Cenozoic Invertebrate Collections

During his time at the Virginia Museum of Natural History, Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology Dr. Lauck Ward developed a comprehensive collection of Cenozoic shelled invertebrates from the Atlantic coast states. The collection spans the Paleocene to the present and includes hundreds of thousands of individual shells, all with tight controls on stratigraphy.

Three shells of the giant scallop Chesapecten jeffersonius. Fossils of Chesapecten were discovered as far back as the days of the Jamestown colony and it is presently the state fossil of Virginia.


A shell of the Cenozoic snail Ecphora. Ecphora fossils are also among the most common recovered from late Cenozoic marine fossil sites.



A beach at Chippokes State Park littered with fossils shells, mostly of Chesapecten jeffersonius. Located in Surry County, Virginia, Chippokes is famous for its abundance of fossil shells.