Show finest fossil pearls fo found und in western kansas in the fusty workrooms wor krooms ot of the smithsonian institution recently reposed some 50 hard little balls on one e half inch to one inch in diameter to a haymans lay mans eye they looked like dull dirty gray or yellowish gray pebbles actually they are pearls and as pearls go huge their value as jewels is zero but they are precious to science they are fossil pearls in the chalk age of years ago when the dinosaurs reached their lurid climax before extinction there lived in the sea shallows a big mollusk with a shell width up to four feet was not much different from modern oysters made pearls the same way surrounding a foreign irritant inside its shell with concentric layers of the calcium carbon oxygen compound these pearls were found in western kansas in 1935 by george fryer sternberg of fort hays kansas state college since many other fossil pearls had been previously discovered the college museum did not pay much attention recently sternberg shipped his stony lack lustre treasures off to the smithsonian for an expert appraisal the Smithson ians crack paleontologist roland brown examined them with enthusiasm dashed off a scientific report and pronounced them the finest fossil pearls for size and shape ever collected ec e |