Fossil Ursids of the National Park Service

Here we are, a little later than usual for the annual "Fossil [Group] of the National Park Service" but present nonetheless. I decided to get in another group of carnivorans, this time the bears (Ursidae). If you've been here for the cats and dogs, you can probably guess the basic shape of things: a few records earlier in the Cenozoic, then a big slug in the Pleistocene into the Holocene, with many of the records representing living species. That is indeed how it goes with the bears as well, with a couple of quirks: the bear record goes back as far as the dog record, into the Chadronian (Late Eocene), but is never as diverse as the records for either cats or dogs. Essentially you get a couple of genera or species in a formation, and that's about it. Bears, it seems, have never felt the need to be profuse about the business of being bears. It's not quite "one-bear-fits-all", but bears favor generalism, and there's only room for so many species of generalists in one place and time.

Odds and Ends

Several items worth a brief comment...

Minnesota state fossil

By Minnesota law, Castoroides ohioensis, the "giant beaver", became Minnesota's state fossil on July 1, 2025. C. ohioensis is a rare case of a write-in winning (the original slate of candidates did not include it). Call me a lot of things (crazy, no fun, pessimistic about human nature), but I have a hard time believing the giant beaver won based on its merits as a fossil found in Minnesota, as opposed to a bunch of people on the Internet thinking it would be funny for Minnesota's state fossil to be a giant beaver. Which, I suppose, is a reasonable response to the idea of state symbols in general and state fossils in particular.

Enigmacursor

Speaking of pessimism, no sooner are all previous names for Morrison Formation "hypsils" declared dubious than a paper by the same authors comes out naming... a new Morrison Formation "hypsil". (Not the first time this kind of thing has taken place, but usually the declaration of invalidity and the new name come in the same paper.) Anyway, the new one is Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae, based on a partial skeleton from Colorado featuring vertebrae, ribs, and most of the girdles and limbs. It's not one of the more famous (well, "famous", but bear with me) unnamed Morrison specimens like BYU ESM 163R or "Barbara" but instead was recovered a few years ago. (Some days it feels like famous unnamed specimens *never* get described, but I digress.) Given the matter of chimeric specimens discussed in the Nanosaurus paper, a quarry map would have been a nice inclusion. E. mollyborthwickae looks and phylogenetically acts about the way you'd expect out of a Morrison "hypsil". I wouldn't expect that it actually *is* the closest relative to Yandusaurus hongheensis among all dinosaurs known to date (for one thing, that's putting a lot of faith in Yandusaurus, one of those dinosaurs that seems more complete and better known than it is), but that's about where Morrison "hypsils" always turn up.

Tyrannosaurus

Meanwhile, on the reincarnation of the Dinosaur Mailing List, the Dinosaur Mailing Group, the hot topic has been Tyrannosaurus and nanotyrants. Some things never change, after all. It's not a spontaneous irruption, but driven by Gregory Paul's new review of latest Cretaceous western North American tyrannosaurs. This follows on the paper a couple of years ago proposing to split T. rex into three species. Paul further revises Tyrannosaurus in this paper, supporting not only the removal of Nanotyrannus lancensis, but also Stygivenator molnari. (If you remember using the word "aublysodont" seriously, you know what's up, and there's an excellent chance you're also at least 40.) These two species are interpreted as having crossed over from Appalachia (the eastern half of North America) with the dwindling of the Western Interior Seaway, which is a fascinating idea worth further consideration.

Will it settle anything? I don't expect it to. At this point it feels like everyone is well beyond being burned out on the topic and is firmly set in their ways. It doesn't help that Nanotyrannus, along with spinosaurs and exaggerated dinosaur sizes, is one of the most obnoxious long-running issues among dinosaur enthusiasts, providing further incentive to stay the heck away. It's a pity, though, because there's something something weirdly Alioramus-y going on with some of these specimens, and all we ever do is circle around the same couple of points we always have.

Probably 25 years ago or more I posted something on the DML about a taxonomic discussion, and another member suggested we'd be better off not using the names at all and just using specimen numbers. I thought it was crazy at the time since they're a lot harder to keep track of, but with time I'm definitely coming around to the idea.

Lithodendron

The second issue of Lithodendron, Petrified Forest National Park's journal, has just come out. Contributions to this issue include a report of a large silesaurid (and coelophysoid) from the park, and the printing of a previously unpublished stratigraphic study of the park from 1940 (always good to see formerly overlooked research get published!).

Cenozoic Life and Mesozoic Life in the National Parks coloring books

Finally, some uncomplicated fun: We've recently produced coloring books of Cenozoic and Mesozoic life in the National Parks to go with the Prehistoric Life in the National Parks coloring book from a few years back. They feature a mix of artwork from the original coloring book plus newer pages. The links above will take you to the data store pages for the two books, which can be downloaded freely as pdfs. Parks with notable Cenozoic or Mesozoic fossils may also have physical copies available.

References

Maidment, S. C. R., and P. M. Barrett. 2025. Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae, a neornithischian dinosaur from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of the western USA. Royal Society Open Science 12(6):242195. doi: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.242195

Paul, G. S. 2025. A presentation of the current data on the exceptionally diverse non-tyrannosaurid eutyrannosaur and tyrannosaurini genera and species of western North America during the End Cretaceous North American Interchange. Mesozoic 2(2): 85–138. https://doi.org/10.11646/mesozoic.2.2.1

Catching up with NPS proboscideans

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.

Conard Fissure

It's been a while since we've done a good old-fashioned Pleistocene cave fauna, and there's one more wanting to complete the Big Three of Irvingtonian eastern North America. We've already spent some time with Cumberland Bone Cave and Port Kennedy Bone Cave, so now it's the turn of Conard Fissure in northwestern Arkansas.

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.

Fossil Canids of the National Park Service

We've been taking a tour of Mammalia for the past two annual "Fossil [Group] of the National Park Service", and this year we'll make it three in a row with man's best friends, the Canidae. The dog record starts up in the Eocene with the hesperocyonines, who held court through the Oligocene but then petered out in the Miocene. Turning up in the Oligocene are the borophagines, or "bone-crushing dogs," and the canines, which include wolves, foxes, domestic dogs, and close relatives. Borophagines, as the nickname suggests, had robust jaws and teeth, which doesn't mean they should be typecast as slavering hypercarnivorous brutes (canids in general have been pretty flexible about diet over their history). They drop out of the record at about the end of the Pliocene, leaving the field clear for the canines, which had been a fairly minor component of the canid radiation until about the Late Miocene. If you're interested in paleontological nitty-gritty on these two groups, check out Wang et al. (1999) on borophagines and Tedford et al. (2009) on canines. Canids, incidentally, are a North American invention, and unlike some other groups that originated in North America (camels, horses, rhinos), they have never gone extinct on the continent.

Fossils at Airports

This year's annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting was held in Cincinnati, and I was quite pleased to be greeted in Concourse B of Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport by a mastodon skeleton.

This seemed like a good omen.

This is hardly the only airport to have fossils. Sometimes they are part of the building stone; at Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport, for example, you can hardly walk around without seeing fossils in the (non-local) flooring stone. Most of the fossils are bits and pieces of shells, but there are some nice coiled cephalopods, and if you have time they're certainly worth a pause. (It would be fun to do a thorough photographic inventory, but I imagine it would probably have to be explained so as not to appear nefarious.)

Two cephalopods with part of my foot for scale.

A generous assortment of large fossil debris.

In other cases the fossils are on display, as at Cincinnati. One of my favorite examples is the Brachiosaurus at Chicago O'Hare. I've become fairly familiar with this mount over the years since I first saw it on the way to Mongolia, as O'Hare has been practically a required stop on my trips east from MSP.

On this visit in 2019 the brachiosaur was decked out in Chicago Bears livery for the NFL's centenary.

Back to Cincinnati. (Well, not literally; the airport is actually across the Ohio River in Kentucky.) In the mastodon photo above another skeleton can be seen in the distance. I'd been in a hurry when I arrived, so I hadn't explored farther, but made it a point to do so when I departed. It turned out there were five more mounts in the concourse, which makes me wonder if there were any in Concourse A. The animals chosen for exhibit are all typical Ice Age fauna of the area (in fact, all have been found at Big Bone Lick not too far down the river). One notable absence, if only by name, was the giant beaver Castoroides ohioensis, so I kind of hope there were more in Concourse A.

Cervalces scotti, the "stag-moose"; think of a moose with fancier antlers.

A dire wolf pursues an extinct peccary.

A giant ground sloth; the mounts are convenient to walk around, particularly nice for appreciating the unusual anatomy of this animal.

A Smilodon smiling.

Fossil Lagomorphs of the National Park Service

It's time for the annual focus on the paleontology of a particular group in National Park Service lands. This year we turn from the felines to one of their prey items, the lagomorphs (rabbits, hares, and pikas). So, why bunnies and pikas? To be honest, most of us have probably never given more than a moment's thought to the fossil record of lagomorphs, and that moment probably involved one of three thoughts: a nodding recognition that fossil rabbits et al. must exist; goofy speculation ("prehistoric saber-toothed rabbits"); or providing some ancient carnivore an appropriate lunch for a drawing or story. Well, you know me: I love topics nobody else is talking about. (I get in fewer arguments that way.) Also, I come from a household that appreciates small mammals for what they are. In return, they seem to feel comfortable hanging around. (A Tamiasciurus hudsonicus deciding your yard is part of its territory provides entertainment value all winter; the little psychos will take on anything.) For the past couple of months a young rabbit has been a frequent visitor, so this is my tip of the cap.

Historical miscellany, including O.P. Hay, Whitesburg fossils, and the "Scientific Swindler"

A selection of brief historical items for your approval:

If you're like me and have an interest in Pleistocene megafauna, you've probably spent some time tooling around Neotoma and NeoMap (which unfortunately doesn't work anymore), as well as the Paleobiology Database. (In fact, it's kind of necessary to use multiple databases because they don't all have the same information.) Compiling datasets like these can be a thankless job. The actual business of making one is time-consuming and requires access to a vast array of scholarly (and less-scholarly) resources. To make it more efficient, you can bring in a crowd to contribute smaller parts, with the obvious trade-off that quality control is harder to maintain (and participants may disagree strongly about things like taxonomy). Synthesizing material doesn't get as much respect as producing new information. It takes a certain kind of personality to compile these things (I ain't about to name any characteristics, because I'd just be pointing in the mirror). You also want to be very, very sure you get it right, because sometimes people just accept the compendium and forget to check the original sources.

There are many state-level compendia of Pleistocene finds for the US, and at least one excellent regional resource (for the southwestern US and northwestern Mexico). They don't exist for every state, though, and unfortunately many are in the neighborhood of a century old. (If anyone wants a reference for a specific state, I can see what I can do.) By far the most monumental of these monuments to industry are the three volumes produced by Oliver Perry Hay in the 1920s, the "Vertebrated Animals of North America" series. Hay was no stranger to compiling information, with two bibliographies on North American fossil vertebrates under his belt. For people used to the Internet, it takes a moment to realize the staggering amount of work that must have gone into these books, which cover the entire continental US and Canada from the beginning of scientific documentation of fossils to his own day. Even granting that the field was smaller and there were fewer publications, the number of references he must have seen must have been immense (to say nothing of the work of tracking them down). That there are occasional errors and omissions is not the wonder; the wonder is that these books exist at all. I've included citations to several of his volumes at the end; all are freely available for download at the moment except the third volume of the "Vertebrated Animals" series, but even this one can be read online.

I've referred to Hay's works many times in my own work; on this occasion he came to mind because I happened upon a seemingly forgotten Pleistocene fauna from northeastern Tennessee that he described with five other Pleistocene collections (Hay 1920). The Smithsonian had received a collection made by USGS geologist Ira Sayles in 1885 from "one mile north of Whitesburg, Hamblen Co., Tenn." Matrix with the bones indicated that the site had once been a cave, now eroded. Hay recognized twenty species from the fauna, eight of which were extinct and three of which were new species (turtle Testudo munda, tapir Tapirus tennesseae, and deer Sangamona fugitiva; none of them is considered valid anymore, which tends to happen with supposed new Pleistocene species in North America, but Sangamona fugitiva is a nice name). What gets me is that there's never been any real follow-up outside of Hay's own 1923 compendium of Pleistocene sites. The actual location is still unknown to this day, if it could even be rediscovered. That's one of the things that I love about these compilations and databases: there's a story behind every site, even if it's not known in detail.

Finally, I wanted to mention a historical story I came across this spring while working on another topic. It is a story of fraud in science, but not the usual "unscrupulous scientist scoops another worker or commits a nefarious action against a graduate student." It goes like this: from the mid-1880s to the early 1890s there was a man operating in the Midwest and Northeast who would use false pretenses to swindle scientific books, equipment, and fossils from unsuspecting geologists, to sell them. Among his methods were pretending to be deaf-mute and stealing the identities of other geologists, including such luminaries as Leo Lesqueroux and Charles Walcott. His trail can be followed by a series of letters in scientific journals reporting encounters and giving warnings, but he was able to operate for years. The icing on the cake is that he was actually a competent paleontologist, as attested by several of the victims. It's a fascinating story worthy of a journal article, and fortunately we have what amounts to one in a lengthy blog post, so if you're looking for something to read, it's well worth the time!

References

Hay, O. P. 1902. Bibliography and catalogue of the vertebrata of North America. U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, D.C. Bulletin 179.

Hay, O. P. 1908. The fossil turtles of North America. Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 75.

Hay, O. P. 1914. The Pleistocene mammals of Iowa. Iowa Geological Survey Annual Report 23(1):1–662.

Hay, O. P. 1920. Descriptions of some Pleistocene vertebrates found in the United States. Proceedings of the United States National Museum 58:83–146.

Hay, O. P. 1923. The Pleistocene of North America and its vertebrated animals from the states east of the Mississippi River and from the Canadian provinces east of longitude 95°. Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 322.

Hay, O. P. 1924. The Pleistocene of the middle region of North America and its vertebrated animals. Carnegie Institute of Washington Publication 322A.

Hay, O. P. 1927. The Pleistocene of the western region of North America and its vertebrated animals. Carnegie Institute of Washington Publication 322B.

Hay, O. P. 1929. Second bibliography and catalogue of the fossil vertebrata of North America, volumes I and II. Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 390.

Fossil Felids of the National Park Service

For this year's annual focus on a fossil group in National Park System units, I am going to pay my Internet cat tax and present a quick look at the fossil felids of the parks. If you're not familiar with the history of Felidae, it may come as a surprise that cats are a relatively recent innovation. They have only a few tens of millions of years under their collective belts, and didn't arrive in North America until Pseudaelurus in the early Miocene. (Note: barbourofelids and nimravids may give off saber-toothed cat vibes, but they aren't Felidae.)

It turns out that there are 24 NPS units with cat body or trace fossils. All of the records, unsurprisingly, are early Miocene in age or younger. The great majority are Quaternary (concerning the question of when to cut off the paleontological record, caves don't discriminate if you happen to be 11,000 years old rather than 12,000 years old, and neither do we): only seven of the 24 park units have pre-Q cats. These are Big Bend National Park, Death Valley NP, Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument, John Day Fossil Beds NM, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Mojave National Preserve, and Niobrara National Scenic River.

These maps are so much easier to make now that I have one file with all of the parks as points, and I can just turn them on and off. 1. John Day Fossil Beds National Monument; 2. Oregon Caves NM; 3. Lava Beds NM; 4. Hagerman Fossil Beds NM; 5. Yellowstone National Park; 6. Great Basin NP; 7. Death Valley NP; 8. Tule Springs Fossil Beds NM; 9. Lake Mead National Recreation Area; 10. Mojave National Preserve; 11. Joshua Tree NP; 12. Grand Canyon NP; 13. Chaco Culture National Historical Park; 14. White Sands NP; 15. Carlsbad Caverns NP; 16. Guadalupe Mountains NP; 17. Big Bend NP; 18. Amistad NRA; 19. Waco Mammoth NM; 20. Niobrara National Scenic River; 21. Ozark National Scenic Riverways; 22. Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park; 23. Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail; 24. Valley Forge NHP.

Geographically the sites are concentrated in the southwestern US; in fact, 15 of the sites are in Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, or Texas. This seems to say something about cat biogeography, given these are mostly Quaternary sites and the NPS has a pretty good Quaternary record in terms of geographic spread. I wouldn't base a thesis on it or anything, though.

It's not stated on the map, but the Quaternary record is heavy on caves; a dozen of the records are from caves or rock shelters. These included significant records at Carlsbad Caverns NP, Grand Canyon NP, Guadalupe Mountains NP, Potomac Heritage NST (Cumberland Bone Cave), and Valley Forge NHP (Port Kennedy Bone Cave).

Most of the records are body fossils, but at least three have cat trace fossils: tracks at Death Valley NP and White Sands NP, and tracks and cave scratches at Chickamauga & Chattanooga NMP. One of these sites has yielded a track type specimen, Felipeda scrivneri Sarjeant et al. (2002) from Death Valley NP. There are also eight fossil felid species named from body fossils discovered within or potentially within NPS areas (all named before the units were established):

• Felis lacustris Gazin (1933) from Hagerman (now Puma lacustris)
• Machairodus? hesperus Gazin (1933) from Hagerman (now Megantereon hesperus)
• Felis augustus Leidy (1872) possibly from Niobrara (now Panthera onca [augusta], and Pleistocene instead of Miocene in age)
• Felis (Pseudaelurus) intrepidus Leidy (1858) possibly from Niobrara (now Pseudaelurus intrepidus)
• Crocuta inexpectata Cope (1895) from Valley Forge (now Miracinonyx inexpectatus) 
• Lynx calcaratus Cope (1899) from Valley Forge (now considered a synonym of Lynx rufus)
• Smilodon gracilis Cope (1880) from Valley Forge
• Uncia mercerii Cope (1895) from Valley Forge (now considered a synonym of Smilodon gracilis)

Attaining consensus on cat taxonomy and nomenclature can be like, well, herding cats. It doesn't help that it can be difficult to tell cats apart; see a record of "Panthera onca" at Carlsbad Caverns NP becoming Panthera atrox (Kottkamp et al. 2022), and "Puma concolor" fossils at Grand Canyon NP becoming Miracinonyx trumani (Hodnett et al. 2022; take the skull for a spin here). Nevertheless, the Quaternary sample can be divided among seven species or species groups. Three are extinct:

• American cheetah (Miracinonyx inexpectatus and M. trumani): found at Carlsbad, Grand Canyon, Potomac Heritage, and Valley Forge
• American lion (Panthera atrox): found at Carlsbad, Potomac Heritage, and Tule Springs
• Saber-toothed cats (Smilodon spp.): found at Potomac Heritage, Tule Springs, Valley Forge, and Waco Mammoth

Two are still around but not this far north:

• Jaguar (Panthera onca): found at Lava Beds, Oregon Caves, Ozark, Potomac Heritage, and Valley Forge (these are all pretty far north for something we associate with tropical jungles!)
  
• Jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi): found at Valley Forge

Finally, two are still found in the United States:

• Bobcat (Lynx rufus, with allowance for Lynx sp.): Amistad, Carlsbad Caverns, Chaco Culture*, Great Basin*, Grand Canyon, Guadalupe Mountains, Joshua Tree*, Lava Beds, Tule Springs, Valley Forge, and Yellowstone* (*=Holocene only)
• Cougar/mountain lion/puma (Puma concolor): Carlsbad Caverns, Chaco Culture*, Guadalupe Mountains, and Tule Springs

The most species-rich sites are:

• Carlsbad Caverns NP (American cheetah, American lion, bobcat, cougar)
• Hagerman Fossil Beds NM (American cheetah, Homotherium sp. [a saber-toothed cat], Lynx rexroadensis, Megantereon hesperus [or cultridens; another saber-toothed cat], Puma lacustris)
• Tule Springs Fossil Beds NM (American lion, bobcat, cougar, saber-toothed cat)
• Valley Forge NHP (American cheetah, bobcat, jaguar, jaguarundi, saber-toothed cat)

Of these four, the Hagerman assemblage is Pliocene, the Valley Forge assemblage is middle Pleistocene, and the other two are late Pleistocene. In the Pleistocene, at least, a robust cat assemblage may include a big lion-type cat, a saber-toothed cat, a smaller big cat (but apparently not cougars and jaguars at the same place), and a bobcat-sized cat.

Felids are relatively uncommon compared to the other big terrestrial carnivorans. Fossil dogs and bears are more widely distributed in NPS units than cats. Furthermore, all but one NPS assemblage that has cats also has dogs, bears, or both (the exception being the Pliocene tracks of Death Valley NP). These groups, though, are for another time...

References

Cope, E. D. 1880. On the extinct cats of America. American Naturalist 14(12):833–858.

Cope, E. D. 1895. The fossil Vertebrata from the fissure at Port Kennedy. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 47:446–450.

Cope, E. D. 1899. Vertebrate remains from Port Kennedy bone deposit. Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 2nd series, 11(3):193–286.

Gazin, C. L. 1933. New felids from the upper Pliocene of Idaho. Journal of Mammalogy 14:251–356.

Hodnett, J. P., R. White, M. Carpenter, J. Mead, and V. L. Santucci. 2022. Miracinonyx trumani (Carnivora; Felidae) from the Rancholabrean of the Grand Canyon, Arizona and its implications on the ecology of the “American cheetah.” New Mexico Museum of Natural History Bulletin 88:157–186.

Kottkamp, S., V. L. Santucci, J. S. Tweet, R. D. Horrocks, and G. S. Morgan. 2022. Pleistocene vertebrates from Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 88:267–290.

Leidy, J. 1858. Notice of remains of extinct Vertebrata, from the valley of the Niobrara River, collected during the exploring expedition of 1857, in Nebraska, under the command of Lieut. G. K. Warren, U.S. Top. Eng., by Dr. F. V. Hayden, Geologist to the expedition. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 10:20–29.

Leidy, J. 1872. Remarks on some extinct vertebrates. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 24:38–40.

Sarjeant, W. A. S., R. E. Reynolds, and M. M. Kissell-Jones. 2002. Fossil creodont and carnivore footprints from California, Nevada, and Wyoming. Pages 37–50 in R. E. Reynolds, editor. Between the Basins: Exploring the western Mojave and southern Basin and Range Province. California State University, Fullerton, California.

Proboscidean update: the Williamsburg mammoth (or mastodon)

Leaving titanosaurs aside for the moment...

A couple of times now, I've featured inventories of National Park Service proboscidean fossils: mammoths, mastodons, and so forth. One of the records that's been stuck as questionable is an 1811 report from the area of Colonial National Historical Park. To quote from the most recent published assessment, in Mead et al. (2020):

“The Williamsburg-area mastodon was first reported in 1811 (Anonymous 1811). The details vary from report to report, but apparently the bones were found 10 km (6 mi) south (Anonymous 1811) or east (Mitchill 1818) of Williamsburg on the south bank of the York River. It is unclear where the former location would be, but the latter is potentially within COLO [Colonial National Historical Park], in the vicinity of Bellefield Plantation and the mouth of Indian Field Creek. Anonymous (1811) reported that the site was a few yards within high water near the home of Gawin Corbin. The fossils include 2 tusks, 2 vertebrae, 1 pelvis, 1 femur, and partial mandibles with 7 associated teeth (Mitchill 1818). Given the presence of molars, it is surprising that Mitchill (1818) identified the specimens as mammoth, yet Hay (1923) reported them as a mastodon (Mammut). Hay (1923) reported that the bones were probably destroyed in the 1859 fire at the College of William and Mary. Clark and Miller (1912) refer this specimen to the Pleistocene of the Talbot Formation (a now-obsolete name)."

I and others have made attempts over the past few years to determine who the Gavin Corbin in question was and where his property was located, most recently as part of the Colonial National Historical Park paleontological inventory currently being reviewed. The primary issue has been the numerous Corbins who have lived in this region, including multiple Gawin Corbins. In such a case, sometimes you have to trust in serendipity, and I can now state that I'm practically certain the answer is at hand. The man in question is Gawin Lane Corbin (1778–1821), and the property is the “Kings Creek” plantation, now within the U.S. Navy's Cheatham Annex just north of the Colonial Parkway.

This was the kind of thing where it was helpful to have some experience in genealogical research. It wasn't enough to have a good candidate for the name; there also had to be a way to track the location. In this case, "Kings Creek" has a lengthy history, beginning as "Utimaria" in 1630 and passing through various hands until being sold to Corbin's father in 1790 (Tyler 1894; Anonymous 1913). Later the area was known as Penniman, and eventually the Navy's Cheatham Annex. Importantly for us, we also know that the Ringfield and Bellefield (or Bellfield, or Belfield) plantations were active in the same time frame as the fossil discovery, on what is now the NPS side of Kings (or King’s, or King) Creek. With this knowledge, we can be certain than any mammoth or mastodon found near the home of Gawin Corbin on the York River shore was found in what would now be part of the Cheatham Annex, and therefore near but not within the historical park. (On the other hand, if anyone from the Annex is reading this, it looks like there's a mammoth or mastodon in your history.)

Presumably Corbin had some idea of the significance of the find for it to have been collected in the first place. He was certainly in a position to have been exposed to discussion of such fossils, having social standing and a college education (William & Mary alum; Anonymous 1922) at a time when fossils of mammoths and mastodons held an unusual fascination beyond their scientific value.

Near the mouth of King's Creek, looking north toward Penniman Spit.

References

Anonymous. 1811. Curious discovery [elephant bones from York River, Williamsburg, Virginia]. Philadelphia Repertory 2:87–88.

Anonymous. 1913. Notes from the records of York County. William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 22(2):73–89.

Anonymous. 1922. The Corbin Family (continued). The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 30(4):403–407.

Clark, W. B., and B. L. Miller. 1912. The physiography and geology of the Coastal Plain province of Virginia. Virginia Geological Survey Bulletin 4:13–222.

Hay, O. P. 1923. The Pleistocene of North America and its vertebrated animals from the states east of the Mississippi River and from the Canadian provinces east of longitude 95 degrees. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C. Publication 322.

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.

Mitchill, S. L. 1818. Observations on the geology of North America; illustrated by the description of various organic remains found in that part of the World. Pages 319–431 in G. Cuvier. Essay on the theory of the Earth, with mineralogical notes, and an account of Cuvier’s geological discoveries, by Professor Jameson. Kirk and Mercein, New York, New York.

Tyler, L. G. 1894. Notes by the editor. The William and Mary Quarterly 2(4):230–236.

A Star-Spangled Mastodon?

When I wrote about the NPS fossil proboscidean inventory, you may recall that I mentioned there was one Eastern record I wished I could have confirmed. I thought it was only fitting to shine a spotlight on it in conjunction with the anniversary of the event that made the park unit in question famous.

Port Kennedy Bone Cave

I'd gotten to thinking about some things I'd written at other venues, including some pieces I'd done as National Fossil Day monthly features a few years back, at the moment only accessible through Internet Archive but potentially to come back one day. One of these I thought I'd scoop up, given I'd written a companion piece for it here back in the day: a description of Port Kennedy Bone Cave. (Also, it fits in with other Eastern caves covered so far, all sharing the common thread of being investigated by Henry Mercer near the end of the 19th century). So, here it is, with the text edited to be more like the blog style, and inline citations included.

National Park Service proboscideans revisited

You may recall that a few years ago I ran a post with a map summarizing proboscidean records in National Park Service areas. Sometimes these things take on a life of their own. I'm happy to share with you Mead et al. (2020), a fleshed-out compendium of fossil proboscideans from National Park Service units, affiliated areas, and National Natural Landmarks and Historic Landmarks. The citation is:

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.

Gomphotherium osborni in Elephant Hall, University of Nebraska State Museum. You may not realize it, but proboscidean fossils are very common in Nebraska. We haven't had a gomphothere photo yet, so it seemed appropriate.

The project had a serendipitous beginning; my supervisor Vince Santucci and I occasionally produce inventories of fossil groups from NPS lands, as thematic inventories. We'd been kicking around ideas for our next such inventory and put the proboscideans on the short list. At SVP 2018, Vince got in contact with Jim Mead of The Mammoth Site of Hot Springs about the planned Quaternary section of the Grand Canyon National Park report. He also brought up the proboscidean inventory, Jim was interested, and all that was left was assembling notes, writing, and revising (you know, the easy part). (One of the side effects of the work I do is that I have a very eccentric CV. Of course, that's one of the things I love about my work, getting to work with a bit of everything.)

Despite the ponderous subjects, this is not what you'd call a "heavy" paper. It's a compendium of various reports. Having said that, many of these reports we compiled are either published only in a very limited way elsewhere, or are unpublished. These include internal park reports, collections information, and other such documentation. We cast a very wide net to be as comprehensive as possible; as such, you might think that some of the things we included are very marginal. There's everything from mammoth bonebeds to a tooth fragment found in a cave at Grand Canyon NP. There's dung-filled caves and several track sites. There are artifacts carved from ivory from Alaska. There's even a mastodon tooth found in Philadelphia that might have belonged to Benjamin Franklin.

In terms of geography, the occurrences are spread throughout the country, but there is a definite bias to the West. This is probably due in large part to factors outside of the actual distribution of proboscideans: there aren't as many large parks in the eastern US, many of the park units are in urban areas, and many of them were established for human events that occurred in the past couple hundred years. (There's one eastern record I wish I could have confirmed. Another time, maybe.) Most of the records are for Pleistocene mammoths and mastodons, although there are a few going back into the Pliocene and Miocene. I certainly now have a much greater appreciation for the fossil record of the Niobrara National Scenic River corridor.

Did we get everything? Well, we cast a wide net, as I said, but I would not be surprised if we missed things, especially given that many of the reports we did include are of limited circulation; surely there are others lurking in file cabinets and in the recesses of hard drives? In fact, I'm hoping this will lead to people pointing out records we missed. If there was an update in ten years, I would absolutely expect that there would be additions from things we overlooked. In particular, our records of fossils in National Natural Landmarks and National Historic Landmarks are in an early stage of development, making these the most logical candidates for new information. Anyway, if you're curious about proboscideans in the Parks, we've got you covered!

Stegomastodon mirificus, same venue. Despite the name, it's not a close relative of mastodons (and certainly has nothing to do with Stegosaurus!); it's a later gomphothere.

On the mis-location of a giant sloth

To start off, I though you might be interested in a new series of pages on the National Park Service paleontology site, concerning the history of paleontology in NPS lands (including going back to before the sites were parks). We're always on the lookout for historical information. One odd case we've recently come across is a sloth which was at one time thought to come from a cave in the Mammoth Cave system.

Hunting the history of the Channel Islands mammoths

My visit to Santa Rosa Island back in June was just part of a larger project on Channel Islands National Park, for which I've been gathering information, researching, and writing for a number of months. Part of that work is summarizing the history of paleontological investigations, which go back well into the 19th century, and one of the most important parts of that is the history of mammoth finds on the islands. As often happens the story turned out to involve many more parts than I thought.

Fossil Horses of the National Park Service

Every so often I like to do an overview of a fossil group in National Park Service lands. We've had proboscideans, dinosaurs, sloths, and bison, plus late Cambrian and Late Ordovician summaries, and an update to a published packrat midden roundup. This time around, I present Equidae, the horse family. Horses have a long and distinguished fossil record in the NPS, from the Eocene to end-Pleistocene Equus, the modern horse genus. (Note: if this was a formal setting, I'd stick to "Equidae" and "equids" throughout, but I think we can get away with "horses" here.) Cue the map with giant caption:

Another in the long line of long captions. There is some question about the location or antiquity of the records for 30, 31, and 32, so they are marked with gray question marks. 1. John Day Fossil Beds National Monument; 2. Nez Perce National Historical Park; 3. Hagerman Fossil Beds NM; 4. Yellowstone National Park; 5. Fossil Butte NM; 6. Great Basin NP; 7. Golden Gate National Recreation Area; 8. Death Valley NP; 9. Tule Springs Fossil Beds NM; 10. Mojave National Preserve; 11. Lake Mead NRA; 12. Glen Canyon NRA; 13. Grand Canyon NP; 14. Santa Monica Mountains NRA; 15. Joshua Tree NP; 16. Bering Land Bridge NPRES; 17. Kobuk Valley NP; 18. Wind Cave NP; 19. Badlands NP; 20. Agate Fossil Beds NM; 21. Niobrara National Scenic River; 22. Carlsbad Caverns NP; 23. Guadalupe Mountains NP; 24. Big Bend NP; 25. Waco Mammoth NM; 26. Padre Island National Seashore; 27. Mammoth Cave NP; 28. Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail; 29. Valley Forge NHP; 30. Chesapeake and Ohio Canal NHP; 31. Piscataway Park; 32. George Washington Birthplace NM; 33. Cumberland Island NS; 34. Big Cypress NPRES.

Stillwater tusk(s): Minnesota's first

Stillwater, Minnesota is not the kind of place that comes to mind when thinking about good elephant country. If you've never been there, there's a bit of a drop from the top of the St. Croix Valley to the river (the map coming up will make this clear). Furthermore, Stillwater is not noted for its broad floodplain, so a proboscidean wouldn't have much space if it did come down. However, the deep valley of the St. Croix itself is of geologically recent vintage, a parting gift of the most recent ice age sending meltwater through an area marked by billion-year-old faults. This is all a long-winded way of saying that compared to today, it would have been much easier to have mammoths and mastodons wandering around the future area of Stillwater right after the ice had cleared out, only where they were wandering wouldn't have looked very much like how it looks like today.

In fact, what appears to be the first documented find of mammoth or mastodon fossils in Minnesota was made in Stillwater in 1856 (Anonymous 1860; Stauffer "1945"). The find was briefly mentioned in a description of the Minnesota Historical Society ("Already we find it its museum the remains of the first mastodon found in the State, presented by A. [Abram or Abraham] J. Van Vorhes, esq., of Stillwater"; Anonymous 1860), but a fuller account would not be made until Newton Horace Winchell took an interest in it.

According to Winchell, who met with Van Vorhes, the find came from coarse river gravel (actually the base of a bed of fine sand 30–40 feet thick [9–12 m] according to the included stratigraphic section) "far above the present river, but within the main valley" and consisted of a single mastodon tusk (Winchell 1878). Obviously, as an isolated find there's really no way to be certain where the tusk was when its services were no longer required by its owner, but we take our tusks where we find them. (There are differences between mastodon and mammoth tusks, but I don't know if these were known in the mid-1800s, or if this is just a case of "mastodon = generic American proboscidean".) Van Vorhes also reported pottery fragments at the top of the sand bed. Eight feet (about 2.5 m) of the tusk went to the Academy of Sciences of St. Paul (Winchell 1878), and would have been lost in the 1881 fire (mentioned previously).

Winchell also included an extensive quotation from Van Vorhes, who reported multiple tusks "were found about eight or ten feet [about 3 m] above the base of the hill: the hill at this point rises at an angle of about 45°. After excavating in the base of the hill on the grade of Myrtle Street about 37 feet [11 m], the tusks were found, consequently 37 feet below the surface. At this point the hill was about 90 feet high [27 m].

The crockery I found some thirty feet [9 m] farther into the hill and some six or eight feet [about 2 m] higher in the strata. This hill is a continuous tongue of land lying between the Florence mill stream and a spring run. The two streams run parallel and some 350 feet [107 m] apart. The hill is so steep on the Florence mill side as to be inaccessible except by clinging to roots and brush growing on it. The material at the base is sand and small gravel. Where the tusks were found the strata were pure sand ten or twelve feet thick [about 3 m], exhibiting clearly the direction of the current in an eastward inclination one or two degrees."

Leaving aside the question of one tusk or multiple tusks, the location of the find can be reasonably well established from Van Vorhes’s recollections (refreshing for a mid-19th-century find!). The Florence flour mill is long gone, and was not built until 1872, so Van Vorhes was using the then-current geography to describe the 1856 situation. However, as mentioned in the linked article, "The water for the mill was brought down from a dam located where the Pitman House once stood, now the northern portion of Trinity Lutheran Church, and supplied by a brook from McKusick’s Lake." The church is adjacent to Myrtle Street between 3rd Street N and 4th Street N, and a valley can be traced from this area to the lake. The "spring run" seems most likely to be related to a valley to the south, but the present-day distance is much greater than 350 feet. Given that Van Vorhes was an experienced surveyor, it's unlikely he would have been off by hundreds of feet or more; it seems more likely to me that the critical area has been so heavily modified in later years that the 1856 watercourses have been obscured or obliterated. My guess is that the find was made within 500 feet (150 m) of the present location of the church.

This map (helps to click) shows several of the landmarks mentioned above. As I said, I think the find was made in the vicinity of the modern church. (Here's a plug: I've found the Earth Point topo map overlay for Google Earth invaluable!)

The location was retransmitted incorrectly in Hay (1924:44), who placed it in Browns Creek. I suspect this stems from a misreading of a later report by Winchell. Winchell (1888:397) stated "In the fall of 1872 the writer [Winchell] first visited Stillwater, and in company with Mr. Abram Van Vorhes examined the deposit of tripoli in the valley of Brown's Creek. At the same time Mr. Van Vorhes pointed out the drift bank in which he had found ancient pottery and the remains of the mastodon." It's not hard to see how a reader may have come to the conclusion that the "drift bank" was in Browns Creek. This creek, though, is on the north side of Stillwater; Highway 96 borrows part of its valley. It is approximately 1.4 miles (2.3 km) north of the actual area of the find.

The loss of the specimen relegated it to a paper curio. Winchell returned to it once more, in 1910, which is notable because he hedged on the mastodon identification, acknowledging it could have been an "elephant" (mammoth). Aside from Hay (1924), the only other place it seems to have appeared in the literature since Winchell is Stauffer's inventory of Minnesota's Pleistocene fossils (usually given as 1945, but at least 1948). Winchell’s report is #17 in this publication, and Stauffer classified it as "Elephas sp.", which translates as "some kind of proboscidean". Stauffer included another Stillwater find, #6, a tusk found in terrace gravels “in the edge of Stillwater” at an unspecified time. With such little information, it is impossible to say anything else about it.

[An unrelated closing note: I really ought to plug the Geological Society of Minnesota more frequently for local readers; for example, there was a talk this week on Cretaceous fossils in Minnesota. This would have been the normal closing session of the spring lecture series, but an opportunity arose for the GSM to co-sponsor a presentation by Peter Brannen on "The Ends of the World", his book about extinction events, Monday, May 20th (see flyer below for more details). The fall lecture series will start up in September. The GSM staffs a booth during the State Fair in the Education building if you'd like to stop by and chat in person. Lectures are free and open to the public.]

Here's a flyer for the upcoming talk. Note: "Blue Line" should be "Green Line".

References

Anonymous. 1860. Minnesota. The Historical Magazine 4(5):141–142.

Hay, O. P. 1924. The Pleistocene of the middle region of North America and its vertebrated animals. Carnegie Institute of Washington Publication 322A.

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.

Winchell, N. H. 1878. Primitive man at Little Falls. Minnesota Geological and Natural History Survey Annual Report 6:53–65.

Winchell, N. H. 1888. The geology of Washington County. Pages 375–398 in N. H. Winchell and W. Upham. The geology of Minnesota. Minnesota Geological and Natural History Survey, Final Report 2. Johnson, Smith & Harrison, state printers, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Winchell, N. H. 1910. Extinct Pleistocene mammals of Minnesota. Bulletin of the Minnesota Academy of Science 4:414–422.

The Pacific Mastodon

Mastodons have been in the news this week, thanks to a new paper by Alton Dooley et al. that makes a case for distinguishing a new Pleistocene species, Mammut pacificus, from the familiar Mammut americanum. The paper is freely available, so give it a look if you're interested in the technical side of fossil proboscideans (mammoths, mastodons, elephants, and friends). If you're interested but not quite up to speed on the details, there's also an in-depth interview with the lead author.

The skull of the type specimen of M. pacificus, Figure 1 in Dooley et al. 2019. From the caption: "Cranium in: (A) dorsal, (B) ventral, (C) left lateral, (D) right lateral, (E) posterior, (F) distal end of left tusk (I1), lateral, and (G) right tusk (I1), lateral view. Teeth include left and right M2–M3. (A–E) are images of a resin cast of the holotype cranium on exhibit at the Western Science Center. All images are orthographic views of photogrammetric models. Scale = 10 cm."

Although mastodons and mammoths are among the most familiar extinct animals, our understanding of their species is still fairly hazy. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the issue, the short answer is that paleontologists historically loved to name proboscidean species. The long answer is too long for a post, but there's a little 1,800-page two-volume monograph by Henry Fairfield Osborn that may provide some illumination. You can read and download the volumes from the Biodiversity Heritage Library (both) and Internet Archive (1, 2). Two caveats for the reader: both volumes are large files (88 and 103 mb, respectively), and Osborn had some* ideas about taxonomy and evolution that have not quite stood the test of time. The 1920s and 1930s were a splitting time, and Osborn could split with the best of them. Over the following decades researchers have gradually settled on a shortlist of a few species and genera, but there are still a lot of questions, and given the results from the original binge of species-naming there hasn't been much of an appetite for creating more.

*By "some" I mean "all of them".

Western North America appears to have been mammoth country; mastodons are not particularly abundant, with many finds only coming in the past couple of decades. Dooley et al.'s project started with a mastodon found at Diamond Valley Lake West Dam near Hemet, California. This mastodon, now on display at the Western Science Center and known familiarly as "Max", has small third molars for its size. (As the interview relates, this fact only became apparent when Dooley was working on exhibit text, and then the project grew from there.) The authors began making comparisons to other mastodon specimens. What they concluded, after several years of work, was that mastodons from California and southern Idaho shared a small suite of characteristics unlike the more familiar mastodons of eastern North America. Aside from the small third molars, these include six fused sacral vertebrae (usually five in M. americanum), femora with relatively thicker shafts, no mandibular tusks (M. americanum sometimes has tusks in the lower jaw), and males with relatively thinner tusks at the base.

Figure 33 from Dooley et al. 2019. The caption there reads "Red circles mark all known M. pacificus localities, while blue circles mark the M. americanum localities that produced teeth used in this study and represented in Table S2. Note that while there are many additional M. americanum localities that were not included in this study and that are not indicated on the map, there are no known M. americanum localities in California. The M. americanum locality in Oregon is a non-diagnostic specimen that was included as M. americanum in this study, but that could represent M. pacificus."

Dooley et al. found not only that all of the mastodons that could be studied from California shared these characteristics, but that the differences extended well into the Pleistocene, into the Irvingtonian land mammal stage. The mechanism for species separation would most likely be ecological: mastodon fossils are particularly rare in the mountain and desert country that intervenes between California and the rest of North America, and there may simply have not been enough suitable suitable mastodon environments in that region to keep the California population connected to the eastern population. In recognition of this distinct population, Dooley et al. coined the name M. pacificus, the Pacific mastodon. Moral of the story? Keep looking at your fossils, even if it's something seemingly well-known; you never know when something unusual might turn up.

References

Dooley, A. C., E. Scott, J. Green, K. B. Springer, B. S. Dooley, and G. J. Smith. 2019. Mammut pacificus sp. nov., a newly recognized species of mastodon from the Pleistocene of western North America. PeerJ 7:e6614. doi:10.7717/peerj.6614.

Photos from Albuquerque

Back in October I attended the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, held at Albuquerque, New Mexico. The meeting was co-hosted by the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. Part of the program of the annual meeting is a reception at a co-hosting institution, where the attendees can mingle among the institution's exhibits. I was fortunate enough to be in the company of JP and Sarah Hodnett, who are very familiar with the museum. (In fact, we'd actually spent most of that day there already, working the National Fossil Day event.) Thanks also to JP and Sarah for helping me get around Albuquerque!

We also had the able assistance of ceratopsids for National Fossil Day.