South Carolina has a State Fossil

South Carolina finally has an official state fossil: the Columbian mammoth (that's also the state fossil of Washington). The decision was not without some melodrama.

As I mentioned below, eight year old Olivia McConnell was perusing lists of state symbols and noticed that her state was one of the last states without a state fossil. She did some research and discovered that South Carolina has a special tie to American paleontology through a discovery of some mammoth teeth that were the first in the New World to be authoritatively identified as elephantine in nature. The identification was made by an African slave whose name was unfortunately not recorded. Armed with this background research, Olivia wrote to her state representatives who promptly wrote a bill and submitted it to each house. The bill was short and clear. After the usual whereas's it read:

Article 9, Chapter 1, Title 1 of the 1976 Code is amended by adding: "Section 1-1-712A. The Columbian Mammoth is designated as the official State Fossil of South Carolina."

It sailed through the House with a 94-3 vote, went on the Senate, and came screeching to a halt. Sen. Kevin Bryant, a creationist, decided the bill needed some religion and amended it with three verses from Genesis describing the creation of the animals. This was judged to be an insertion of a new topic into the bill which, for procedural reasons stopped its progress. At this point, the national press took notice, and not in a way that made South Carolina look good. 
If the story had simply been about religion, Bryant and his supporters would have gotten their Southern stubborn on and said "screw you" to Yankees, the liberal media, and all of the others that they imagine to be persecuting them. The South Carolina legislature has had no problem unconstitutionally inserting religion into their education standards. What made this time different was that the story was almost universally framed as "humorless old men frustrate well-meaning little girl's dream." Defying public opinion in the name of God and the South wasn't going to work this time. Bryant whined to The Daily Beast that he didn't mean to block Olivia's bill, he "just felt like it'd be a good thing to acknowledge the creator of the fossils."

The simple thing to do would have been for Bryant to remove his amendment and pass the bill before the PR disaster could go on any longer. It didn't work out that way. Bryant removed his amendment, but Sen. Mike Fair, another creationist, put a hold on the bill so Bryant could reword his injection of religion in a way that wouldn't be deemed a new topic. Bryant did this and the Senate leadership accepted his new language. The bill was set to come up for a vote on Wednesday, when Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler blocked it. Peeler thinks the state has more than enough state symbols and considers naming any more to be a waste of time. To demonstrate how strongly he felt about this, he chose the most embarrassing time possible to waste three hours of the Senate's time arguing over it. Finally, the leadership allowed his to insert a second clause into the bill declaring a moratorium on any new symbols. The leadership chose not to view this as a new topic even though it is. The final vote was unanimous.

The final Senate bill is hardly perfect. Peeler got his moratorium. Bryant got his religion. The final wording is awkward and redundant:

The Columbian Mammoth, which was created on the Sixth Day with the other beasts of the field, is designated as the official State Fossil of South Carolina and must be officially referred to as the 'Columbian Mammoth', which was created on the Sixth Day with the other beasts of the field.

The one improvement, from my perspective, is that they finally got the species right. The original bill said "Wooly (sic) Mammoth" in the title and "Columbian Mammoth" in the actual bill. The final version has this corrected to Columbian in both places. The press is still having trouble with that. The New York Times coverage refers to it as the "Columbia woolly mammoth." USA Today correctly refers to it as the Columbian mammoth, but then messes up by calling it a sub-species of the woolly mammoth.

South Carolina has a state fossil and Olivia McConnell has had an education in civics. I hope this encourages her to stay out of politics and to go into science. Or, if she is inspired to go into politics, that it be so the people of South Carolina have someone representing them who knows how to do their homework and who will cut through the crap.

Mammoths in the News

In South Carolina, eight year old Olivia McConnell noticed that her state has a state grass doesn't have a state fossil. She set out to fix that. She wrote a letter to her state legislators, Rep. Robert Ridgeway and Sen. Kevin Johnson, laying out her reasons why the state need an official fossil and proposed the mammoth for the job. They were impressed and sponsored a bill for her.

The articles I've checked on all flip back and forth between Columbian mammoth and woolly mammoth and so does the bill. They are two different species. Columbian would be the correct one for South Carolina. Olivia probably knows the difference. She did her homework on this, but I can't find the text of her letter. One of the reasons she gave for choosing the mammoth was that it has an important tie to South Carolina. The first known mention mammoth remains in the Americas appeared in 1743 in Mark Catesby's in his Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands he wrote "At a place in Carolina called Stono, was dug out of the Earth three or four Teeth of a large Animal, which, by the concurring Opinion of all the Negroes, native Africans, that saw them, were the Grinders of an Elephant...." Catesby probably heard about the teeth when he traveled in the southern states in 1725.

Olivia's bill should have sailed through both houses and been signed into law in no time. Rep. Ridgeway's version sailed through committee, was put to a vote and passed 94-3. Those three should be ashamed of themselves. Then the bill ran aground in the senate. Far right Sen. Kevin Bryant decided it needed to to be amended with an unconstitutional injection of religion. He wanted to add some verses from Genesis so every one would know just who created mammoths and fossils. Bryant's amendment was ruled out of order because it introduced a new subject. Bryant tried to shorten his amendment, but still wants to keep religion in the bill. Thus, it remains in limbo. In his defense, Bryant whines, "I think it's a good idea to designate the mammoth as the state fossil, I don't have a problem with that. I just felt like it'd be a good thing to acknowledge the creator of the fossils." Bryant has one ally in the state senate, Sen. Mike Fair, who has placed an objection on the bill. Fair, like Bryant is a creationist and climate change denier.

And so, it remains unclear if South Carolina will get a state fossil. Three other states have mammoths as their state fossils (and one has the mastodon), but duplication has never been a problem for state symbols (state flowers, for example). Changing the species won't help. Bryant and Fair will want to attach religion to any fossil. Most stories on this predictably end with the gag that perhaps Bryant and Fair should be the state fossils. The story shouldn't be about their obstructionism. It should be about Olivia McConnell, a smart, observant girl. I hope those two old poops don't discourage her. We need more girls like Olivia.