Fona herzogae

This whole thing started from a website called Thescelosaurus!, so unsurprisingly I'm particularly interested when an old-fashioned "hypsil" metaphorically crosses my desk. Our (belated) guest today is the new genus and species Fona herzogae. Before we get into the meat of the post, I would also like to throw a kind word to the iguanodontian Comptonatus chasei Lockwood et al. (2024), published online the same day. (Yes, it *did* make me think of Camptonotus, which would have been Camptosaurus had somebody not pinned it to a cricket first.)

An unexpected mammoth

While visiting Wisconsin's Interstate Park over the weekend (happy 80th birthday, Smokey Bear!), I was surprised to come across another resident of the Cottage Grove area at the Ice Age Center:

According to the display, this mammoth tooth was discovered on Grey Cloud Island on July 9, 1987, by Arnold Sanford of Frederic, Wisconsin. This is the kind of thing that makes me wish we had an update to Stauffer "1945". (Even if I have to do it myself.) There must be plenty of other post-WWII finds scattered across Minnesota that are only known locally. When I was a little kid, my mother told me that part of a mammoth tooth had been found in Red Wing by a Boy Scout; I've never been able to find anything about it, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me!

Incidentally, the Ice Age Center also has other fossils and cast fossils of Ice Age mammals from the area. (Interstate Park is the western terminus of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail and one of the components of Ice Age National Scientific Reserve.) The most significant are bison bones and a cast skull from the park's bison bonebed, discovered in 1936 during CCC work. The bonebed is in my hopper of topics; until then, here are the specimens on display.

References

Stauffer, C. R. “1945” [at least 1948 based on dates in the article]. Some Pleistocene mammalian inhabitants of Minnesota. Minnesota Academy of Science Proceedings 13:20–43.