I had occasion recently to review some of the records in the 2020 National Park Service fossil proboscidean inventory (Mead et al. 2020), so I thought it would be useful to produce an update on the roster of parks, National Natural Landmarks, and National Historic Landmarks that we included at that time.
When preparing the original paper, we crossed off a variety of edge cases and others. For example, we eliminated Cumberland Island National Seashore because the potential record came from spoil pile material deposited on the island from dredging of a nearby channel. A museum record from Gulf Islands National Seashore came from a site ~115 miles from the nearest part of the park. Extremely vague provenance information got Petersburg National Battlefield and San Antonio Missions National Historical Park off the list, and unconfirmed collections records did the same for Canyon de Chelly National Monument and Scotts Bluff National Monument. A possible record for Gateway Arch National Park proved to be misidentified. The potential record for Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine could not be established, as related here. Potential records for Saint Croix National Scenic Riverway, particularly the Stillwater occurrence, were outside of the park. Finally, there was one very odd case of mammoth bones being found in a former dump on land now within Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, which we left out because we had no idea what the heck was going on besides the fossils not being in place.
A few occurrences have updates. The potential Colonial National Historical Park record turned out to be just outside of the park after some deep historical probing, and we recently covered an unexpected mammoth tooth from Grey Cloud Island within Mississippi National River and Recreation Area. (The latter is especially useful because with the benefit of experience I'm not as certain of most of the records I'd previously flagged as likely within the park.) We can also confirm that the Colorado National Monument record is from a mammoth after finding a photo of the specimen in an old newspaper during the recent paleontological inventory of the monument.
Three regular NPS units can be added to the roster. One is actually thanks to a site that's already in Mead et al. (2020). At about the same time we were working on the publication, Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail was expanded to include the route used to get to the jumping-off point in Illinois, mostly on the Ohio River. One of the sites on this stretch is none other than Big Bone Lick National Natural Landmark, included in the publication for its (historic) proboscideans and boasting direct connections to Lewis (who visited the site on his way to join the expedition in 1803), Clark, and Thomas Jefferson.
The other two newcomers are Canyonlands National Park and El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail. The Canyonlands record, regrettably, is a straight-up miss on my part. It's the reason I thought about doing this post in the first place: I was checking a list of Canyonlands taxa for another project recently and saw Mammuthus sp. included. "CANY [I think in park acronyms after all this time] doesn't have any mammoths," I said to myself, so I checked the source, which turned out to be a paleo summary I'd written years ago. Certain there was something wrong, I went to the source and discovered that no, I'd screwed up years ago when transcribing my own data: the museum collections section reported four catalog numbers' worth of mammoth fossils from a site in the park. As far as I know, between 2012 me and 2024 me, we're the only people to mention this. (I'm beside myself!)
El Camino Real de los Tejas NHT is a trail unit, and trail units have not been as high of priority for us to research (for one thing, it's hard to pin down what's from a trail unit because they don't really fit the boundary/land ownership paradigm of your typical park). This one, though, has some interesting records; in particular, it crosses Stone City Bluff, which just happens to be one of the best Eocene marine sites in the country. Between that and Lewis & Clark NHT now crossing the Falls of the Ohio, I have hundreds of type specimens waiting for me if I ever clear out all of my more time-sensitive work and have a couple of spare months with nothing else to do. Cloning might help (but then I'd be beside myself again*). Anyway, we were talking proboscideans, and it turns out that work on the Interstate 37 bridge south of San Antonio, on a route marked as part of the El Camino Real, unearthed fossils of two mammoths (Carpenter et al. 2013).
*<rimshot> I'll be here all week! Don't forget to tip your waitress!
As alluded to in the post presenting Mead et al. (2020), the real action has been in National Natural Landmarks and National Historic Landmarks. I still haven't done a certified exhaustive trawl of NNLs and NHLs for fossils, just a couple of exhausting trawls (that's another one for "after all the time-sensitive work is cleared out"), but I can point to five other NNLs and two other NHLs that would qualify (not counting a few NNLs and NHLs that are within formal NPS units, e.g., Bent's Old Fort, Hagerman, John Day Fossil Beds, and the Onion Portage Archeological District in Kobuk Valley National Park). The sites are:
- Cave Without A Name NNL, Texas
- Ichetucknee Spring NNL, Florida
- Longhorn Cavern NNL, Texas
- Rainbow Basin NNL, California
- Wakulla Springs NNL, Florida
- Lubbock Lake Site NHL, Texas
- Peale's Baltimore Museum NHL, Maryland
It turns out that large-scale karst features (e.g., caves, large sinkholes, and large springs) are great places to check for fossils. The one ringer here is Peale's Baltimore Museum, which is where a mastodon was exhibited rather than one being found (Peale had two of 'em). These sites all include your typical Pleistocene mammoth and/or mastodon fossils, except for Rainbow Basin NNL, the type area of the Barstovian North American Land Mammal Age of the Miocene.
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| It's that map again! Parks are in alphabetical order this time to follow Mead et al. (2020), although the numbering diverges pretty quickly. 1) Agate Fossil Beds National Monument; 2) Aleutian World War II National Historic Area (affiliated); 3) Amistad National Recreation Area; 4) Anza-Borrego Desert State Park National Natural Landmark; 5) Arches National Park; 6) Ashfall Fossil Beds NNL; 7) Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site; 8) Bering Land Bridge National Preserve; 9) Big Bend NP; 10) Big Bone Lick NNL; 11) Big Cypress NP; 12) Big Thicket NPres; 13) Blackwater Draw National Historic Landmark; 14) Canaveral National Seashore; 15) Canyonlands NP; 16) Cape Krusenstern NM; 17) Cave Without A Name NNL; 18) Channel Islands NP; 19) Colorado NM; 20) Death Valley NP; 21) Denali NP & Pres; 22) El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail; 23) Florissant Fossil Beds NM; 24) Gates of the Arctic NP & Pres; 25) Glen Canyon NRA; 26) Golden Gate NRA; 27) Grand Canyon NP; 28) Great Sand Dunes NP & Pres; 29) Hagerman Fossil Beds NM; 30) Hopewell Cultural National Historical Park; 31) Ichetucknee Springs State Park NNL; 32) Independence NHP; 33) John Day Fossil Beds NM; 34) John Muir National Historic Site; 35) Joshua Tree NP; 36) Klondike Gold Rush NHP; 37) Kobuk Valley NP; 38) Lake Mead NRA; 39) Lake Meredith NRA; 40) Lava Beds NM; 41) Lehner Mammoth-Kill Site NHL; 42) Lewis & Clark NHT; 43) Longhorn Cavern NNL; 44) Lubbock Lake NHL; 45) Mammoth Cave NP; 46) Mammoth Site of Hot Springs NNL; 47) Mississippi National River and Recreation Area; 48) Mojave NPres; 49) Montezuma Castle NM; 50) Murray Springs Clovis Site NHL; 51) Natchez Trace Parkway; 52) Navajo NM; 53) New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve (affiliated); 54) Nez Perce NHP; 55) Niobrara National Scenic River; 56) Noatak NPres; 57) Olympic NP; 58) Padre Island NS; 59) Peale’s Baltimore Museum NHL; 60) Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail; 61) Rainbow Basin NNL; 62) Rancho La Brea NNL; 63) Salinas Pueblo Missions NM; 64) Santa Monica Mountains NRA; 65) Tule Springs Fossil Beds NM; 66) Valley Forge NHP; 67) Vicksburg National Military Park; 68) Waco Mammoth NM; 69) Wakulla Springs NNL; 70) White Sands NP; 71) Wupatki NM; 72) Yukon-Charley Rivers NPres |
References
Carpenter, S. M., C. B. Bousman, O. Potapova, L. D. Agenbroad, J. K. Hanselka, K. A. Miller, K. Lawrence, C. T. Hartnett, J. Lowe, M. C. Cody, and L. Bement. 2013. The San Antonio River mammoth site: archaeological testing investigations for the Interstate 37 Bridge at the San Antonio River Improvement Project, Bexar County, Texas. Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State 2013(3).
Mead, J. I., J. S. Tweet, V. L. Santucci, J. T. Rasic, and S. E. Holte. 2020. Proboscideans from US National Park Service lands. Eastern Paleontologist 6:1–48.
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