a good home.

“There are all kinds of collectors and clubs—appealing to all kinds of interests, rocks and minerals, fossils—and these amateurs often find and donate things and some of them know more than academics,” Gnidovec said.

The beautiful specimen of Isotelus maximus, Ohio's official state fossil, was delivered to the Orton Museum in late March and had its official “coming-out” party at the Columbus Rock & Mineral show the following weekend.

“Everyone wanted to pet it,” Gnidovec said.

And, visitors to its new home in Orton Museum will agree that it begs to be petted. The smooth ridges of the glossy dark brown, 14.5 inch-long specimen appeal to the tactile sense.

“As to what it most looked like when alive, a horseshoe crab is probably the closest modern analog,” Gnidovec said.

From its pristine look with the light shining on it in its new home, one might not guess that it is from the Ordovician Period of about 450 million years ago. “At that time,” Gnidovec said, “Ohio was under a warm tropical sea and was much closer to the equator—about where Australia is today.”

Talk about time and change—it nearly defies ordinary comprehension.

Isotelus maximus is just one compelling example of the thousands of treasures—fossils, minerals, bones —displayed behind glass or stunning floor and wall displays or housed in cabinets and drawers—that can transport us through time and distance.

They make Orton Museum, not about dead things, but the repository of Ohio’s geological history and Ohio’s place in the planet’s geological record of life.

--Sandi Rutkowski, Arts and Sciences Communications

Explore rocks, minerals and fossils from Ohio and around the world. The Orton Geological Museum is located in Orton Hall on the South Oval on the Ohio State University Columbus Campus. Part of the School of Earth Sciences, Orton Museum plays a key role in teaching, outreach and research. It is open to the public free of charge from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.