At a regular meeting of the Caroline County Board of Supervisors, Dr. Alton Dooley of the Virginia Museum of Natural History presented the science and significance of an ancient 28-eight foot gray whale fossil proposed to be housed in the Caroline Visitor Center on Route 207 by late summer.

Dooley, a paleontologist with the museum who has been working at the Caroline Quarry dig site in Carmel Church, detailed a number of finds made in Caroline, including the bus-sized gray whale, Eobalaenoptera. Dooley characterized the Carmel Church site as the most important paleontological site in North America east of the Mississippi.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Floyd Thomas invited Dooley to speak to the board about the finds in Caroline to explain their significance and how Caroline could benefit from this display.

The Virginia Museum of Natural History has been working since the 1990s to extract a rare combination of land and ocean animal fossils dated 12 million to 14 million years ago.

Another rare find in Caroline is the most intact example of an early horse discovered in America, known by its scientific name Calippus regulus. Dooley pointed out that Caroline's historic association with horses extends much further back than Secretariat. Caroline's first horses are 14 million years old.

The gray whale, Eobalaenoptera, is only on display in Martinsville at the Virginia Museum of Natural History. The Smithsonian Institute in Washington also has a specimen, but it is not on display.

When the whale project is funded, Caroline will have the only other display in America. The project is expected to cost $125,000. It will be paid for by gifts, grants and private revenue stream, not from the county's general fund.

A $25,000 donation has been pledged from the Litt and Kath Thompson Foundation. The Thompsons are landowners in Caroline County, and Mr. Thompson is a leading businessman in Virginia.

Most of the cost of the project ($100,000) is for casting the bones in a light and durable material and attaching them to a metal armature for display. The actual bones are too rare to display as they would deteriorate under normal building conditions.

The $100,000 also includes the hanging of the whale from the tower section of the new Visitor Center by a Canadian firm that specializes in prehistoric-animal displays.

The work will be overseen by the Virginia Museum of Natural History, which controls the ownership of the skeleton. The remaining cost covers the expense of display structures and information panels that interpret the discoveries from the Carmel Church site.

A cast of the limited horse remains, Calippus regulus, will be included in the project. The whale display will be a permanent fixture, while there might be a rotating display of other items found at the Carmel Church dig site.

Thomas suggested rotating displays of the smaller finds in a proposed county museum to be located in Bowling Green as well as at the visitor center.

Dooley's presentation will soon be available to the public on the county Web site, www.visitcaroline.com.

Donations for the display will go to the Virginia Museum of Natural History and will be tax-deductible as the museum foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation.

The Caroline Department of Economic Development and Tourism will forward donations to the museum, and staff is available to brief potential donors about the project.