Science is Fun Fridays!

 

10-12 million years ago, a Yellowstone hotspot erupted and blanketed a watering hole with ash.

Today, Ashfall Fossil Beds is a State Historic Park in Nebraska.

Above are the fossils of Teleoceras, an extinct grazing rhinoceros.  The site also includes small three-toed and one-toed horses, camels, a saber-toothed musk deer, as well as birds and turtles.

Researchers have determined through the bones that the animals died of lung failure from inhaling the ash.  Several bones showed marks from scavenging predators, such as the bone-crushing dog, Aelurodon.

In 1971, someone noticed a skull sticking out of a gully at the edge of a cornfield.  That someone happened to be a University of Nebraska State Museum paleontologist, who recognized it was that of a juvenile rhinoceros.  The area was purchased by the Game and Parks Foundation in 1986, and became and National Natural Landmark in 2006.

Teleoceras