Science in a Troubling Political Climate – Dr. Chris Widga – Part 2

New Hampshire doesn’t have a state museum.  I never realized there were such things until someone I interviewed mentioned a mastodon fossil in Albany, which prompted me to travel to the NY State Museum soon after to see it.

Not understanding what a state museum is, it shocked me that there was no admission fee; anyone from anywhere could visit the museum at no cost.  I marveled then—as I marvel still—that such places exist. (To be clear: not all state museums are free.)

The Cohoes Mastodon at the NY State Museum in Albany, NY; picture taken by the author of this blog.  I learned of this mastodon thanks to Dartmouth professor, Dr. Roger Sloboda, after interviewing him for a piece I was writing about a mammoth & mastodon exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science in 2012.

 

 

Illinois not only has a state museum, that museum is made up of five separate museums with over 13 million artifacts.  And in 2015, Governor Bruce Rauner wanted to close it completely.

During a messy and contentious budget battle, the museum was shuttered for nine months, only to be reopened this past July with a new $5 admission fee.  But by then, most of the staff had gone, forced to take jobs in other places as their future at the museum was decidedly uncertain.

 

Screenshot from this page of the Illinois State Museum website.

 

No one knows this better than Dr. Chris Widga, who had been a vertebrate paleontologist employed at the Illinois State Museum.  He now works at the Center for Excellence in Paleontology at East Tennessee State University (ETSU).

“The whole question of Channel Islands and island mammoths probably got me through last winter,” Dr. Widga explained as we spoke by phone.

We were discussing the effect islands had on proboscidean evolution and the exciting recent research done in part by researchers from The Mammoth Site and the National Park Service.

“In Illinois, as the State government was falling apart around my ears, as the State Museum was closed, I basically closed my door and was doing the analysis for the Quaternary International article. In so doing, I was thinking about these pygmy mammoths. As it’s icy outside and subzero for about six weeks at a time, that kept my sanity.” He laughed.  “So the Channel Islands has been my refuge, I guess, even though I’ve never actually been out on one of them.”

The move from Illinois to Tennessee was not just a contrast in physical environments.  It also meant moving from a scientific institution founded in 1855 to one that has been open for just 10 years.  Dr. Widga explained that a mere two weeks prior to his start date at ETSU, the university formed a partnership with a local science center.   The ETSU staff maintains the collections, conducts research, and oversees excavations at the nearby Gray Fossil Site.  The science center staff is responsible for educational activities within the museum and overall maintenance.

“Their [educational] philosophy is very similar to ours,” Dr. Widga said of the science center. “It’s inquiry-based. We want people to come in and learn through asking questions rather than just be spoon-fed facts.”

So much of what Dr. Widga has done involves public outreach.  From videos about the collections at the Illinois State Museum to long-distance learning programs like The Mammoth Expedition, work he did in conjunction with Dr. Katy Smith at Georgia Southern University and with the Milwaukee Public Museum.

When I commented on how much I loved that kind of publicly accessible information, his response was, “Part of that is because I’m in a museum. I’m not buried under coursework and teaching. Outreach is valued. The way you justify your existence in a museum is to connect with the public.  And part of that is figuring out how we can connect with the public in ways where it’s an exponential relationship.”

In other words, not having a one-on-one conversation with a museum visitor, but creating a website about the Ice Age in the Midwest, for example.

Figure from a presentation done by Dr. Chris Widga as part of the National Science Foundation grant received; image courtesy of Chris Widga.

 

Despite everything he’s gone through, there is no question Dr. Widga loves what he does.  It permeates his voice when he speaks of paleontology, and it prompted me to ask if he ever becomes excited at work.  His response was a definitive ‘YES.’

By way of explanation, he quoted his now-retired colleague, Dr. Jeff Saunders, who used to say, “‘Going to work in the morning was like going to Disney Land everyday.’”

Not only did the two scientists literally work across the hall from each other at the Illinois State Museum, they were apparently known to shout out excitedly to the other whenever one read a great article or wanted to share a relevant scientific image.

“Part of the reason I like museums is because you just never know!” Dr. Widga continued. “Some of the new things come from the collections; some of the new things come from new papers. You read them and you’re like, ‘oh, this explains it!’ It was something that you had been working on for a long time and, all of a sudden, somebody else had that last piece of the puzzle that puts the whole thing together.

“At least once a day—even on the worst days—there’s something that comes through and I’m like, ‘oh, this is so cool!’”

Proboscideans at Morrill Hall at the University of Nebraska State Museum of Natural History; image courtesy of Chris Widga

 

The seemingly idyllic work environment in Illinois lasted for a decade until 2015. Despite protests, a MoveOn.org petition and public outcry about the museum closing, Dr. Widga and his colleagues were forced to consider other options.  The fate of the museum was out of their hands.

“There was a point as I started looking for jobs last year that I asked myself, you know, do I want to continue in this vein?”

“I’d watched many of [my colleagues] that had taken jobs in Research One institutions [become] totally burned out.  Or they’d kind of gone in weird and funky directions, not because the research was taking them in that direction, but because they were getting pressure from their institution to go in a certain direction or something like that.

“And that was part of the fun of the Illinois State Museum is that I could work on anything. Nobody was saying, ‘You have to work on elephants.’ That was a choice that was mine. Nobody was saying, ‘well, you have to work on dogs.’ That was a choice that was mine. You could chase whatever questions were out there.

“The feedback that I got from the people that interviewed me [was that] they were very interested in what I did.  It was a very different situation than what we were going through at the Illinois State Museum where, essentially, you were being told, ‘what you do is not important.  And none of what you do—your position, your entire existence—is important.’ [The feedback I got while interviewing for other jobs] revived this idea that what we do is important, and it’s exciting.”

I couldn’t help but compare his experience in Illinois to the general anti-science climate in our government today.  It was particularly interesting for me to speak with Dr. Widga about his paper on Pleistocene ecology a day or so after the House Science Committee’s so-called hearing on climate change.  Dr. Widga’s infectious enthusiasm took a very somber turn, as he conceded how difficult things become when “politics starts really driving the boat and reason takes a back seat.”

“That won’t change any of the science,” he added, “[but] it may change how the science is funded. It also won’t change any outreach that we do or the educational activities! In fact, if anything, it’s going to make those seem more important and put more emphasis on those.

“We can talk about the scientific community writ-large, but certainly within the paleontological community, you will find very few working paleontologists, working scientists, who say that education and outreach is not a good thing anymore.

“It used to be that you could just hole-up and do your research and never really interact with the public.  But if anything, this whole process [with the IL governor and the Illinois State Museum] has made us realize that that can’t happen.

“There’s this realization that pre-dates this modern political atmosphere: That you really do need to work with the public and you need to make sure that the point of what you’re doing is out there. Not just in terms of dinosaurs are always cool so therefore that’s why we’re doing it. But we’re also doing it to learn more about how our world works–the nuts-and-bolts of how ecosystems are put together, the nuts-and-bolts of how climate changes impact those ecosystems–that has real-life implications for today and into the future.

“And there’ve been some really loud voices in the last couple of years that have said that over and over and over again. Some of which are people like Jacquelyn Gill! And that is a big shift in science. It’s a big shift in science communications.

“I’m glad that we were moving on that before the current [political] atmosphere because it makes it much more difficult to sideline us as, you know, a bunch of eggheads.”

It didn’t take long for our conversation to take a positive swing upward, as Dr. Widga then described possible future projects involving scientists across the country.

His statement “I’ve always been of the opinion that science is a collaborative effort” couldn’t be more apt.  And I, for one, cannot wait to see what he and his colleagues work on next.

Artwork by Velizar Simeonovski based on scientific research at Mastodon Lake in Aurora, IL; courtesy of Chris Widga

*****

THANK YOU, Dr. Chris Widga, for your generosity of time and spirit in speaking with me about paleontology and the difficulty you’ve gone through.  I loved conversing with you, and I’m eager to read about, watch or see the projects you dive into next!

 

References:

1. Illinois State Museum reopens to public after nine-month shutdown, John Reynolds, The State Journal-Register, July 2, 2016
2. Closing decimates Illinois State Museum management, Chris Dettro, The State Journal-Register, December 27, 2015
3. Much of Illinois State Museum management leaves amid closure, Chicago-Tribune, December 28, 2015
4. Museums caught in middle of state budget showdown, Steve Johnson, Chicago-Tribune, June 25, 2015
5. Rainer prepares to close state museums, shutter some prisons to balance ‘phony’ Democratic budget, Becky Schlikerman, Chicago Sun-Times, June 24, 2015

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Rewriting the Story of How They Died – Columbian Mammoths in Waco

[[The following text has been edited from the original post.  Email me for the original post: mostlymammoths (at) gmail.com or read the full scientific paper by the authors here.]]

*****

Sometimes, it just takes a different point of view.

The largest known potential nursery herd of Columbian mammoth fossils in the world exists in Waco, Texas.  Of the 25 mammoth skeletons found to-date, 16-22 of them died at the same time. Something catastrophic occurred to these animals in the Pleistocene, but just what remains inconclusive.

While some speculate death by lightning, disease or miring, the predominant theory maintains that this is a herd of mammoths that died and were buried in the same flash flood.  It’s an idea that has stuck for many years given the existence of aquatic fauna and the evidence of an ancient river upon which many of the fossils have been found.

Image of Female Mammoth “W” at the Waco Mammoth National Monument, photo by Larry D. Moore CC BY-SA 3.0, 2013

 

But Logan Wiest, Don Esker and Steven Driese of Baylor University have a different hypothesis, one published this past December in Palaios.  By studying traces on the bones available in situ, as well as those available in the nearby Mayborn Museum, they offer an entirely new idea: water didn’t kill them; its absence did.  Struggling to find water in a drought, these animals may have collapsed and died at a watering hole that could no longer sustain them or anything else.

Columbian mammoths were enormous animals.  In general, they are known to be much larger than woolly mammoths and considerably larger than mastodons, both of which were behemoths in their own right.

The mammoth skeletons at Waco are thought to be a matriarchal herd, consisting mainly of females and youth (no calves).  The evidence suggests a herd, and there is more research to be done to prove it using stable isotopes.  A single bull has been discovered in a different geologic layer.  Separate fossils of other species—none of them complete except for a western camel—have also been found throughout the site.

Don admitted he didn’t have an alternative explanation for the death of so many animals. He invited his colleague, Logan Wiest, to take a closer look at the fossil evidence.

“I’d brought [Logan] in hoping he’d look at the [site’s paleosols],” Don said. “I knew he was a trace fossil expert, so I’d hoped he [might] tell me a little bit about the conditions based on worm burrows, [for example].

“What he found instead was much more interesting! He found that there were all kinds of bite marks on the bones.  We didn’t find those all at once.  It actually took quite a while [before] we recognized what we were seeing as bite marks.  A lot of literature research and a lot of staring at bones.  Those bite marks shouldn’t have been there if the mammoths were immediately buried.

“One of the first things he noticed and was able to identify quickly were dermestid beetle bite marks: pits that the beetles dig in the bones when they’re going to lay eggs.

“I thought that perhaps [evidence of dermestid beetles] might be there, but I didn’t realize the significance of [that evidence].  He’s more of an expert on this than I am.

“And he knew that dermestid beetles don’t eat wet meat.  It actually has to be almost completely dessicated–no moisture left at all, just the fats and proteins–before the dermestid beetles will touch it. And that didn’t fit well with animals that were killed in a flood and rapidly buried.

“Dermestid beetles also don’t burrow. Even a single inch of soil is enough to keep dermestid beetles from digging down to perfectly good meat.  They can’t dig.”

FIG. 7.—Cubiculum isp. on various skeletal elements. A) Slightly elliptical, hemispherical bore on in situ rib of mammoth W. B) Hemispherical boring on mammoth U phalanx (545-BU-MMC). C) Shallow bore on femoral articulation surface 761a-BU-MMC. D) Shallow bore on eroded long bone of mammoth D limb fragment (203-BU-MMC). E) Hemispherical bore in cancellous bone on the surface of a spiral fracture (20-BU-MMC). F) Comparative trace generated by captive hide beetles on a wild-hog skull (Sus scrofa). Note the similarities in size and morphology to Figs. 7A-E.

 

Used with permission, PALAIOS, v. 31, 2016, doi:10.2110/palo.2016.053, © SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology 2016.

 

“So, it was Logan looking at this and trying to think about what might be causing this instead of a flood, and he said, ‘Well, how about a drought?’

“I knew about some other evidence that really fit with that. So that clicked with me very quickly, particularly the fact that we’ve got both aquatic and terrestrial animals—a great diversity of them all in the same place.  What that suggested to me was a diminishing watering hole. And I wouldn’t have realized that if Logan hadn’t noticed the dermestids and figured out the drought angle.”

Beyond studying the available literature for trace fossil search images, they tested their ideas on the heads of deceased wild hogs using extant dermestid beetles. In effect: they put the fleshy heads into a contained area and let loose the beetles, who proceeded to consume all of the flesh, leaving clean skulls. It’s an efficient and chemical-free method used by scientists and museums the world over.  But for Logan, Dan and Steven, this provided more data for comparison. Traces left by the beetles on the wild hog skulls are similar to traces on the fossils in Waco.

 

Screenshot of a tweet regarding the use of dermestid beetles from Dr. Lisa Buckley, paleontologist and ichnologist at the Peace Region Palaeontology Research Centre

 

“Previous studies have attributed trace fossils of this size and morphology to dermestid beetles,” Logan wrote in response to what prompted them–of all insects that might have left traces on fossils–to think of dermestid beetles.  “We simply wanted to test this notion by providing bone to dermestid beetles and seeing if these traces could be duplicated under controlled conditions. The beetles came from a nearby museum, but they are also native to Texas. We used the head from a hog simply because wild hogs are easily accessible in central Texas.”

A true ichnologist, Logan added, “I’ve also spent a great deal of time observing bones of modern cattle that were scavenged upon in pastures near my home.”

They didn’t just find evidence of ancient dermestid beetle traces; they found traces of animals who gnawed at the bones: rodents and carnivores, including a possible saber-toothed cat.  It is important to consider that animals drowned and then rapidly buried in a flash flood would not be accessible to these terrestrial scavengers.  This indicates that these Columbian mammoth carcasses were exposed on land long enough to be at least partially devoured.

That, too, is key. Remember that most of these mammoth fossils are articulated skeletons, complete except for missing tails and parts of their feet.  In an area devastated by drought, even scavengers would lack the energy to completely devour and tear apart a carcass.  All of these clues add more weight to the scenario proposed by these authors.

FIG. 5.—Brutalichnus brutalis on M. columbi skeletal elements. A) Arcuate grooves on femoral head 761a-BU-MMC. B) Relatively deep, arcuate grooves on mammoth Q in situ patella. C) Isolated arcuate groove on proximal radius (40-BU-MMC) of mammoth B. Note the similarity in curvature between the arcuate groove and the saber-toothed cat canine recovered from WMNM. The tooth is 6.4 cm for scale. Also note the faintly colored lines that are parallel to the arc of the groove. Dashed white box highlights the area depicted in D. D) Close-up image of groove depicting the microfractures within the trace on 40-BU-MMC. Notice how the fractures are all open towards the upper-right corner of the image, indicating the trace was generated from a force moving from the upper right towards the lower left. E) In situ femur of bull mammoth at WMNM. F) Arcuate grooves on mammoth Q phalanx 522-BU-MMC.

 

Used with permission, PALAIOS, v. 31, 2016, doi:10.2110/palo.2016.053, © SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology 2016.

 

Describing the tools they used to study the fossils in situ, Logan wrote, “The low-angle light creates a shadow which makes the small structures on the bone surface to be easier to see and photograph. We used a Dino-Lite portable microscope to study the fossils mainly because we are unable to transport the mammoth remains from the site to the laboratory. Studying the fossils in place is the best way to ensure preservation of the original positions.”

In other words, because the fossils remain where they were found, they studied those available directly at the site.  Their paper states that the in situ fossils comprise 30% of the available Waco fossils.  The rest reside at the Mayborn Museum, some of which are available in their collections, but most of which remain unopened in their plaster jackets.

“It’s an amazing site,” Don enthused, “and there’s decades and decades of research there, on top of potentially a lot more excavation, too, because they are in NO WAY finished excavating. What they’ve got probably represents a fairly small fraction of the whole deposit.

“One of the things that Logan and I were speculating about [is] if you’ve got a really big regional drought, that should show up in multiple places in the geologic record, especially right in that area.  The bed that we’ve got marking the drought as this depositional hiatus could be covered with bones for acres and acres in every direction.

“And we know that it’s covered in bones at least 80 or 90 feet away from where the known deposits are because we’ve done core sampling that have pulled out large bone fragments.  We only did a couple of them—a couple at random!—and they hit bones both times.”

 

FIG. 4.—Machichnus regularis on various skeletal remains of M. columbi (unless otherwise noted). A) Rodent gnaw marks on rib 764b-BU-MMC. B) Rodent traces on mammoth E limb fragment 203a-BU-MMC. C) Rasps on vertebra of in situ camel. D) Rodent gnaw marks on in situ neural spine of juvenile mammoth T in L1. E) Rodent traces on in situ left scapula of bull mammoth (Q) in L2. F) Close-up image of the same trace depicted in view E.

 

Used with permission, PALAIOS, v. 31, 2016, doi:10.2110/palo.2016.053, © SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology 2016.

 

 

The Waco Mammoth site itself has been around for 39 years, but it has only been part of the National Park Service since July 2015, thanks to President Barack Obama and the work of many people years beforehand who helped bring that to fruition.  Don and I discussed this by phone, given the current political climate and the fears that some National Monuments might lose their status.

“That’s really worrisome,” he remarked. “And what really sticks in my craw about the Waco Monument in particular is that it’s costing the Federal Government almost nothing.  The city of Waco is paying for almost all of the upkeep.  The original buildings? That wasn’t tax money. That was done by good old fashioned fund-raising. And the day-to-day operations are almost all city.  There are a couple of rangers there alongside city employees and some signage and brochures. And that’s really all the Federal Government’s paying into it.”

“It’s a really incredible place.  There are not a lot of sites like this anywhere, as far as in situ fossils sites go.”

*****

A Mammuthus columbi-sized THANK YOU to Don Esker and Logan Wiest for their remarkable generosity in answering my questions and for sharing their research with me.  It was an enormous pleasure speaking with and communicating through email with them.  I loved reading their research and hearing more of the history behind it!!

You can read the paper here.

A sincere and enthusiastic thank you to Kathleen Huber, Managing Editor at Palaios, for her gracious permission to use the figures contained in this post!

References:

1. The Waco National Monument may represent a diminished watering-hole scenario based on preliminary evidence of post-mortem scavenging, Wiest, Logan A.; Esker, Don; Driese, Steven G., Palaios, December 2016, DOI: 10.2110/palo.2016.053
2. Waco National Monument, Waco, TX
3. City of Waco, TX – Waco Mammoth National Monument, Waco, TX
4. Mammoth Opportunity, Jeff Hampton, Baylor Arts & Sciences Magazine, Fall 2016
5. What is Ichnology? from Introduction to Ichnology, Anthony J. Martin, Emory University (This page offers a great explanation of some of the more technical ichnological terms included in the scientific paper referenced for this post. I also recommend Dr. Martin’s book, “Dinosaurs Without Bones” for a more comprehensive look into ichnology.)
6. Flesh-Eating Beetles Explained, Mollie Bloudoff-Indelicato, National Geographic, January 17, 2013

 

Screenshot of the entrance to Waco Mammoth National Monument from a video done by the City of Waco

Persistence Cave: A rich resource for paleontological research

Caves whisper exploration and discovery.

Anyone who has ever set foot in a cave of any size cannot help but wonder what lies beyond, what lurks in the crevices, the darkness.  Stepping into a cave is stepping into the entrance of mystery just waiting to be revealed.  In a world that has been largely tamed to fit the human species, there are few spaces that still hold an element of danger.  These unknown spaces beckon to the adventurous: “Explore me!” And who wouldn’t answer that call?

Me, that’s who. I am perfectly happy learning about the discoveries in caves from other people, thank you very much.

For people like me, Twitter and blogs have provided tantalizing glimpses of such explorations the world over.  And one of the more fascinating adventures has taken place at Persistence Cave, just one cave of many at Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota.

“Wind Cave National Park is full of fossils. Almost everywhere you go there’s going to be fossils: in the cave and at the surface. So Wind Cave National Park actually has [perhaps] 30-40 fossil sites.”

PhD student Jeff Martin explained more about the work he and his colleagues conducted there last season as he and his wife were literally driving to Texas to begin a new chapter in their lives. He was in the moving truck; his wife was in the jeep ahead.  Jeff and I had been in touch by email from time-to-time over the past year. As luck would have it, and thanks to his seemingly unending generosity, the time to discuss Persistence Cave by phone was while he was on the open road.

Wind Cave—as we know it now—was named because of the air that blows through an opening within.  It was considered a sacred place to the Native Americans long before settlers knew of its existence.  The Lakota people refer to the Black Hills (where Wind Cave is located) as ‘He Sapa’, (although it is listed as ‘Paha Sapa‘ on the Wind Cave National Park site).  Eventually, in 1903, it became the 8^th National Park, but the first one to center around a cave.

Persistence Cave, a much smaller and less-explored cave in the park, was discovered by accident by Marc Ohms, spelunker and physical science technician for the park, in 2004.  His initial foray into the cave was brief: moving a cap rock, peering inside, seeing a rattlesnake, and deftly removing himself from the opening.

But its value as a fossil site was discovered thanks to another member of the park.

“Rod Horrocks, Wind Cave National Park Physical Scientist, in 2013, collected some sediment for preliminary analysis to see whether the site is paleontologically productive,” Jeff explained by email earlier.

It was, and this analysis is what eventually brought several scientists from diverse locations together.

Rod Horrocks sent the material to Dr. Jim Mead, Persistence Cave Project Leader, then at East Tennessee State University, where Jeff was a Master’s student at the time.  Jeff eventually moved to the University of Maine for his PhD, where Dr. Jacquelyn Gill was his advisor.

“Sharon Holte, PhD Candidate at the University of Florida, was also a previous Master’s student of Jim’s, as well as Dr. Chris Jass at the Royal Alberta Museum,” wrote Jeff, explaining the connections between the Persistence Cave teammates. “He knows that we each excel in different aspects of vertebrate paleontology, and he invited each of us to collaborate on [and] bring our expertise into the research project. I brought Dr. Gill with me to the Black Hills to see the cave and to learn how a paleontological excavation is usually conducted. She brings a different set of skills related to paleoecology and palynology.”

Also on the team are undergraduate Chason Frost from the University of Maine who studies horticulture.  His skills and those of Dr. Gill help the group understand that fossil plants and pollen found in the cave.

Sharon Holte, aside from being one of the three principal spelunkers in this dig, is in charge of educational components.  Chris Bell at the University of Texas Austin studies the fossil rodents; Dr. Chris Jass and Dr. Jim Mead study fossil rodents as well, but include fossil snakes.

“Each person has their role,” he said, “their own ecological-niche, if you will.”

And Jeff?  He is the “bison guy.”

“My PhD research and dissertation focuses on bison body size adaptation to climate change over the past 40,000 years and how does that evolutionary legacy influence the bison we ranch today,” he wrote before he graduated this past Spring. “To answer this, I am using Persistence Cave and other fossil sites in Wind Cave National Park boundaries to geographically isolate my variation to only local animals.”

Wind Cave National Park, currently home to 400+ extant bison, offers information on both fossil bison and their living descendants.

 

EPSON DSC picture; bison at Wind Cave National Park, public domain from the National Park Service

 

“Collectively, we (Jacquelyn, Chason, and I) will then also look at the pollen grains and macro-botanicals preserved in the sediment to reconstruct the paleoecology and paleoclimate of the Black Hills through the last 11,000+ years to today. This is [to understand] the climate and ecology the bison were living in at these times.”

But let’s get back to the cave itself.

Below is an image of Natural Trap Cave (another exciting fossil cave dig in Wyoming; photo from myfossil.org):

 

 

Compare that to an image of Persistence Cave from the top looking in (photo: Chason Frost as posted on Jeff Martin’s blog here):

 

 

 

 

And one of Sharon Holte peering out:

 

 

 

Finally, below is an image from the Rapid City Journal of “a tight spot in Wind Cave” (photo: National Park Service):

 

When I asked about how this image compares to the space within Persistence Cave, I was surprised by Jeff’s email response.

“The picture above is much larger than the cave we are working in,” he described of the 2015 dig.  “The cave is very narrow and only fits one person’s shoulder width and up to 1.5 shoulder widths in places. The vertical height is similar to the above photo though.”

“I’m a broad shouldered fella’ and very, very tall,” he continued by phone recently. “The space in there to turn around is not quite enough for me, so I’d have to climb in and then climb backwards out.”

“Chris Jass and I are both the exact same height. Chris is a far more experienced spelunker, and even Chris wasn’t going in there.”

Sharon Holte, Chason Frost and Jim Mead were the principal spelunkers for the site.  Only one person could be in the cave at a time, and their only source of light came from a headlamp.  Trowels, buckets and ropes: their only tools.

 

“I thanked them endlessly, and I still thank them for all the work they were doing down in there,” Jeff said of his three colleagues. (A video of Sharon’s work in the cave can be found here.)

Work involved taking chunks of sediment in buckets out of the cave, tagging it, labeling the information (where that sediment appeared on the appropriate grid, at what depth, etc.), bagging that sediment, and then sending it down—by zipline, of all things!—to the truck below, where it could be taken to be screenwashed by other team members. (You can see a video of that process here, on Jeff’s blog.)

 

Screenshot of tweet during the 2015 Persistence Cave (#cavebison) dig

 

Their fossil discoveries have been diverse. Jeff wrote that “[a] camelid, (the species is unknown at this time), has been an extraordinary find. We have 5 different kinds of snakes and at least 5 different species of bats. [A] pika is also an intriguing find.”

 

 

 

 

 

Screenshots of some of the many tweets during the 2015 Persistence Cave (#cavebison) dig

 

“One of the fun things that we ran across was a ton of Ponderosa pine needles,” he mused later by phone. “That’s the primary tree out there now.  Today, they’re mostly a two-needle bundle. In the past, it seems as though they were a three-needle bundle. And we don’t know exactly what that means yet.  So we’re trying to figure out if that means anything at all; if it’s a genetic difference; or if it truly is an environmental difference that it’s responding to.”

 

Screenshots of some of the many tweets during the 2015 Persistence Cave (#cavebison) dig; the scientists involved in this dig didn’t just conduct research, they also conducted outreach to the larger public through social media.

 

 

Work did not continue as expected on the site this year for a number of reasons, but it’s not over yet.  Studies on the fossils continue at the University of Maine (pollen and plants); the bison fossils have travelled with Jeff to Texas A&M University where he is now in wildlife sciences; and the rest of the fossils are housed at The Mammoth Site, where Dr. Jim Mead is currently Chief Scientist and Director.

The Mammoth Site is another major connection between many of the team members, as they have each “worked [there] at some point…over the last 40 years.”

As many know, that site is a paleontological (and proboscidean!) goldmine turned museum, thanks to the work of many, including the late Dr. Larry Agenbroad.  Over 60 mammoth fossils have been discovered there to-date, among other fossil species.

Image of the bonebed at The Mammoth Site where excavations continue to this day

 

“He was probably THE reason that I got into the School of Mines [as an undergrad] and was also the reason I got into paleontology,” Jeff said of Dr. Agenbroad.

“I’m not alone,” he continued. “There are several of us that are like that.  We all stem from Larry.”

The reverence in his voice was not difficult for me to understand.

Jeff’s introduction to this paleontologist began when he was much younger, through the 2000 documentary “Raising the Mammoth.” The film focuses on the Jarkov mammoth, and Bernard Buigues’ attempts to excavate it.  The team Buigues calls upon to help include some giants of proboscidean research: Dick Mol and Larry Agenbroad.

A year or so after seeing that film, Jeff’s family traveled to The Mammoth Site.  It was winter in South Dakota, and, he said, his family basically had “the run of the whole place.”  With a graciousness I am sure permeates everyone who works at that site, one of the interpreters (‘docents’) offered to bring Dr. Agenbroad out to meet them.

“There’s 8-year-old me that’s just giddy with joy to be able to meet one of my idols,” Jeff shared with no small amount of enthusiasm. “And then he said, ‘You’re a little bit too young to work for me. Come back when you’re older.’”

“So that’s exactly what I did. I worked for him in [the summers of] 2007 at the Hudson-Meng Bison Kill Site and  2008 and 2009 at the Mammoth Site as an intern while I was at the School of Mines.”

Dr. Agenbroad passed away two years ago, followed by his wife, Wanda, a month later.  This saddened me as someone who did not know him closely; I could only imagine how this affected Jeff, who had.

“I’ve made my peace with it,” he acknowledged, and then said something that truly moved me: “I have several things that Jim [Mead] gave me…and one of them is a pocketknife that I carry on me every single day. One of the same pocketknives that Larry carried on him every single day. So I’ve got Larry with me, right now, as a matter of fact.”

Jeff and his colleagues hope to resume work at Persistence Cave next year.

As we discussed some of the findings from last year’s dig, he said, “The oldest date right now at Persistence Cave is at 39,000 and the youngest date is at 3,200.  We have some 37,000 years of deposits with bison throughout. And we also have [modern-day] bison living at the surface!”

Jeff’s research, both of Persistence Cave and of Project Bison, underscore his passion for this animal, as well as the desire to understand its ecological significance.

“I’m looking at both the fossil record and looking at their body size, using the calcaneum [heel bone] as the proxy for body mass. And then also comparing that to modern bison that have just recently passed away within the past 1-3 years.  That’s what I was doing this past summer: going to carcass sites and measuring their calcanea. The unique thing about Wind Cave is that they have almost every single animal microchipped. So they can track this animal throughout its life. On top of that, they bring them in once a year and weigh them. So now we have a known mass of these animals and now a known measurement, because I measured some of their calcanea.

“I’ve got some [fossil bison calcaneal] measurements that go up to 180 millimeters, and I also have Bison bison today that the longest that I’ll find are 130 millimeters.  So quite a body size change in between the fossil and modern.”

Jeff presented some of his research at last year’s Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) meeting in Dallas.

Describing the results, he explained, “As it gets colder, bison get bigger.  As temperatures are increasing, bison get smaller. That has modern day application to the bison industry today. If we’ll have smaller bison with future global warming, we’re going to have to change our management options.”

As I pondered all of the information Jeff had shared with me about the work he and his colleagues had done, I couldn’t help but go back to the images of how small the cave actually is. If Wind Cave National Park has an abundance of fossil sites, why go through the trouble of trying to access this one?

“Surface localities often represent a one-time event,” he explained. “Persistence Cave represents many events over a long period of time. That’s the unique part of this locality.”

I will continue to enjoy their adventures from the safety of my computer!

 

**************

Jeff Martin: you were extraordinarily generous with your time and responses to my myriad questions.  Likewise, I am in awe of how open you were with your experiences.  For being willing to share all of this, I am truly grateful.  It was an honor and a pleasure connecting with you!

When #CaveBison starts up again, you can be sure it will be on Twitter!  Follow these scientists:

@BisonJeff

@JacquelynGill

@SharonHolte

@Pocket_Botanist

@MammothSite

 

You can follow Jeff’s research here and here. 

Jacquelyn Gill is one of three hosts of the podcast, Warm Regards, which discusses climate change.

 

[REPOST] The Mammoth Site and Dr. Larry Agenbroad – Renowned Paleontologist

Ask Dr. Larry Agenbroad what his most exciting discovery as a paleontologist has been, and his response is: “Too many to select just one.”

He cites, among the top three, discoveries with which you might already be very familiar:

• the most complete pygmy mammoth skeleton found to-date,

• an 11,000 year-old bison kill site,

• and the Jarkov mammoth in Siberia.

These discoveries—like his work—are from all over the world.

(Image of Dr. Agenbroad and fossil replica, courtesy of Dr. Larry Agenbroad. If you, like me, thought this was a saber-toothed cat fossil, guess again! See the end of the post for more info*.)

Pygmy mammoths are the smallest of the known species, and their remains have been found on Wrangel Island (off of Russia) and on the Channel Islands (off of California). It is thought that their size evolved from their isolated existence on islands, an environment that would not be able to support multiple Columbian or woolly mammoths.

Dr. Agenbroad led the team that excavated the most complete pygmy mammoth skeleton yet found. A cast of the fossil can be seen at the Channel Islands National Park Visitor Center, and a replica of this fossil in-situ is in the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. The SBMNH’s website states that Dr. Agenbroad has found 66 more fossil sites on the islands.

Nebraska is home to the Hudson-Meng Bison Kill Site. Named after Bill Hudson and Albert Meng, who found it by accident in 1954, it eventually produced almost 600 separate bison fossils. These fossils represent a species of bison that does not exist today. Dr. Agenbroad began excavation here in the 1970’s. Different theories exist regarding why so many 11,000 year-old remains of the same species are in one place.

You can see Dr. Agenbroad in the Discovery Channel documentary, “Raising the Mammoth”. It details the discovery and research of the Jarkov mammoth in Siberia. Dr. Agenbroad is among other well-known paleontologists who worked together on this remarkable find: an enormous mammoth encased in ice. That documentary also gives you a peak into the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, South Dakota, where he is the Chief Scientist and Site Director.

Recently accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, the Mammoth Site houses the largest collection of mammoth fossils in the United States. It is open to the public year-round.

Their website lists that they recently found the 61st mammoth fossil this summer; 58 of which are Columbian mammoths, 3 are woolly mammoths.

Woolly mammoths may dominate mainstream imagination, but the species that lived throughout the U.S. was actually the largest (and possibly the least hairy) representative of that species: the Columbian mammoth.

The Mammoth Site, a growing museum on 8.5 acres of land, is built over the initial excavation area. And that area was originally intended as part of a housing development. Construction came to a halt in 1974 when mammoth fossils were found.

Joe Muller, COO/Business Manager of the museum, describes the initial structure built in 1975 as a modest plywood construction. An addition was made to that structure in 1976 and 1978.

“That [addition] remained over part of the site so people could come in and look a little bit at some of the fossils,” he said in a phone interview.

“[Researchers] would excavate outside (there was a self-imposed hiatus from excavating for 1980-1982 and 1984-1985 until a building could be constructed over the site) until in 1986, the building was built over the sinkhole area. Then in 1990 we enclosed a lobby area with a gift shop.”

Today, there is an additional 4000 square feet of enclosed exhibit space, plus 8,000 square feet for laboratory, bone storage, research library, offices, bathrooms and storage (which opened in May 2001).

And–to give readers an additional sense of the size of the museum space–there is a crane.

“We have a crane in the sinkhole area,” he continued, “so that we can remove the fossils, take them to the ‘mammoth elevator’, and then take them to the basement to the laboratory work on.”

The sinkhole is the reason Hot Springs has such a wealth of fossils. As described both on the museum’s website and in the acclaimed book by Adrian Lister and Paul Bahn (Mammoths: Giants of the Ice Age), the area known as “the sinkhole” was created about 26,000 years ago. It was a 65-foot-deep pond framed by steep banks, with an even deeper section through which flowed warm water. Warm water and vegetation are believed to be the temptations that caused mammoths to venture into the pond. Getting out of that pond—or rather, the inability thereof–is believed to have been the cause of their death.

The many fossils that remain today—mostly young male mammoths—were eventually covered and preserved by mud and sediment over thousands of years. A number of these fossils remain in-situ and available to the public at the Mammoth Site. Excavation within the site continues each year, and it is an opportunity for which one can apply—paleontological background or not. Muller advises that one can apply “to come and excavate for five days with Roads Scholars (May & October), then EarthWatch volunteers come for two two-week sessions; basically the month of July.” Amongst the Ice Age fossils found are camel, llama, prairie dog, a giant short-faced bear, wolf, and numerous invertebrates.

The book Mammoths: Giants of the Ice Age lists the surprising fact that mammoth hyoid bones and bile stones have been recovered here.

Dr. Agenbroad explained that “a hyoid bone is a set (5) of bones that support the tongue. Often only one of the set is found.” When asked how something so seemingly small such as a bile stone could be found and identified, he said that is “a non-osteological specimen”, and that they use “chemical analyses to identify them, comparing and contrasting them to modern elephant bile stones.”

Dr. Adrian Lister, one of the authors of the aforementioned book, is listed as one of the former “Visiting Scholars” to the Mammoth Site. Designed and implemented by Dr. Agenbroad, the Visiting Scholar program invites researchers to study at the site.

“I wanted to ‘cross-pollinate’ ideas, methods, and theories with international experts,” wrote Dr. Agenbroad in an email. In response to whether other sites engage in similar activities, he continued, “It is rare for other sites to invite and support a visiting scholar (usually due to budget restrictions).”

The impressive list of “Visiting Scholars” also includes, among others, Adriana Torres of Mexico; Dr. Laura Luzi of Italy; Dr. Daniel Fisher (now of the University of Michigan, one of the many researchers who worked on “Lyuba”, the best preserved baby mammoth found to-date, and mammoth-tusk expert); Dick Mol of the Netherlands;  Dr. Evgeny Maschenko, Dr. Alexei Tikhonov and Dr. Gennady Baryshnikov of Russia; Dr. Ralf Kahlke of Germany; and Dr. Jim Burns of Canada.

In terms of tourists, approximately 100,000 people visit the Mammoth Site each year from all over the world.

“Our town is about 3700 people,” Muller said, referring to Hot Springs, SD, “so when we bring in 100,000 visitors a year, it’s a big economic impact for the city.”

From the United States, visitors from Minnesota and Colorado top the list (visitors from South Dakota itself come in third!), but people from as far as South Africa, Korea, and Australia—among so many other foreign countries—also travel to the site.

The Mammoth Site received accreditation by the American Alliance of Museums in October of 2013.

“We are in the top 6% of museums in the United States, as only about 5.8% of the estimated 17,500 museums are accredited.”

The accreditation process is apparently a lengthy process, and not every museum is successfully accredited upon their initial application. Policies regarding everything from the artifacts and exhibits (its “collections”) to its financial policies are reviewed and evaluated. The Mammoth Site, Muller stated with well-deserved enthusiasm, “made it the first time!”

“We have a $2.2 million major gift campaign going on now,” Muller continued. “$1.6 million is for a ‘Learning Center’, which includes a couple of theatres and a kind of a gathering area. We are planning a bid letting in August and construction to start in October, with a May 2015 opening date.”

The website offers a “buy-a-brick” program as part of that campaign. It is clear that the growth of this museum is–in no small part–a result of the dedication of everyone who works at and is involved with the Mammoth Site. Muller attributes that to a close-knit community within the museum.

“We’re pretty much like a family, and that’s what the reviewers with American Alliance of Museums said that they were really impressed with: how the staff gets along and works together.”

——————————————————————————

*Dr. Agenbroad is pictured with a short-faced bear replica.

The Mammoth Site: http://www.mammothsite.com/

You can apply to excavate at the Mammoth Site! http://www.mammothsite.com/earthwatch.html OR http://www.mammothsite.com/elderhostel.html

Buy-a-brick to help the Mammoth Site campaign! http://mammothsite.pinnaclecart.com/index.php?p=product&id=1064

Pygmy Mammoth, Channel Islands National Park: http://www.nps.gov/chis/historyculture/pygmymammoth.htm

Pygmy Mammoth, Santa Barbara Natural Museum of History: http://www.sbnature.org/exhibitions/199.html

Latin names of mammoth species mentioned:

Pygmy mammoths = Mammuthus exilis

Woolly mammoths = Mammuthus primigenius

Columbian mammoths = Mammuthus columbi

(Earlier post with Dr. Dan Fisher: https://mostlymammoths.wordpress.com/2013/09/10/mammoth-article-qa-dr-daniel-fisher-renowned-paleontologist/)

A Mammuthus columbi-sized THANK YOU to Dr. Larry Agenbroad and Joe Muller for their time, their generous insight, and their work at the Mammoth Site! An equally large thank you to Presston Gabel, Diana Turner and for all who are involved with the work in that museum!

Dick Mol – Renowned Mammoth Expert: Fossil Hunting in the Sea

‘Fossil-hunting’ often brings to mind remote locations filled with rocks, sparse vegetation and a bright, merciless sun.

But Dick Mol–an internationally renowned paleontologist–is part of a team that regularly uncovers fossils in an unusual place: the ocean.

Dick Mol holding Ice Age bison skull found in the North Sea, image courtesy of Rene Bleuanus and Dick Mol

 His expeditions take place upon the North Sea, a large expanse of ocean between the East coast of the United Kingdom and the coasts of several other European countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany up through to Norway.

 

Embed from Getty Images
“The North Sea is very rich,” wrote Dick Mol in an email. “Ever since 1874, fishermen have brought large quantities of bones and molars ashore.”

He himself has written articles about these finds, describing how the area is routinely dredged, enabling large ships passage on this navigational route. This dredging is what helps uncover fossils deposited there so many thousands of years ago. Coupled with trawling—a method of fishing that pulls weighted nets along the sea floor—these fossils are then brought to the surface.

“I learned about the Ice Age mammal remains, trawled by fishermen,” he explained, “from the curator of the Geological and Mineralogical Museum in Leiden, now the NCB Naturalis (Netherlands Center for Biodiversity). At that time, the attic of the museum was full of large bones of trawled mammoth bones, skulls and lower jaws. It was very impressive.”

Fisherman preparing trawling nets as the ship leaves Stellendam harbor for the North Sea, image courtesy of Hans Wildschut and Dick Mol

“I remember,” he continued, “that in November 1992 I brought the late Dr. Andrei Sher, a renowned mammoth expert from Moscow, to the museum. When he entered the large attic, he didn’t believe what he was seeing: perhaps one of the largest collections of isolated mammoth bones in the world. This was recorded by a film crew making a documentary on mammoths in the Netherlands. Once in a while, I rewatch this brief documentary again, and it gives me very good memories of a longtime ago.”

“When he entered the large attic, he didn’t believe what he was seeing: perhaps one of the largest collections of isolated mammoth bones in the world.” — Dick Mol, describing the reaction of Dr. Andrei Sher to a collection of mammoth fossils from the North Sea at the NCB Naturalis in the Netherlands

Known to the world as Dick Mol, his name is actually Dirk Jan Mol, and he has been researching mammoths and other Pleistocene fauna for decades. One cannot study mammoths without becoming acquainted with his name and his work.

In response to what prompted his career in mammoths, he wrote, “I grew up on the border with Germany. Around the town of Winterswijk a lot of different geological sediments and fossils can be found from the Triassic, Cretaceous, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene and Holocene eras. In different quarries and clay-pits you could collect fossils, but none were of mammoths or remains of other Ice Age creatures.”

“I have been, since 1968, fascinated by mammoths. In the literature, you could read that these prehistoric animals stood up to 5 meters at shoulder (which was exaggerated, of course). I wanted to know more about mammoths and their ancestors. I wanted to find my own mammoths, but it seems that the mammoth has found me!”

“I wanted to find my own mammoths, but it seems that the mammoth has found me!” — Dick Mol

His enthusiasm for the topic has lead him to become a visiting scientist in 1990 and 1994 at the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, South Dakota—part of the “Visiting Scholar” program designed by Dr. Larry Agenbroad. He has co-authored numerous papers over the years, and his books include Mammoths (published 1993) and, more recently, Mammoths and Mastodons of the Haute-Loire (published 2010), a bilingual book he co-authored with French paleontologist, Frédéric Lacombat.

Scientists and explorers from all over the world have invited him to help excavate their discoveries: some of the most notable finds include the Jarkov woolly mammoth in Russia (Mammuthus primigenius), the Nolhac steppe mammoth in France (Mammuthus trogontherii), and parts of a mastodon skeleton in Greece (Mammut borsoni), in which the longest tusks found to-date were uncovered (502 cm in length).

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands knighted him for his work in paleontology in 2000. In addition, he is President of Mammuthus Club International and has been involved in the international conference related to mammoth research for years.

His family’s personal collection of fossils exceeds 30,000 specimens that have been used for educational purposes and scientific studies.

Today, he is a Research Associate at the following institutions:

• Natural History Museum Rotterdam, the Netherlands
• Natural History Museum, Milia, Greece
• Historical paleontological collections, Siatista, Greece

For all of his accolades and accomplishments, Dick Mol is a very accessible and kind man. One witnesses his infectious enthusiasm in these two videos about his work in the North Sea:

 

Trawling for Mammoths: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01q0gfr

A Mammoth Task: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01q29mg

 

“Over the years, tons and tons of bones have been trawled by fishermen in their nets,” he reiterated. “Between 1997 and 2003, we weighed the mammoth bones: 57 tons, not including 8000 mammoth molars (!) of woolly mammoths. The southern bight of the North Sea between the British Islands and the Netherlands is very rich in Pleistocene mammal remains. It is a real treasure trove.”

“Between 1997 and 2003, we weighed the mammoth bones: 57 tons, not including 8000 mammoth molars (!) of woolly mammoths. The southern bight of the North Sea between the British Islands and the Netherlands is very rich in Pleistocene mammal remains. It is a real treasure trove.”–Dick Mol

“In the meantime, I have organized 43 mammoth fishing expeditions on the North Sea using big beam trawlers. Quite spectacular and always a good catch. Doing these expeditions gave us very good insight into those areas that are very productive and those areas in which Pleistocene fossils are scarce.”

Given the enormous number of fossils brought up from dredging, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to wonder whether there might be exciting fossil discoveries just waiting to be found if one could go even deeper.

“Yes, for sure,” he agreed. “Most of the bones trawled by the fishermen have been washed out of the seabed by currents. The Eurogully area, off the coast of the province of South-Holland, was dredged from 13 to 40 meters below sea level. At approximately 23-26 meters, there is a rich layer with bones and teeth from the Late Pleistocene. Deeper, there is a layer containing an interglacial fauna (110.000-130.000 BP) including Hippopotamusses and straight-tusked elephants. This is true for the entire southern bight of the North Sea.”

Private collector with the femur of the so-called straight-tusked elephant from the North Sea,image courtesy of Hans Wildschut and Dick Mol

But the cost of such an underwater excavation might be prohibitive.

“Once, I used a diver on one of the expeditions. Visibility was very poor, and it was not successful. But some divers in the past have found some mammoth remains. Amongst others, a diver brought up a complete mammoth tusk.”

Aside from the need to desalinate fossils found in the North Sea, they are not physically treated any differently than fossils one finds on land. And despite the wealth of fossils found thus far, Dick Mol does not have any favorites.

“For me,” he wrote, “every bone, bone fragment or remnant is unique and tells us a story….”

Mammoth tibia freshly trawled from the North Sea with fish, image courtesy of Hans Wildschut and Dick Mol

Keep in mind, however, that these fragments and bones are not found together.

Paleontology is like detective work: terrestrial excavations include mapping by grid, pictures, and notes related to where each bone is found. All of these details help paleontologists better understand what species it is and what happened to that animal before and after it died.

The bones found in the North Sea are pulled up individually in a mass of fish and other debris.

Without any of the clues available to someone digging on land, this begs the question: can one determine to which species a bone belongs in isolation?

“[A]fter spending more than 40 years of my life identifying isolated skeletal elements (we have never retrieved a complete skeleton from the North Sea bed) again and again, using comparative collections, it is possible to identify the specimens as soon as they are on the deck of the vessel.”

“Sometimes,” he added, “I need to use literature, but in most cases, an experienced anatomist can do it right away.”

And what about the isolated teeth that have been found in abundance?

“[A]t least three different species of mammoths are well-documented: from the Early Pleistocene the southern mammoth, (Mammuthus meridionalis); from the Middle Pleistocene the steppe mammoth, (Mammuthus trogontherii); and from the Late Pleistocene the woolly mammoth, the icon of the Ice Age, (Mammuthus primigenius). The molars of these species are quite different and easy to tell apart from each other by an experienced specialist.”

Grooves and marks upon the bones give rise to questions about who or what caused them: humans or other Pleistocene animals? And how can one tell the difference?

“Hyena gnawing marks and other predators are well-known and, in general, easy to recognize. Of course, you need some training and experience. Sometimes, especially in large bones, one can see the deep grooves in the so-called material spongiosa caused by hyena (pre)molars. Hyena gnawing marks are very often found in the skeletal remains of woolly mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses. The ice-aged hyena was very common on the Late Pleistocene mammoth steppe environment. Cut marks caused by human activity are completely different from those of predators.”

The “quality and quantity” of the fossils in the North Sea are two things that surprise him the most.

“We have huge collections, and we are constantly learning from them.”

Private fossil collection storage, image courtesy of Hans Wildschut and Dick Mol (Dick Mol is pictured on the left)

Please click on this (or any) image to see it in more detail, image courtesy of Hans Wildschut and Dick Mol; highlighting by author

“Recently, many collectors are also focusing on small mammal remains (micro-mammals like voles and lemmings). These remains can be found on the beaches of the North Sea where Pleistocene sediments have been added to strengthen the coastline. Some collectors have hundreds and hundreds of small molars of the entire small mammal fauna. These small mammal remains provide very interesting data to complete the picture of the woolly mammoth and its Ice Age world. In other words, it gives us a window into the small animal community that coexisted with the megafauna.”

“These small mammal remains provide very interesting data to complete the picture of the woolly mammoth and its Ice Age world. In other words, it gives us a window into the small animal community that coexisted with the megafauna.”–Dick Mol

There are two questions that come to mind regarding the volume of fossils collected so far: where are these fossils stored and how long does it take to catalog and study such collections?

“It is a continuous process,” he stated, referring to the length of time needed to catalog and study the fossils.

But in terms of where they are stored, he wrote, “[t]he NCB Naturalis (Netherlands Center of Biodiversity Naturalis in Leiden) has a huge collection of fossil bones from both the North Sea, as well as from dredging operations in the floodplain of our rivers like Rhine, Meuse and IJssel. Really, a huge collection.”

“Using about 200 skeletal elements of mammoths of almost the same size, same age and same gender, we compiled a skeleton for museum display, a huge male individual. Another extensive collection is housed at the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam. Here, a huge collection of Pliocene and Pleistocene marine mammals is stored. Most of these marine mammal remains have been trawled from the seabed as well, and some of these animals coexisted together with terrestrial mammals like mammoths and other large animals. The marine mammals were living in the paleodeltas.”

 

Woolly mammoth skeleton at the NCB Naturalis Leiden Museum, the Netherlands, composed of individual fossils found within the North Sea, image courtesy of Hans Wildschut and Dick Mol

“And there are some private collections. Some of them are very well documented. They are like professional collections, and they are available and often used for scientific studies.”

“The co-operation between non-professional and professional paleontologists is extremely good in the Netherlands. For more than three decades, both groups have been working closely together on mammoths and mammoth fauna, scoring very interesting results like 14C, stabile isotopes, new species, etc.”

Dick Mol himself posed the final question: “What can we learn from the mammoth bones trawled from the North Sea between the British Islands and the Netherlands?”

“The rich terrestrial mammal remains trawled teach us that the North Sea between Britain and the Netherlands was once dry land,” he explained. “The British Islands were connected with the mainland of Europe during the entire Pleistocene or Ice Age (2.580.000 – 11.500 BP). That area was inhabited by different faunas.”

“In the Early Pleistocene, it was a savannah-like environment, dominated by the southern or ancestral mammoths, (Mammuthus meridionalis). In the Middle Pleistocene, it was a steppe-like environment dominated by the steppe mammoth, (Mammuthus trogontherii), and in the Late Pleistocene, it was a cold, dry and almost treeless steppe dominated by woolly mammoths, (Mammuthus primigenius).”

Woolly mammoth skeleton at the Hellevoetsluis Museum, the Netherlands, composed of individual fossils found within the North Sea, image courtesy of Hans Wildschut and Dick Mol

“At the end of the Pleistocene, this landscape disappeared, caused by dramatic change of climate. It became warmer and warmer, and ice–which blanketed the northern hemisphere–started to melt. Melted water filled up lower countries, and the vast plain became ocean. We know this area today as the ‘North Sea’, and it reached its present sea level about 8,000 years ago. The mammoth steppe disappeared and the mammoth fauna became extinct. This extinction is what we need to accept; it is not dramatic.”

“These events—of which we can learn from the North Sea fossils–show us that we are on a living planet and extinction belongs to it.”
————-

A Mammuthus trogontherii-sized THANK YOU to Dick Mol for his generous and detailed answers to my many, many questions; for his time, his wisdom and his thoughtfulness! What a truly great honor and a great pleasure!!

 

Dick Mol, image courtesy of Hans Wildschut and Dick Mol

Dick Mol’s papers and research: http://hetnatuurhistorisch.academia.edu/DickMol

The Eurogeul—first report of the palaeontological, palynological and archaeological investigations of this part of the North Sea:  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618205000649

For fascinating pictures and in-depth descriptions of mastodons and mammoths, Mammoths and Mastodons of the Haute-Loire is a great book (published 2010, in English and in French):  http://www.amazon.fr/Mammouths-Mastodontes-Haute-Loire-Dick-Mol/dp/2911794974/

If you are interested in seeing more of Hans Wildschut’s exciting work, here are links provided by Dick Mol:

Trawling and fossils:

Hans Wildschut – trawling for fossils

Hans Wildschut – fossil finds

Hans Wildschut – trawling for fossils, December 2010

Hans Wildschut – exciting fossil finds and collection (Urk)

Remie Bakker and the creation of the life-sized model of the Mastodon of Auvergne:

Hans Wildschut – Remie Bakker’s work

 

VI International Conference on Mammoths and Their Relatives – May 2014!

Every three to four years, mammoth experts and scientists from all over the world congregate for several days to discuss the most recent findings and cutting-edge discoveries.

This year, that event takes place in Greece.

This location is particularly fitting, not only for its exciting mammoth and mastodon finds (including the world’s largest tusks found to-date), but also because the name of the mammalian Order to which mammoths belong is derived from a Greek word: proboskis (προβοσκίδα).

The name Proboscidea–from proboscis (trunk)—aptly describes some of its more popular members: today’s elephants and yesterday’s mastodons and mammoths.

This marks the 6^th time this conference has been held.  It is not an annual event, nor is it necessarily held in the same location or on the same continent.

This year’s honorary president is a US-based scientist: Dr. Larry Agenbroad, from the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, South Dakota.

(Image of Dr. Larry Agenbroad with short-faced bear replica, courtesy of Dr. Larry Agenbroad)

The president of the conference is Dr. Evangelia Tsoukala, Associate Professor of Geology at the University of Thessaloniki, and one of the team of paleontologists who excavated the largest tusks mentioned above.

The vice president is Dr. George Theodorou, Professor of Palaeontology and Stratigraphy at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

The list of scientists and experts involved in this event is both impressive and exciting.  Among so many others, (there were too many to mention here, but you can find them at this link) some of the participating specialists are:

• Dr. Paul Bahn, British archaeologist and co-author of Mammoths: Giants of the Ice Age with Dr. Adrian Lister;
• Dr. Daniel Fisher, Professor at the University of Michigan, Curator and Director at the Museum of Paleontology, Michigan, mammoth-tusk expert, and one of the original scientists to study Lyuba, the best preserved baby mammoth found to-date;
• Dr. Victoria Herridge of the Natural History Museum, London and dwarf mammoth expert;
• Dr. Frédéric Lacombat, paleontologist at the Musée Crozatier, France, and president of the Vth International Mammoth Conference, 2010;
• Dr. Adrian Lister of the Natural History Museum, London and author of the two most comprehensive books on mammoths published in English;
• Dick Mol, mammoth expert from the Netherlands who has been involved in mammoth research and discoveries for decades, and one of the paleontologists who excavated the tusks in Greece with Dr. Tsoukala;
• Dr. Doris Nagel of the Institute of Palaeontology, University of Vienna;
• Dr. Maria Rita Palombo of the Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza;
• Dr. Alexei Tikhonov, Deputy Director of the Zoological Institute, St. Petersburg,  Scientific Secretary of the Mammoth Committee, Russian Academy of Sciences, and also one of the scientists who originally studied Lyuba;
• Dr. Haowen Tong, Adjunct Professor of the Graduate University, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

(Image of the Historical Paleontological Collection of Siatista, Municipality of Voion, courtesy of the OC of the VIth ICMR)

Evangelos Vlachos, a PhD student at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and one of the many organizers of the event very generously responded to my questions.

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1. What will your PhD be in and what is your doctoral thesis? How did you become involved in the Mammoth Conference?

I am doing my PhD on Vertebrate Paleontology, specifically on the study of turtles and tortoises from Greece.

But what is a “turtle guy” doing at the Mammoth Conference?

Well, being part of Evangelia Tsoukala’s team includes excavating for proboscideans, including some of the biggest ever lived. In my first years of study, I considered working with fossil proboscideans, but later I changed to the study of chelonians.

My first experience with the Mammoth Conference was at the Vth Mammoth Conference in Le Puy-en-Velay, France in 2010.  In Le Puy, the Greek side participated with many oral and poster presentations, and the scientific community had the chance to get familiar with the exciting proboscidean findings from Greece.

[Image of poster presentations of the Greek-Dutch team during the Vth ICMR in Le-Puy-en-Velay, France (2010, picture credits W. van Logchem), courtesy of the OC of the VIth ICMR)]

2. How wonderful that the Mammoth Conference is held in Greece this year! How was the decision to hold it in Greece made?

Indeed, it is wonderful, but it was sudden!

Normally, at the end of each conference, the Organizing Committee examines all of the available proposals and decides where the next Mammoth Conference will be held.

In Le Puy, the Organizing Committee decided that Anchorage, Alaska would host the VIth Mammoth Conference in May 2013. Although the scientific community was excited to visit this remote place, which has played an important role in the history of the mammoths, things didn’t work out.

In the beginning of 2014, new proposals were requested. Within a few days, we filed a proposal to host the next conference in the historic towns of West Macedonia, Grevena and Siatista, which have brilliant collections of fossil proboscideans.

Luckily, our proposal was accepted, and we are honored to host the next conference in Greece.

[Children making their own mammoth under the guidance of the Dutch artist Remie Bakker, during the opening ceremony of the Historical Paleontological Collection of Siatista. Similar events are going to be held during the conference (2011, picture credits V. Makridis), image courtesy of the OC of the VIth ICMR)]

3. Who organizes this conference and who determines the president of the conference? (Do the organizers change each year?)

The organization of the conference is the responsibility of the Organizing Committee.

Some members are regular; they have been there since 1995 when the first conference was held in Saint Petersburg.

Specialists like Dick Mol provide the experience of organizing a Mammoth Conference and access to the network of the proboscidean scientific community.

Many people from the host country itself are involved to make sure that everything will be organized in detail. The organizers of the conference are supported by the Scientific Committee: specialists of various topics related to the conference. Their role is to consult the committee in scientific matters and to serve as reviewers of the abstracts and papers submitted to the conference.

This year, we are privileged to have a large Scientific Committee of 43 specialists from all fields related to proboscidean study. Moreover, in this conference, many young scientists are included in the Scientific Committee, which is very important for us. One of the goals of this conference is to ensure that the study of proboscideans will not only have a glorious past, but a great future as well.

4. Who typically attends this conference? Do you have an idea of how many people will be attending this year?

The Mammoth Conference attracts the interest of scientists from many different fields, but all joined by the interest of promoting knowledge surrounding proboscidean evolution.

Among the numerous participants, you will find paleontologists presenting new findings that improve our knowledge of the fossil record; geneticists examining the DNA of present-day elephants and from the frozen carcasses of the woolly mammoths; scientists applying new techniques like stable isotope and dental microwear analysis on proboscidean molars; archaeologists investigating the interaction between humans and proboscideans.

This is not all. At each conference, something new comes up!

Early registration for the participants closed on 31th of January 2014.

The interest of the proboscidean community in the VIth ICMR was enormous and far exceeded the expectations of the Organizing Committee!

We received more than 150 registrations from all corners of the world: from Cape Town, South Africa in the South to Stockholm, Sweden in the North; from Wollongong, Australia in the Southeast to Edmonton, Canada in the Northwest; from Kusatsu, Japan in the East to Nevada in the West; from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in South America to Yakutsk in Siberia. In total, all the participants will have to travel more than 11 times the circumference of Earth to come to Grevena and Siatista!

 (Geographic representation of this year’s Mammoth Conference participants, image courtesy of the OC of the VIth ICMR))

5. How does one decide what topics and papers will be discussed?

The Organizing Committee, in close co-operation with the Scientific Committee, set an initial number of topics to be discussed in the conference. They have to summarize the current open questions in the field.

Some of the topics, however, are “classical,” we could say, such as the information from soft tissues from the frozen carcasses, or the interaction between humans and mammoths.

At the same time, in every conference we are trying to promote the regional research by proposing topics that could stimulate researchers to come up with ideas. For example, in our conference, we are particularly interested in the “primitive” probiscidean proboscidean forms–before the appearance of mammoths–like the mastodons or gomphotheres.

Sometimes, the participants are able to propose new topics of interest. This was the case with our Brazilian colleagues, who suggested we have a session on extinct South American proboscideans that, until recently, have been relatively unknown.

6. What do you think is the most exciting part of the Mammoth Conference?

As a young scientist, the most exciting part is definitely to get to know all the well-known specialists in this field and exchange ideas with them.

Standing up in front of a well-qualified audience and presenting your ideas is a great challenge. But the experience you get is unique.

[Presenting in front of the world’s leading experts (Vth ICMR in Le-Puy-en-Velay, France, 2010, picture credits V. Makridis), image courtesy of the OC of the VIth ICMR)]

 

In the end, when you are returning to your country, you feel overwhelmed by the information you have received. But as the days go by, ideas start to form and with the experience gained by attending an International Conference, you can make good progress on your studies.

Science is not only reading and writing, but communicating your ideas.

[Preparing a plaster jacket for a partial femur of a mastodon. Now this specimen is part of the Paleontological Exhibition of Milia (2012, picture credits W. van Logchem), image courtesy of the OC of the VIth ICMR)]

Moreover, it is always exciting to take part in the field trips of the Conference.

In our conference, not only we will visit all of the impressive sites in Northern Greece, like Grevena, Milia, Siatista and Ptolemaida, but we have planned a unique post-conference field trip. The participants will travel to the remote island of Tilos where the last European elephants lived, as dwarf forms, in the Charkadio Cave. To reach this island, we will go through Athens and the world famous site of Pikermi.

 

[Excavating in site Milia-4 using rope techniques. One of the sites that the participants will visit during the Field Sessions of the conference (2010, picture credits W. van Logchem), image courtesy of the OC of the VIth ICMR)]

 

7. Are there any challenges to organizing or hosting the Mammoth Conference?

One word: logistics.

The amount of work needed to arrange everything–the registrations, the abstracts, transportation and accommodation, the field trips–is enormous. In those cases, especially when you have so many people from different countries and cultures, you need to pay attention to every detail to make sure that all will go according to plan.

But the Organizing Committee is working hard, night and day, to extend an example of traditional Greek hospitality to everyone involved!
8. Is there anything else that you would want people to know?

Latest News:

This week, members of the Organizing Committee visited the places where the conference will take place (Grevena, Milia, Siatista and Ptolemaida) and inspected all venues, exhibition and facilities. At the moment, everything is going according to plan and the Organizing Committee works day and night to make a wonderful conference for the participants.

 

(Image of the the Paleontological Exhibition of Milia, Municipality of Grevena, courtesy of the OC of the VIth ICMR)

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I would like to extend an Archelon ischyros-sized thank you to Evangelos Vlachos for his lightning quick responses to my emails, his generosity and his detailed answers! 

When he mentions that the Organizing Committee works night-and-day for this conference, he is not kidding. Some of our emails were exchanged at 3am his time!  

Σας ευχαριστούμε!

Thank you, as well, to Dr. Evangelia Tsoukala and to Dick Mol, who also generously shared their time for this post (behind the scenes)!

Please check out the VI International Conference website:  www.mammothconference.com

You can follow them on Twitter! @mammoths2014 / #mammoths2014

Videos on YouTube related to the Conference and excavating the world’s longest tusks from the mastodon in Greece!

a. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caDUsZHehyY&list=UUJJtPaGIosoQiSHtBSyQ7RA&feature=c4-overview

(The video above is multilingual.)

b. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCMDHJSTYZE&list=LLIWT11-xMeFd4CEztS2eB9g

c. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJPB4Vdy70A&list=LLIWT11-xMeFd4CEztS2eB9g

It has been my great honor to have connected previously with two of the many mammoth experts listed above:

Dr. Daniel Fisher:

https://mostlymammoths.wordpress.com/2013/09/10/mammoth-article-qa-dr-daniel-fisher-renowned-paleontologist/

Dr. Larry Agenbroad:

https://mostlymammoths.wordpress.com/2014/01/23/the-mammoth-site-and-dr-larry-agenbroad-renowned-paleontologist/

The Mammoth Site and Dr. Larry Agenbroad – Renowned Paleontologist

Ask Dr. Larry Agenbroad what his most exciting discovery as a paleontologist has been, and his response is: “Too many to select just one.”

He cites, among the top three, discoveries with which you might already be very familiar:

• the most complete pygmy mammoth skeleton found to-date,

• an 11,000 year-old bison kill site,

• and the Jarkov mammoth in Siberia.

These discoveries—like his work—are from all over the world.

(Image of Dr. Agenbroad and fossil replica, courtesy of Dr. Larry Agenbroad. If you, like me, thought this was a saber-toothed cat fossil, guess again! See the end of the post for more info*.)

Pygmy mammoths are the smallest of the known species, and their remains have been found on Wrangel Island (off of Russia) and on the Channel Islands (off of California). It is thought that their size evolved from their isolated existence on islands, an environment that would not be able to support multiple Columbian or woolly mammoths.

Dr. Agenbroad led the team that excavated the most complete pygmy mammoth skeleton yet found. A cast of the fossil can be seen at the Channel Islands National Park Visitor Center, and a replica of this fossil in-situ is in the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. The SBMNH’s website states that Dr. Agenbroad has found 66 more fossil sites on the islands.

Nebraska is home to the Hudson-Meng Bison Kill Site. Named after Bill Hudson and Albert Meng, who found it by accident in 1954, it eventually produced almost 600 separate bison fossils. These fossils represent a species of bison that does not exist today. Dr. Agenbroad began excavation here in the 1970’s. Different theories exist regarding why so many 11,000 year-old remains of the same species are in one place.

You can see Dr. Agenbroad in the Discovery Channel documentary, “Raising the Mammoth”. It details the discovery and research of the Jarkov mammoth in Siberia. Dr. Agenbroad is among other well-known paleontologists who worked together on this remarkable find: an enormous mammoth encased in ice. That documentary also gives you a peak into the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, South Dakota, where he is the Chief Scientist and Site Director.

Recently accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, the Mammoth Site houses the largest collection of mammoth fossils in the United States. It is open to the public year-round.

Their website lists that they recently found the 61st mammoth fossil this summer; 58 of which are Columbian mammoths, 3 are woolly mammoths.

Woolly mammoths may dominate mainstream imagination, but the species that lived throughout the U.S. was actually the largest (and possibly the least hairy) representative of that species: the Columbian mammoth.

The Mammoth Site, a growing museum on 8.5 acres of land, is built over the initial excavation area. And that area was originally intended as part of a housing development. Construction came to a halt in 1974 when mammoth fossils were found.

Joe Muller, COO/Business Manager of the museum, describes the initial structure built in 1975 as a modest plywood construction. An addition was made to that structure in 1976 and 1978.

“That [addition] remained over part of the site so people could come in and look a little bit at some of the fossils,” he said in a phone interview.

“[Researchers] would excavate outside (there was a self-imposed hiatus from excavating for 1980-1982 and 1984-1985 until a building could be constructed over the site) until in 1986, the building was built over the sinkhole area. Then in 1990 we enclosed a lobby area with a gift shop.”

Today, there is an additional 4000 square feet of enclosed exhibit space, plus 8,000 square feet for laboratory, bone storage, research library, offices, bathrooms and storage (which opened in May 2001).

And–to give readers an additional sense of the size of the museum space–there is a crane.

“We have a crane in the sinkhole area,” he continued, “so that we can remove the fossils, take them to the ‘mammoth elevator’, and then take them to the basement to the laboratory work on.”

The sinkhole is the reason Hot Springs has such a wealth of fossils. As described both on the museum’s website and in the acclaimed book by Adrian Lister and Paul Bahn (Mammoths: Giants of the Ice Age), the area known as “the sinkhole” was created about 26,000 years ago. It was a 65-foot-deep pond framed by steep banks, with an even deeper section through which flowed warm water. Warm water and vegetation are believed to be the temptations that caused mammoths to venture into the pond. Getting out of that pond—or rather, the inability thereof–is believed to have been the cause of their death.

The many fossils that remain today—mostly young male mammoths—were eventually covered and preserved by mud and sediment over thousands of years. A number of these fossils remain in-situ and available to the public at the Mammoth Site. Excavation within the site continues each year, and it is an opportunity for which one can apply—paleontological background or not. Muller advises that one can apply “to come and excavate for five days with Roads Scholars (May & October), then EarthWatch volunteers come for two two-week sessions; basically the month of July.” Amongst the Ice Age fossils found are camel, llama, prairie dog, a giant short-faced bear, wolf, and numerous invertebrates.

The book Mammoths: Giants of the Ice Age lists the surprising fact that mammoth hyoid bones and bile stones have been recovered here.

Dr. Agenbroad explained that “a hyoid bone is a set (5) of bones that support the tongue. Often only one of the set is found.” When asked how something so seemingly small such as a bile stone could be found and identified, he said that is “a non-osteological specimen”, and that they use “chemical analyses to identify them, comparing and contrasting them to modern elephant bile stones.”

Dr. Adrian Lister, one of the authors of the aforementioned book, is listed as one of the former “Visiting Scholars” to the Mammoth Site. Designed and implemented by Dr. Agenbroad, the Visiting Scholar program invites researchers to study at the site.

“I wanted to ‘cross-pollinate’ ideas, methods, and theories with international experts,” wrote Dr. Agenbroad in an email. In response to whether other sites engage in similar activities, he continued, “It is rare for other sites to invite and support a visiting scholar (usually due to budget restrictions).”

The impressive list of “Visiting Scholars” also includes, among others, Adriana Torres of Mexico; Dr. Laura Luzi of Italy; Dr. Daniel Fisher (now of the University of Michigan, one of the many researchers who worked on “Lyuba”, the best preserved baby mammoth found to-date, and mammoth-tusk expert); Dick Mol of the Netherlands;  Dr. Evgeny Maschenko, Dr. Alexei Tikhonov and Dr. Gennady Baryshnikov of Russia; Dr. Ralf Kahlke of Germany; and Dr. Jim Burns of Canada.

In terms of tourists, approximately 100,000 people visit the Mammoth Site each year from all over the world.

“Our town is about 3700 people,” Muller said, referring to Hot Springs, SD, “so when we bring in 100,000 visitors a year, it’s a big economic impact for the city.”

From the United States, visitors from Minnesota and Colorado top the list (visitors from South Dakota itself come in third!), but people from as far as South Africa, Korea, and Australia—among so many other foreign countries—also travel to the site.

The Mammoth Site received accreditation by the American Alliance of Museums in October of 2013.

“We are in the top 6% of museums in the United States, as only about 5.8% of the estimated 17,500 museums are accredited.”

The accreditation process is apparently a lengthy process, and not every museum is successfully accredited upon their initial application. Policies regarding everything from the artifacts and exhibits (its “collections”) to its financial policies are reviewed and evaluated. The Mammoth Site, Muller stated with well-deserved enthusiasm, “made it the first time!”

“We have a $2.2 million major gift campaign going on now,” Muller continued. “$1.6 million is for a ‘Learning Center’, which includes a couple of theatres and a kind of a gathering area. We are planning a bid letting in August and construction to start in October, with a May 2015 opening date.”

The website offers a “buy-a-brick” program as part of that campaign. It is clear that the growth of this museum is–in no small part–a result of the dedication of everyone who works at and is involved with the Mammoth Site. Muller attributes that to a close-knit community within the museum.

“We’re pretty much like a family, and that’s what the reviewers with American Alliance of Museums said that they were really impressed with: how the staff gets along and works together.”

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*Dr. Agenbroad is pictured with a short-faced bear replica.

The Mammoth Site: http://www.mammothsite.com/

You can apply to excavate at the Mammoth Site! http://www.mammothsite.com/earthwatch.html OR http://www.mammothsite.com/elderhostel.html

Buy-a-brick to help the Mammoth Site campaign! http://mammothsite.pinnaclecart.com/index.php?p=product&id=1064

Pygmy Mammoth, Channel Islands National Park: http://www.nps.gov/chis/historyculture/pygmymammoth.htm

Pygmy Mammoth, Santa Barbara Natural Museum of History: http://www.sbnature.org/exhibitions/199.html

Latin names of mammoth species mentioned:

Pygmy mammoths = Mammuthus exilis

Woolly mammoths = Mammuthus primigenius

Columbian mammoths = Mammuthus columbi

(Earlier post with Dr. Dan Fisher: https://mostlymammoths.wordpress.com/2013/09/10/mammoth-article-qa-dr-daniel-fisher-renowned-paleontologist/)

A Mammuthus columbi-sized THANK YOU to Dr. Larry Agenbroad and Joe Muller for their time, their generous insight, and their work at the Mammoth Site! An equally large thank you to Presston Gabel, Diana Turner and for all who are involved with the work in that museum!

Next up on Mostly Mammoths, Mummies and Museums!

Ghosts of Big Bone, an event at Big Bone Lick State Historic Park in KY held with paranormal experts.  A Q&A with Todd Young, Naturalist at that Park: http://parks.ky.gov/calendar/details/ghosts-of-big-bone/18858/

A look at Echoes of Egypt: Conjuring the Land of the Pharaohs by Dr. Colleen Manassa, William K. and Marilyn M. Simpson Associate Professor of Egyptology at Yale University, and Dr. Alicia Cunningham-Bryant, Assistant Professor of Intellectual Heritage at Temple University. Please check out this remarkable exhibit at the Yale Peabody Museum through January 2014.  http://peabody.yale.edu/exhibits/echoes-egypt-conjuring-land-pharaohs

And a look at the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, SD, with Dr. Larry Agenbroad! http://www.mammothsite.com/

Please check back over the next couple of weeks!