WYOMING — Last fall, an 11-year-old exploring public lands in southwest Wyoming made an exciting discovery that was later identified as a fossil nearly 48 million years old.
In a Wednesday press release, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Rock Springs Field Office described a fossilized turtle found by Touren Pope, who was rock hounding — searching for rocks, fossils and minerals as a hobby — with his grandparents in the Greater Green River Basin. He reported his finding to the BLM, which shared the news with paleontology staff in Rock Springs. BLM states that the fossil was a soft-shell turtle belonging to the trionychid family.
Pope’s grandparents accompanied staffmembers to the site and the turtle fossil was documented and stabilized. BLM put out a call for a permitted paleontologist to assist with the collection before further erosion could occur. J.P. Cavigelli, a museum collections specialist with the Tate Geological Museum at Casper College, volunteered to work on the collection of the specimen.
“In September 2025, Cavigelli and his crew returned to the site along with Touren and his grandparents to fully excavate the fossil,” reads the statement. “The excavation revealed that only the turtle’s shell, or carapace, remained; however, it was nearly complete and remarkably well preserved.”
The fossil was then transported to the Tate Geological Museum — a BLM-approved repository site — where it was expected to be cleaned and prepared for research and possibly public display. Pope was given permission to name the fossil and chose to call it “Little Timmy.”
According to BLM, the Greater Green River Basin looked very different 48 million years ago. The basin was a floodplain with rivers and streams and a nearly tropical climate. As the location of former ancient Lake Gosiute, the location supported plant life and animals such as mammals, fish, crocodiles and turtles.
