Oh My God, An Old Rock!

Fort Greene residents are protective of their rocks:

Residents of Fort Greene don’t want a 400-million-year-old boulder that was dug up during a sewer upgrade project 10 days ago to be lost to their neighborhood.

Even so, the city yesterday used a flatbed truck to move the 10-ton stone to a new Queens park.

“It belongs to us,” said Nicco Beretta, 32, who lives on the Vanderbilt block where the stone was discovered. “They pulled it out of our street.”

The unusual rock was the first, and biggest, of four giant boulders uncovered on the block between Myrtle and Park Aves.

Its removal has turned into a stone of contention in Fort Greene.

“The big one, the first one, should stay here where they found it,” said an emphatic Joseph Vollaro, 55, a 16-year resident of the block.

The other rocks were discovered this week and pulled out of the ground by contractors working for the Department of Environmental Protection.

One is destined for Fort Greene Park. The two smallest ones are going to Pugsley Creek Park in the Bronx, Parks Department officials said.

One woman said all the rocks should stay in Brooklyn.

“What are we, chopped liver?” asked Louise Barlow, 75, who lives five blocks from where the rocks were unearthed. “They should stay in their own hometown.”

(Just so we’re clear, the oldest known rock dates back about four billion years.)