Skeletons: How a Paleontologist Does Halloween

OK, actually this just happened to be a weekend that I wasn't totally swamped with college and my dad could get off work to travel with me. Coincidence or not, looking at famous skeletons seems like an appropriate way to celebrate what traditionally was a recognition of the transition from life to death than studying the past and bringing its story back to life?

However, on our way home from Utah this summer, time ran out on us and we missed one famous Miocene site that I heard about a couple of summers ago and haven't been able to get to. Ironically, its as close to being right in my own backyard as is geologically possible.

That is, Eastern Tennessee, just on the other side of the Appalachians from North Carolina.

That's not to say I haven't been to the area. I rather enjoy spending time in the Appalachian mountains. These, so much older than the Rocky Mountains that I learned how to camp in, were where I first learned to love hiking, to be curious about what would be over the top of each mountain, where I learned to climb, make a camp fire, fish, and would dam little creeks as a kid. This is where we'd come to see my granddaddy, and I never expected that to have the influence on me that its had.


Well, on the other side of the mountain from there is a fossil site that was discovered during the preparations for a highway in eastern Tennessee back in 2001 called the Gray site, named for the town of Gray.

The bones and their story, however, are anything but gray.

Originally, after the discovery of what was only known to be some sort of elephant, it was thought to be an ice age site. This was relatively exciting, not that uncommon, and nothing that would stop the road from being built once a few bones were discovered.

But then there was a problem.

First, there were more bones.

Then the formation turned out to keep going.

And then they started finding animals that were much, much older than the ice age, and completely wrong to the environment. For example, they found an alligator. Then they took a closer look at the elephant. Turns out that it was a shovel tusker, lining up with some of the older species that were found.

Oops.

You see, the site was actually from the end of the Miocene, and based on biostratigraphy dates back to about 4.5-7 million years old. The site was saved by the then governor being extremely impressed and asking that the road be diverted just enough to miss the site. The geology made for a messy road, anyway.

And that isn't the whole story, either.

The Gray site represents a sink hole that formed millions of years ago and then filled in with water. This attracted animals as a water source, and many would just happen to die and were easily preserved under these conditions. It's not a mass death site like Agate or Ashfall. This one is more natural. The proportions are natural, the fossils seem to represent a healthy ecosystem....aaah, the relaxation of not having a problem to solve.

Ha. You thought I was serious.

They found this  little guy next. This is an ancestor of the red panda. Aww....

The problem, however, isn't just that it is only found in Asia in the modern day. The problem rests in the fact that the only others of these found in North America have been in Washington and western Canada. There's a big gap in the story of how they got here. The most complete skeletons of them have been found here, though, and they are beautifully preserved.

Mostly...

Some of the bones at this site has been known to turn to powder.  But those that don't are beautiful.

 Other animals that have been found here include tapirs, species of camel, a hornless species of rhino, horses, rodents, short-faced bears, saber toothed cats, possible dogs, weasels...

Basically the entire ecosystem is represented here. There are multiple developmental stage of the tapirs and rhinos, from fetal to old, and pathologies represented in some of the species, including crooked teeth, marks of scavenging, and even some skin impressions on one of the turtles. There is more work to be done; as can be seen by bags and bags of sediment that needs to be microsorted, and pieces of the puzzle to reassemble, as can be seen by a tusk that they're reassembling from where they think they may have a full skull at the dig now. On top of that, there are still acres and acres of the land that have yet to be uncovered, more story to tell, and more to be understood about this area in this time, and other areas, and the world's prehistory through time.

The skeletons aren't creepy, but they're stories are just waiting to be brought to surface and be revealed.