No fish tale: Local fisherman finds oyster 25 million years old

It's not going to break the Guinness World Record - it may even be fairly common - but Bill Riley thinks his recent find is pretty special.

"I've been a commercial fisherman for 13 years, and I never saw an oyster this size," said Riley, holding the oyster fossil he recently stubbed his toe on while surf fishing at North Topsail Beach.

The Jacksonville resident said the fossilized oyster weighed in at 5.8 pounds on his digital scale. It is 9.5 inches in length and about 5.5 inches thick.

"I was surf fishing while the wife and kids built sandcastles, and I caught a flounder," he said.  "I was backing up reeling it in, and I tripped on something ... I reached down to pick it up to see what it was and realized it was an oyster.

The flounder was not large enough to keep, but there was no doubt in his mind the oyster was.

"It may have been buried under the sand for decades," he said.

Patricia Weaver, the collections manager of geology and paleontology at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, Research and Collections, looked at several digital images sent to her and said it is a lot older than that. She said it is not uncommon for fossil oysters that size to wash up on beaches on Topsail Island and Onslow Beach.

"It's probably not good eating - tough and rubbery," she laughed. "It's a big oyster but sort of standard (size) for that oyster. It is a fairly common oyster, probably from the Oligocene age - making it about 22 to 25 million years old - the scientific genus and species is Gigantostrea georgiana. The bedrock around there is probably all that age."

Riley believes the oyster is intact, but Weaver said what he found is one valve of the oyster, not the whole oyster.

"Oysters have two valves; he doesn't have the second valve - oysters with two valves are more shapely," she said.

Clay Caroon, a biologist with N.C. Department of Natural Resources, Division of Marine Fisheries, said Riley's fossil oyster is much larger than the one he keeps in his office.

"Mine is about a 10th that size," he said. "Gosh, it sure was big - it's probably one of the biggest oysters I've ever seen ... and certainly a good size."

Riley said he took the oyster fossil to work to show co-workers.

"I had one of the guys on the job offer me $50 for it, but I said ‘no.' This is rare," he said. "It's pretty unique to me."

Contact Suzanne Ulbrich at 910-219-8454 or sulbrich@freedomenc.com.