The Mammoth Site, Hot Springs- The Fossil Freeway, Part Three

It was the perfect time of year to visit.

South Dakota in winter can be brutal place, but it would seem we were arriving between blizzards. Sweepers had clearly been busy as the roads leading up to the Black Hills were clear of snow and ice, the countryside, however, was covered in a layer of snow, making the scenery for an Australian from a sun-burnt country, spectacular.

Expectations were high for this museum as scattered along the highway were large billboards calling us towards the Mammoth Site…apparently this would be a visit we’d ‘Never Forget’. Crowning one of the large hills the highway heading into Hot Springs passes is a large mammoth- or at least there should be by the time you read this. At the time of our visit this massive concrete beast was under construction and at that point only the lower half of the animals had been completed. It looked like it was going to be impressive, I hope someone can update us and let us know if it is.

It was easy to see the museum from the highway. For starters it was on top of a hill, there was also a life-size Colombian Mammoth trumpeting at the sky at the bottom of the complex, and lastly (as it was winter) most of the trees in the area had lost their leaves and there was very little hiding the building from the road.

The car park was huge and totally empty, proving visiting South Dakota in winter has its advantages. Sure many, many tourist destinations are closed, but those that are open you general have the run of the place of. ‘The Mammoth Site’ would prove to be no different as I could have counted the number of visitors inside on one hand.

Clearly the museum is set up for large numbers of visitors as the foyer is large and the entrance into the exhibit is timed to regulate numbers and allow everyone to get a good look. Even empty we still had to wait, but that wasn’t really a problem as you don’t wait long and the foyer has one of the largest mammoth skeletons I’ve ever seen waiting with you (nickname Sinbad). There’s also a pretty good mural running along one wall depicting life in South Dakota during the Ice Age.

Once the main doors open it’s through a small corridor, past another heavy door and into the main exhibition hall.

What lay on the other side is one of the great spectacles in palaeontology (a theme that seems to be a recurring one on this trip), a room large enough to fit some sports stadiums. To begin the roof over the enormous room is covered with intricate wooden beams, making the ceiling look something like a Viking longboat.

The mammoth site has a walkway running the outside circumference, and a visitor enters this at ground level and gets a good look down into the large pit cut into the hill the entire complex has been built into. Wherever you look in the pit there are bones, enormous bones. Some are solitary limbs, others skulls, some of these lay next to their bodies while others sit on top of columns of rock where decades of workers have dug away the sediment that once protected them.

Wandering through this amazing display I’m not ashamed to admit I had the hell scared out of me when someone working on the fossils moved from behind one large skull…I mean when you’re wandering through an empty museum display, you don’t expect someone to suddenly appear next to you from behind a creature that died thousands of years ago.

 

Now, some history…

In 1974 there were plans to build a new housing complex along one large hill in Hot Springs, and excavation was begun by grading parts of the hill to level it out. As the builders cut through the rise they noticed some soil was lighter than the rest, and inside this odd dirt were fragments of large bones.

A quick excavation revealed a few more bones, though from what was still a mystery until a large tooth was uncovered. This proved to be from a mammoth, and when further tests revealed there were a lot more bones in the ground, everyone involved realised they had stumbled onto something special.

Everything that had been collected till that point was replaced in the ground and covered over. Winter was coming and there was a fear the bones in the ground would be destroyed by the cold, while the bones already removed may have been in danger of disintegrating. Placing them back in the ground would hopefully stabilise them. Everything could wait until warmer, longer days returned.

The next season work was begun on this strange soil and very quickly a large skull was found. ‘Mighty Manfred’ proved to be a large Columbian Mammoth, and with more fossils found it soon became obvious the planned for housing complex was going to be put on hold, permanently.

Money was gathered by the community, the land was purchased and, as more and more fossil were found, the idea of leaving them permanently in the ground and building a large complex around the site to not only protect, but showcase the site was begun.  

A drill hole was dropped 65ft into the hill, and the core revealed the lighter soil went down at least that far, maybe even further, fuelling speculation as to just what this site was. Four decades later its clear the area was once a sinkhole, where a subterranean cavern had formed and the roof collapsed. Filling with water and sediment, the pit became a natural trap where animals trying to get a drink often fell into the depression. The danger of this trap is best seen by one mammoth called Murray (Murray Antoinette to be precise as this mammoth is missing its head), whose body was found in the position it died. Its enormous front legs were pinned towards the lip of the hole and the rest of its body stretched out behind as though the struggling creature was trying to pull itself out. This situation for Murray was made worse thanks to the soil itself, renowned for becoming incredibly slippery when wet.

Most of the skeletons so far have been unearthed along the edges of the pit, strengthening the idea these were trapped animals trying to escape. Unusually most of the mammoths are missing their heads (like good old Murray) suggesting, even with their enormous tusks, the skulls were rather buoyant and had separated from the rest of the body after sometime and floated about the pond. One of these skulls (called ‘Beauty’ due to its complete nature) sits on a stone plinth, the rest of the soil around it dug away, greeting visitors as they first enter the excavation.

My favourite mammoth is also the most complete. Napoleon…Napoleon Bone-a-part if you please… was a large male that died lying on his back. Bone-a-part is so complete his rare hyoid bone (the one that helps us talk) is present, along with some gallstones.

In 1980 the importance of this find was recognised and the site was given the weight of governmental authority when it was established as a Registered National Natural Landmark by the US Department of the Interior.

A few years later a surprising find was brought out of the pit. After years of nothing but mammoths, the skull of an enormous Short-Faced Bear (Arctodus) must have been a welcome sight to those working the dig at the time. Since then other creatures, such as three Woolly Mammoths, have been found. All these finds can today be plotted through the dig thanks to the numerous little flags that have been placed wherever anything important was found.

Going through the site another amazing feature easily seen (and highlighted by large arrows pointing directly to them) are a series of Bioturbations. These are cross sections of mammoth footprints made by an animal wandering through the pit, possibly by one of the creatures that eventually died there. The amazing thing about these 26,000 year old bioturbations is they show the true weight of these animals. The disturbances in the soil from the crushing effect of a ten tonne animal placing all its weight on the soft soil can be seen radiating down deep into the turf.

One feature of the excavation I really appreciate is at the rear of the room. From here there is part of the path that heads down into the pit, allowing a visitor to literally descend into the pit. From here the area comes alive and you can clearly see the various levels of the dig and the numerous skulls in-situ.

After a circumnavigation of the original site, visitors exit into something more akin to a traditional museum. The first thing you encounter here is a life-sized short faced bear. The thing is enormous. As you can see by the picture, I’m no small guy, but this predator was enormous. Living in the US for three years I always said the one creature I never wanted to meet was a Grizzly. They run faster than us, for longer, and if they cannot climb a tree, they’re big enough to knock it down with you in it. Short faced bears were larger, longer legged and apparently far more carnivorous.

Next is a life-like Colombian mammoth standing next to a similar sized skeleton, along with a display showing how Ice Age humans used mammoth bones to create living quarters. In a land with few trees, giant mammoth bones and tusks would have been one of the few resources these humans could use to build their homes.   

There are numerous cabinets full of interesting fossils as well as a dwarf mammoth display and a real life exhibit showing how natives butchered a mammoth.

After all this, visitors exit the exhibition into one of the better gift shops I’ve seen at any museum in the States. Its full of wonderful mammothy goodies, mammothy t-shirts, mammothy hats, mammothy coffee cups….its the place to go for all your mammothy needs.

All in all, a great place to visit and, combined with the other stops along the Fossil Freeway (http://fossilfreeway.net/), a must drive for all paleo-fans.

If you are visiting The Mammoth Site, make sure you do a little research on its opening hours. Because of the weather and an obvious peak season during summer (when thousands of tourists head into the wilds of the Dakotas and Montana), the museums opening hours vary. It is open all year round, but some months it closes earlier than others.

Clash of the Mammoths - The Fossil Freeway, Part two.

Their names are Cope and Marsh, but more about them later...

Running between Kimball in Nebraska and Rapid City, South Dakota, is highway 71- known today as the Fossil Freeway. From this main artery it’s possible to visit at least 20 fossil sites, both natural and institutional. Amongst these in Nebraska are the Huson-Meng Bison Bonebead, the Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, and the Trailside Museum.(http://fossilfreeway.net/)

Due to the nature of the winters in Nebraska the Trailside Museum is closed from November to March except, and this is the important bit, by appointment. As we were heading that way near the end of November, and on a Sunday to boot, I took the chance and emailed the museum to see if there was any possibility they’d be open. They weren’t, but the wonderful Pattie Norman agreed to open the museum for us, so we got to see one of palaeontology’s greatest spectacles- one very few have ever heard of.

I’d been unaware of the museums two Colombian Mammoths until I fortuitously caught NOVA’s ‘Mammoth Mysteries’ (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/mammoth-mystery.html). In 1962 a surveyor was searching the grasslands of Nebraska for a new dam site when he noticed large bones sticking out of the earth. Contacting the University of Nebraska, a team was soon in the field digging out what they thought was a mammoth. When more dirt was removed the team realised it wasn’t one, but two mammoths they were working with, and something very unusual was going on. Both creatures were face to face, their enormous tusks wrapped around each others heads. Collected and wrapped in plaster, the specimens lay at the university, untouched, for nearly 40 years.

Finally the fossils were prepared, with forensic palaeontologists studying closely items like the tusks, which proved so well preserved under the microscope an individual days growth could be seen (you can still see clearly where these samples were taken from). Both mammoths were confirmed males, in their prime, and for elephants this can mean only one thing- Musth!

When male elephants grow sexually mature they go through what’s called Musth, a time when bull elephant testosterone goes through the roof and they become highly aggressive and fight other males (or giraffes, or rhinos, or trees…just about anything really that ticks them off while they’re in such a state), but rarely do they kill each other.

So what had gone so wrong with these two mammoths?

Unluckily for both, each had one broken and one full length tusk, meaning the two could get in close to each other, far closer than most mammoths normally could. Fighting, they jabbed and stabbed at each other, with one managing to strike the other in the eye with its broken tusk. At some point during the struggle both managed to encircle their good tusk behind the head of the other and they became interlocked. Exhausted, both fell (it’s been speculated spring rains had made the normally bone dry Nebraskan soils slippery), and it’s the way they fell that brought about their deaths. The fossils were found in such a way the weight of one elephant lay on the tusk of the other, so for one to get up it literally had to lift the other enormous bull with it at the same time- an impossibility even for these brawny beasts. Trapped, both animals lay facing each other until they died.

In a tongue-in-cheek nod to another pair of famous fossil duellists, the mammoths were nicknamed Cope and Marsh- the two palaeontologists from the famous ‘Bone Wars’ who between them collected and described almost every iconic American dinosaur. They had begun their careers as friends, and ended them as bitterest enemies.

Examination has revealed Marsh was slightly older, but Cope had larger tusks, and just like these mammoths, O.C. Marsh had been older, and the work E. D. Cope produced far more abundant. The comparison it must be said between the four is a fair one.

Such important specimens deserve a special home, and the University of Nebraska placed the mammoths at the Trailside Museum, a building that was once an army theatre. Here they dominate the display, with a large wooden walkway built around the beasts so visitors can see them from all angles. Behind them is a mural that was hauntingly familiar. The artist turned out to be Mark Marcuson, the very same artist who painted the life-sized mammoth mural at Morrill Hall at the University of Nebraska (as reviewed in my previous article, the parade of elephants http://bonerooms.blogspot.com.au/search?updated-min=2011-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2012-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=5)

There’s also a mammoth standing at the front entrance which, I believe, is either a copy of Marsh (or Cope) and was possibly made from the unseen half of one mammoth.

The museums cabinets also hold numerous fossils from the region, mostly ice age mammals like horses (Mesohippus), rhinos (Menoceras), camels (Stenomylus) and bison- there’s also a few dinosaur bones (Stegosaurus) and even a mosasaur skull (Tylosaurus).

At one end there’s a set of stairs heading up to a small balcony, and bounding up there (yes, I do bound) to get a photo of the entire room I noticed a stuffed bison in the corner. Not so unusual for Nebraska I dare say, but this specific animal comes with a tag, noting it had been shot by Buffalo Bill himself.

The museum isn’t the only interesting thing to see here either as it’s situated at Fort Robinson, famous as the launching point for the US cavalry’s final move on the Lakota and Ogallala tribes situated in the Dakotas. It was also here the famed Sioux warrior, Crazy Horse, surrendered and was killed- and today a plaque marks the spot of his death. Sadly I wasn’t aware of this at the time or else I’d have visited the spot…and this, after all, is what my blog is all about, making sure people don’t miss the important things when they’re visiting a museum. It was also a prisoner of war camp for German soldiers during the Second World War.

Surrounding the entire region, on the very edge of the grass prairies the fort is situated in, are rows of weathered, steep bluffs. These make this part of the Nebraskan Badlands look a little like a mini-monument valley. Pulling over to the side of the road and using the zoom on my camera, I noticed some odd looking animals grazing along the edge of the tree line at the base of those cliffs.

To my eternal pleasure they turned out to be something of a living fossil (or a better way of describing them, an Ice Age survivor), the Pronghorn Antelope. Considered the fastest animal in North America, the Pronghorn evolved when an entirely different type of cat prowled America’s endless prairies- the Miracinonyx or American cheetah.

Though not the largest museum in the world, Nebraska’s Trailside Museum is most certainly worth the drive, as is the local scenery….and if you, go say hi to Pattie for me.

DIRECTIONS:

 The Museum is located in historic Fort Robinson State Park. Three miles west of Crawford, NE, on Highway 20, about 2 hours from Interstate 80.