More on DNA samples taken from the Prehistoic Museum's Mammoth

Read more about the DNA samples that were taken from the museum's Columbian Mammoth.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/09/repost-inside-the-columbian-mammoth-signs-of-a-woolly-cousin/

What's New at the Prehistoric Museum?

Director of Education and Exhibits, Lloyd Logan and Volunteer Ralph Escamilla are working on the next project at the Prehistoric Museum. Can you guess what they are creating?

Huntington Mammoth "Preservation" Allows For Scientific Study That Would Have Otherwise Not Have Been Possible

Dr. Tim Riley presents information on the current scientific studies surrounding the Huntington Mammoth. Follow the link to part 2 of the Sun Advocate's coverage on the Huntington Mammoth. This incredible find continues to bring forth new information. The way the mammoth was "preserved" previous to excavation allows for scientific study that would have otherwise not been possible.
http://www.sunad.com/index.php?tier=1&article_id=29012

Great Article on the Pilling Figurines

 

Here is a great new article on all the recent research reuniting the long lost Pilling Figurine with the rest of the collection. Bonnie Pitblado and her team used state of the art research to prove that the returned figurine was authentic ...and it is all detailed here for the first time. The article is open access, so anyone can read it. Check out the article and come to the museum to see these amazing figurines!

http://saa.metapress.com/content/b1wv681331520806/fulltext.pdf

Sun Advocate Article, " Prehistoric Museum marks 25th anniversary of mammoth discovery"

Check out this great article on the Huntington Mammoth Anniversary Celebration, "
Prehistoric Museum marks 25th anniversary of mammoth discovery"
http://www.sunad.com/index.php?tier=1&article_id=28949

Prehistoric Museum Mammoth 25th Anniversary Celebration

With 60 people in attendance two spectacular exhibits were unveiled on 8/8/2013 at the Huntington Mammoth’s 25^th Anniversary Celebration.

The Ice Age Utah exhibit is bilingual and has drawers that contain hands-on activities.

The Importance of the Huntington Mammoth exhibit displays actual bone for the first time.

After the unveilings, attendees were treated to viewing the original movie of the mammoth excavation followed by a lecture by Dr. Tim Riley, the museum's curator of archaeology.

The evening ended with wonderful refreshments provided by the Castle Valley Archaeological Society, (CVAS) with cookies and a mammoth cake from the Manti-La Sal National Forest for desert.

 

 

There was much reminiscing and recounting by those in attendance and a rekindling of the unity that was felt 25 years ago when Chris Nielson, of Nielson Construction encountered bones while excavating for the Huntington Dam a mammoth project presented itself to the public. In just five days various entities, including the Forest Service, the museum, CVAS, Nielson Construction, the Utah State Paleontologist and Archaeologist, and a host of volunteers were able to accomplish the magnificent feat of retrieving the mammoth from its muddy bog of a grave, stabilizing the bones and getting them to the for further stabilization and study.

Something that many may not realize is that the mammoth bones were not fossilized, but rather remarkably preserved in the thick mud bog some 15 feet below the earth’s surface. Therefore, the condition of these bones allowed for more extensive study of the bones to take place.

As most may know, the original bones were reposited at the College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum, but that wasn't an easy feat either. The museum had to become a nationally accredited institution and a federal repository. Through the years up into the current administration under Dr. Kenneth Carpenter, the museum's director and curator of paleontology, the mammoth has been a showcase piece and the center of scientific study. Most recently, analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of the Huntington Mammoth suggested that there was much more interbreeding between Columbian and Wooly Mammoths than researchers previously thought (http://genomebiology.com/content/12/5/R51).  Somewhere in his ancestry, at least one of the Huntington Mammoth’s great-grandmas was a wooly, previously thought to be a distinct species.  A new study is underway to look at the nuclear DNA of this remarkably preserved specimen. This study may shed further light on the complex evolutionary history of these incredible North American elephants. 

Solving a Dinosaur Quandary with Modern Methods

 

 

 

PRESS RELEASE

August 2, 2013

Christine K. Trease, 435-613-5757: christine.trease@usu.edu

Solving a Dinosaur Quandary with Modern Methods

Ever since the discovery in 1909 of what is now called Dinosaur National Monument in 1909, people have wondered how the thousands of fossilized dinosaur bones accumulated.  In the first of its kind in-depth study, Utah State University Eastern paleontologist Kenneth Carpenter thinks he may finally have the answer.

“I approached this study differently than has been done in the past,” Carpenter said, “by including old archival photographs, letters, maps, and notebooks of Carnegie Museum paleontologist Earl Douglass.” Douglass is credited with the discovery of the site, which President Woodrow Wilson made into a National Monument in 1915. Laboring for 13 years, Douglass and a small team of men removed hundreds of tons of fossilized bones from near Vernal, Utah and shipped them east to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.. Carpenter noted that the most complete skeletons on display at the Carnegie Museum come from the large portion of the rocky hillside stripped away by Douglass. “What remains today is only a small portion of what was originally there,” Carpenter added. As a result, Carpenter believes that any study of the current quarry at the Monument Visitor Center can only tell a small part of the story.

Studying the sandstone that still adheres to some of the dinosaur bones Douglass had collected, as well as conducting field work in and around the Quarry Visitor Center, Carpenter realized that the dinosaur bones did not accumulate in a lazy meandering river as some geologists thought, but in a braided river like the Platte River in southern Nebraska. By using freely available software by the Army Corps of Engineers, Carpenter modeled on a computer the ancient river that ran through the quarry (the Quarry River) after the Platte River. Seeding the bottom of the virtual river with dinosaur bones, Carpenter was amazed that hundreds of bones scattered across a section of river bottom had a greater influence on the river than a single large dinosaur carcass. Carpenter also used a strain gauge to measure the amount of force needed to move weighed casts of various dinosaur bones along the river bottom. These results gave an estimate of the amount of water flow and the speed of the ancient river that would have been needed to move the bones downstream from their carcasses. 

Carpenter also concluded that the alignment of bones indicated the ancient river flowed south-southeast. This interpretation is based on a new map of the bone deposits created using Douglass’ original quarry map, supplemented with archival photographs of the excavations by Douglass and some taken later in the 1950s and 1960s by the National Park Service.

Previous studies concluded that the Quarry River flowed to the east, “But that was because people were not looking at the whole picture,” Carpenter said. “This interpretation of the type of river and the direction of flow is also supported by the elongate shape of underwater sand dunes like those seen in the Platte River.” These dunes preserved in the sandstone can be seen in the archival photographs, as well as in and around the Visitor Center Quarry. To see them, however, “you have to tilt your head to see the sandstone beds as if they were horizontal, the way they were deposited,” Carpenter added. Today, the beds are tipped at an angle of 70 degrees, which is what makes viewing the dinosaur bone deposit possible today in the new Visitor Center. The new building was opened in October, 2011, after 18 months of construction to replace the condemned fifty year-old visitor center. 

The new map Carpenter produced also showed that many of the bones seen today at the Monument belong to some of the incomplete skeletons removed by Douglass. The individual bones remaining in the Quarry had been pushed downstream of the main skeletons by the ancient Quarry River.  Carpenter thinks he has solved a mystery of why so many individual dinosaurs were found there. He noted that the bones and skeletons showed a similar pattern of bone scattering as that of as cattle killed during a prolonged drought in Africa. Animals that died early in the drought had a longer time to decay, and their bones were more scattered than animals that died later. The most likely scenario for the fossils in the Quarry is that the dinosaurs died at various times in a shrinking river, where they had sought refuge. Lacking sweat glands, they probably could not venture far from water. By depleting the vegetation within walking distance, many of the dinosaurs eventually starved. Their rotting bodies polluted the water, making the situation worse by making the animals drinking the water sick.

Evidence that some of the dinosaurs were sick is seen in the posture of some of the skeletons. The neck is pulled back over the body, and the legs pulled up close. Carpenter documents the same posture in a modern ostrich an hour after its death. .

“The quarry at Dinosaur National Monument is a remarkable snapshot of the prehistoric past. At least three different layers of bones are preserved and these show repeated episodes of drought 150 million years ago,” Carpenter concluded.

The study, History, sedimentology, and taphonomy of the Carnegie Quarry, Dinosaur National Monument, Utah, appears in the Annals of the Carnegie Museum.

 

###

Prehistoric Museum

Utah State University – Eastern

155 East Main, Price, Utah 84501 USA

usueastern.edu/museum

Actual Mammoth Bone Soon To Be On Display

Lloyd Logan, the Prehistoric Museum's Director of Education and Exhibits works on a new exhibit for the Huntington Mammoth. Actual bone will now be on display. The Exhibit premiers at the

Huntington Mammoth 25th Anniversary Celebration

August 8, 2013
6:00 pm
Prehistoric Museum-Hall of Archaeology
155 East Main Street
Price, Utah 84501

New Exhibit Unveiling
Video of the actual discovery
Lecture: The Huntington Mammoth: Past, Present, and Future by Dr. Tim Riley
Refreshments

This event is FREE and the public is invited to attend

In celebration of The 25^th anniversary of the Huntington Mammoth’s discovery, the Prehistoric Museum invites you to attend an event in honor of the mammoth’s unearthing.

Be among the first to see three newly renovated exhibits that museum staff have been updating for this occasion.  These exhibits will be unveiled at the beginning of the event and focus on the Ice Age, Huntington Mammoth, and Paleoindians.

Immediately following the exhibit opening, the museum’s own Curator of Archaeology Dr. Tim Riley will share a video about the mammoth’s discovery and give a short lecture about the current research being done on the mammoth.

Castle Valley Archaeological Society (CVAS) will also sponsor a reception after the lecture.  This is a fantastic opportunity to celebrate such an important specimen.

Contact Christine K. Trease

Director of Public Relations

(435) 613-5757

christine.trease@usu.edu