Amid the rubble that was once the business school, fossils of 35 million-year-old sea creatures are being discovered.
The approximately 40 specimens being found are only fossils of crustaceans and mollusks, but to Gregory Retallack, a professor in the University’s Department of Geological Sciences, they are bona fide diamonds in the rough.
Retallack said fossil digging has been a life-long passion and it was “hard to resist” the chance to sift through the massive hole that was once the Charles H. Lundquist College of Business.
“Not all geology students are into fossils these days,” he said. “This is kind of dirty work, but I like it. It’s a treasure hunt is what it is.”
About two weeks ago, 10 to 12 feet below the surface of the ground, construction workers began finding the fossils, which will be eventually used as learning tools in the classroom. And that’s when Retallack knew it was time to show up on site ready to dig.
“It’s just bang and grab. There’s no super-sophisticated technique,” he said.
He said the fossils being found are from the Eugene Formation, a nearly 2,000-meter thick layer of basaltic sandstone that formed in a shallow marine environment just off shore of the foothills of the Western Cascades between Eugene and Salem. The formation is composed partly of volcanic ash that erupted from the early Cascades.
Retallack is a campus archeological veteran who has dug through previous University construction sites during his 20 years as a professor here. But he added that not everyone is as interested in digging as he is. He said geology is a vast field that includes the study of rocks, layers of the earth, plate tectonics and soils — it’s not limited to just fossils.

Retallack arrived at the business school site Tuesday dressed in a pair of muddy hiking boots, a plaid shirt and weathered pair of Levi’s, so preoccupied with this hunt for “treasure” that he darted from spot to spot, barely stopping to say a full sentence.
Throughout his search, Retallack cracked open rocks to find a variety of surf, venus, butter and razor clams as well as scaphopod tusk shells and Cretaceous moon snail shells.
“It’s just whack and see what you can find,” Retallack said, absorbed in his work. “The best stuff is inside the rock.”
Retallack took the specimens worth saving and wrapped them in newspaper to prevent them from being scratched.
“A sack-full should do the trick,” he said.
Alberto Perez-Huerta, a graduate student in the geology department, said once the fossils reach the classroom, students will have an important hands-on chance to learn to identify characteristics such as scientific classification, original climate conditions where the creatures lived and whether it was a larger predator or a victim of prey.
“For us, these fossils are very well preserved,” he said. “They show features of the classical mollusk.”
Matt Pearson, project manager with Lease Crutcher Lewis, the general contractor for the project, said the majority of construction workers are not as intrigued with what they find as people such as Retallack who study those findings. But he said it’s important for the crews to know what they uncover.
“You are always interested in what you find,” Pearson said. “You need to know what’s in the hole.”
The dig is not expected to slow down the construction process of the Lillis Business Complex, expected to be finished in time for the 2003-04 school year.
Retallack has collected fossils from digs all over campus, and said this particular dig is not the largest. He said construction done to Willamette Hall in the late 1980s and to Knight Library and Cascade Hall were all deeper excavations. At the Cascade dig, he said they found trilobites, hard-shelled segmented sea creatures that existed more than 300 million years ago during the Paleozoic Era.