A University student who found a rare coral reef formation last year is still reaping the benefits of his discovery.

Ted Lord, an undergraduate geology major, discovered the formation – one that has never before been found in North America – in a cave in northwest Georgia while leading a Boy Scout trip last fall.

“I just happened to be on one of these trips,” Lord said. “I came upon all of these crazy fossils and I recognized that there was something different about it [from] other things I’d seen in caves. I got excited about it and I went to [my senior thesis adviser], the invertebrate paleontologist specialist.”

The cave is in the Bangor Limestone which is Late Mississippian in age – about 318 to 333 million years ago. This type of formation is a framework reef that was not thought to exist in the Late Mississippian period, since most reefs that formed during that time were mud mounds.

Lord’s findings consist of corals that interlock with large, limey sponges that were more typical of earlier reefs in the Paleozoic period, when the global climate was more tropical. At first, geology faculty and students were skeptical of the finding.

“He said they were Mississippian Age and no one really listened to him. I’m doing work in the Mississippian Age and I’ve never seen that,” said Dan Bulger, a Ph.D. candidate in the University’s geology department. “I don’t think anyone has ever seen it. I got a look at that thing and my eyes kind of popped out at first.”

“We weren’t supposed to find anything like this,” said Sally Walker, Lord’s senior thesis adviser and a professor in the geology department. “This is a pretty big find for Georgia’s paleontology program.”

Lord became the first geology undergraduate to receive the National Paleontological Society Student Research Grant and will represent the University on Oct. 18 at the 2009 Portland GSA Annual Meeting by presenting his research and highlighting its significance.

“What’s really cool about it is, in the same time period, there’s a couple well-known reefs in Australia and also in England, but, as far as North America for this specific time period, this is the first major find that correlates with anything that’s been found in Australia and England,” Lord said. “This is a big ticket research project, meaning that it is something that is drawing international attention.”

Since his discovery last year, Lord has traveled back to the site to conduct research about once a month. Lord’s research activities include measuring the dimensions of the reef, documenting the biological succession of the fossils and their locations, locating large colonies of fossil corals and analyzing the reef at the microscopic level.

Microscopic analysis of the reef requires making thin-sections, a skill that entails taking rock, gluing it onto a slide and thinning it down until it can be viewed through the microscope.

In making the thin-sections, Lord received assistance from Bulger, who instructed Lord in making thin-sections and analyzing carbonate rocks.

“I put him on the slides and mentored him in working through those carbonate slides and identifying the things under the thin-sections,” Bulger said. “Then [I gave him] general advice on making the thin-sections and also how he should approach the project.”

As an undergraduate, Lord budgets his time between work at Snelling, full-time classes and actively leading GORP trips. Lord plans to attend graduate school and hopes to continue his research.

“[Ted] had enough senior thesis material to quit a long time ago, but he’s kept on it, and he’s got his eyes set on a publication,” Bulger said. “What he’s doing as an undergraduate is what a master’s student should be doing.”