15 million-year-old mollusk protein found

A team of Carnegie scientists have found “beautifully preserved” 15 million-year-old thin protein sheets in fossil shells from southern Maryland.  The team—John Nance, John Armstrong, George Cody, Marilyn Fogel, and Robert Hazen—collected samples from Calvert Cliffs, along the shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay, a popular fossil collecting area. They found fossilized shells of a snail-like mollusk called Ecphora that lived in the mid-Miocene era--between 8 and 18 million years ago.