Students at Moravia’s Millard Fillmore Elementary School now get an exceptional glimpse at the history of life on earth thanks to the donation of a fossil cast now proudly displayed at the school. The cast gives a fascinating look at a now-extinct plesiosaur but also tells a unique story all its own.

Plesiosaurs were a category of marine reptiles that lived on earth for over a hundred million years, existing at the same time as the famed dinosaurs on land. Sometimes described as “sea dragons,” these animals had flippered limbs and breathed air like modern whales and dolphins.

In truth, the specimen now at the school is not a fossil but a cast – a replica created with painstaking detail from a true fossil. Casts have long been used as a means of education and study when encounters with real specimens are too difficult or costly. It was created by Henry Augustus Ward, a professor at the University of Rochester and budding entrepreneur who traveled to the British Museum of Natural History in London in the late 1860’s. There, Ward produced casts of some of the museum’s finest specimens, creating copies that would then be sold to museums and colleges in the United States and Europe.

A full set of Ward’s casts were purchased by Wells College, who – despite some losses over the decades – retained much of the collection until the school’s closure last year. As the institution shuttered, the casts were offered to such places as the Museum of the Earth and Hobart and William Smith College. The plesiosaur cast now resides proudly at Millard Fillmore Elementary.

“There aren’t very many of Ward’s casts,” said Jackie Schnurr, an Earth Science teacher at Moravia High School. “You could call them priceless, but it’s only because no one is selling them. You really can’t get them anywhere else.”

Schnurr taught at Wells for two decades before the college closed in 2024. After taking the vacant earth science job at Moravia, where she had previously served on the board of education, she was instrumental in getting the fossil cast donated to the district.

“I hope students can better understand fossils,” she said of the plesiosaur cast. “And I hope they get excited about seeing a museum piece that’s pretty rare.”

That excitement is already visible at the Elementary School, which was chosen to house the piece despite still being a learning tool for older students. After canvassing elementary students for ideas, a school-wide vote chose a clever nickname for the fossil.

Now, “Milly O’Saurus” – named both for the school and the US president – can continue its fascinating story by helping to promote inspiration and learning in Moravia schools.