Nebraska - Day 9 - Ashfall Fossil Beds

Willow Springs State Recreation Area, Norfolk

Sunday, 9 October 2022

today's route

Randolph

Less than 25 miles from the campground is the tiny town of Randolph, pop. 955, "Where Tomorrow Is Built Today."  They call themselves "The Honey Capital of the Nation" based on the number of bee-keeping families per capita.  This town was founded in 1898 and named in honor of England's Lord Randolph Churchill.  (I don't know why, I'm just reporting.)  As far as the houses are concerned, it's a nice old town.  As far as the shops are concerned, it's a tired old town.  It has several brick streets and a very nice new library.  

part of the downtown area

Note the quilt square, even on the post office.
I saw them all over town.

The road that runs right by town - US-20 - was under serious construction and there were very few access points from town.  By the time I finally got back on the road, I was turned around and ended up driving a long way out of the way, as you might be able to see on the route map above.  Along the road I saw almost nonstop corn fields either harvested or still standing.

Back in the right direction, I came to Plainview, pop. 1,353, "The Klown Kapital of Nebraska," per the state governor.  Okay, I tolerate (though don't like) all the "k's" from KOA because of its marketing shtick, but I really don't get this.  Their signs say they have a "Klown Doll Museum" here, and I passed it.  There's probably more information about them on Facebook than I saw on their website for the rest of us, but here's a link to their history which explains how this thing got started.   http://www.klowndollmuseum.com/history

Just past Royal, pop. 81, "Small Town, Big Heart," I saw a pretty good-sized herd of horses.  In fact, I've been seeing a lot of horses in Nebraska.

Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park

For my visit here, I was lucky because today was the last day this year the park was open for visitors.

Their brochure explains what created this site:

Almost 12,000,000 years ago, a supervolcanic eruption in southwest Idaho spread a blanket of ash over a very large area.  One foot of this powdered glass covered the flat savanna-like grasslands in northcentral Nebraska.  Most of the animals that lived here survived the actual ashfall, but as they continued to graze on the ash-covered gasses, their lungs became severely damaged and they began to die.  The smaller animals died first (smaller lung capacities) and finally, after perhaps four to six weeks, the last of the rhinos perished.  Their bodies were covered by the blowing and drifting ash.  Undisturbed except by an occasional scavenging meateater (bone-crushing dogs), the skeletons of these animals are preserved in their death positions, complete with evidence of their last meals in their mouths and their last steps preserved in the sandstone below.

In case you thought you read wrong, yes, there were rhinos here; they've been the most common fossils exposed.

I'll start here where both that explanation and the visitor center exhibits started: with volcanic eruptions.

This is the exhibit - details enlarged below.

I've bought the "Old Dutch Cleanser" before
and find this information a little disturbing.

This is what scientists believed happened here at this site,
which was once presumably a watering hole.  The result is
hundreds of the fossilized remains of the animals that lived here.
See an example below.

This shows the remains of an entire turtle
and the bones of a bird, enlarged below.

Not only the bones but the tendons!

The main exhibits were skeletons that we saw in what they call the Rhino Barn, a structure built over the dig.  All these next photos came from inside that barn.

This entire archaeological site evolved from the gift of erosion
exposing a hidden skull.

This shows the work done to expose the skeletons of young rhinoceroses.

This is the exhibit - text enlarged below.

Hard for me to believe there were once rhinoceroses abundant in Nebraska (or even here at all!), but these skeletons prove beyond a doubt that there were.

The skeletons shown above indicate how this dig has been conducted, and the next photo gives an overview of that.

This photo was taken from a CCTV, which I discovered when I realized I was looking at those tourists shown in the photo in actual person.  It was hard to find a vantage point to see what they'd uncovered, which is probably why they came up with this camera, placed where a person couldn't easily go.

All of those skeletons are where they were found; none of them has been moved as far as I know.

In the same way I think of rhinoceroses as African animals, I think of camels as belonging to African and Middle Eastern desert regions.  But apparently they started out here, in North America and specifically in Nebraska.

Text enlarged below.

I saw this next sign outside where the staff had laid out a sort of geologic timeline.  I found it staggering to revise my thinking to include the idea that camels actually migrated from America to Asia.  I guess that northern land bridge was a gate that swung both ways - if people could follow game from Africa to America, then game could follow climate changes from America to Africa.

They had dozens of exhibits about the various types of animals - large and small - that have been discovered here.  Here are two samples.

The text is enlarged below.

Enlarged text.

The exhibits I showed earlier about volcanoes and ash were right by the entrance of the visitor center.  They also had these other, fancier exhibits in the same hall as the skeletons, showing additional information.  I had a hard time getting photos because of the glare, but I thought it was interesting enough to give it a try.

This next exhibit looks the same and is related to the one above, but has different information.

This is the exhibit.  Details enlarged below.
It's explaining that glaciers obliterated all traces of the ashfall from the eastern states.

The following exhibit is titled "The Track of the Yellowstone Hotspot."  Apparently scientists believe the underground hotspots that result in volcanoes migrate over time, which I guess makes sense given the earth's crust keeps shifting because of underground forces (tectonic plate movements).  They think the eruption that sent ash all over the continent and created the boneyard here in Nebraska was from a volcano in western Idaho - and the hotspot that caused that volcano is now underneath Yellowstone National Park.

There were several signs outside about the current natural world, and I thought these 2 were interesting.

Blue sage near the sign.

I spent about an hour at this place, plus a couple of walks for Dexter.  Back on the road I came to Foster, pop. 57, "Little Town on the Prairie," they say.  This whole area is cows and corn.

Back in the campground, I realized I still hadn't identified a nut I picked up in the David City City Park yesterday.  My guess was a chestnut, which I looked up and yes, this is a chestnut.  I've seen quite a few of these trees in Nebraska.  They don't grow in either Texas or Alaska and they aren't common in Washington, so I just wasn't quite sure.  Pretty color, isn't it?

(not to scale)