The sand dollar, the 8-year-old and the world record

Nick Vogel -

When good fortune literally washed up on the shore of a Florida beach this spring, it chose an 8-year-old Downers Grove boy as its recipient.

 The good fortune came in the form of a sand dollar.

 The boy was Augie Balicki and there is reason to believe the sand dollar he found is the largest ever recorded in modern history.

 It was spring break, this year. Augie and his family were on vacation doing what has become a family tradition.

 “We just hang out on the beach,” said Augie’s mother, Amy Balicki.

 The family noticed a sand bar and decided to walk out to it.

 “We were just walking along the sand bar and that’s where we found the sand dollars,” she said.

 Finding sand dollars, whole and unblemished, was enough to make the Downers Grove family happy, Amy Balicki said. But then Augie found the sand dollar that would make him famous.

 “It’s got five little holes in it and it’s kind of rare because most sand dollars have six holes that you find,” Augie said. “But mine had five so it’s a little rarer than the others. It’s (12.73) centimeters in diameter. ... It’s kind of a whitish beige color.”

 When her son found the sand dollar, Amy Balicki turned to an encyclopedia to learn more about the marine animal. What she found was that the average sand dollar was 5 to 10 centimeters.

 On a whim, she wrote an email to Guinness World Records, asking if her son’s find really was something special. Within a day she got a reply saying that if her son had found a 12-centimeter sand dollar, he could have the world record.

 Thus began a quest to document and authenticate the sand dollar.

 In order for Guinness World Records to accept Augie’s find as legitimate, the Balickis had to get a qualified biologist to identify and verify the sand dollar as real. This was no small task.

 “I don’t just happen to have a qualified biologist in my pocket,” Amy Balicki said.

Full story...

Posted via http://batavia08.posterous.com batavia08's posterous