Although many folks on the coast assume Nebraska is flyover country, few paleontologists would label it plow under country.
Nebraska's soils and sedimentary rocks are full of fossils, providing snapshots into the archeological record.
"We have here in the state essentially the last 35 million years of geological history," said George Corner, collection manager of the division of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Nebraska State Museum at Morrill Hall.
"We've got the right-aged rock exposed at the surface. It's fortuitous for us that most of those sediment rocks have fossils in them."
Corner estimated that roughly one-third of the collection in Washington D.C.'s Smithsonian Institution's Hall of Mammals comes from Nebraska.
Terrestrial fossils are Nebraska's specialty because much of the state was beneath an inland sea during the time when dinosaurs roamed the planet.
"Dinosaurs were long extinct before most of the sediments that are producing the mammal fossils in the state were present," Corner said. "Those animals died out in the Cretaceous (period), say, 65 million years ago."
"We have Cretaceous rocks around Lincoln, but all of those rocks are marine."
The Cretaceous rocks in southeast Nebraska are part of the Dakota Formation, an expanse of sandy brown rock that has yielded numerous plant fossils. Some dinosaur tracks were identified in Jefferson County near Fairbury, Corner explained.
Although there are few dinosaur fossils in the state, Nebraska is viewed as a premier place to learn about proboscidean fossils. Proboscidean refers to animals with trunks. Mammoth and mastodon fossils fall into this category. Proboscidean fossils have been found in 90 out of Nebraska's 93 counties.
Although Nebraska is well known for its mammoths and mastodons, there are plenty of other creatures putting the Cornhusker State on the paleontology map. Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park's fully intact, three-dimensionally preserved skeletons add to Nebraska's global recognition.
"In 1971, a paleontologist who was conducting research in the area walked up an eroded gully and noticed the lower jaw of a rhinoceros calf exposed in a layer of volcanic ash," said the park's superintendent Rick Otto. "After probing back into the bank of the gully, he realized it was one of several intact skeletons."
The site is one of a few worldwide where the specimens have been left in situ with a building raised over the site to provide on-the-ground learning experiences.
The animals that became the fossils in today's park were ancient visitors to a waterhole after a large-scale volcanic eruption had filled the air with what amounted to powdered glass.
As dying animals breathed in the ash for days, they grew weaker. They may have gone to a pond or spring to seek comfort in the water. Instead, they succumbed to their illnesses and were buried in ashes. The effect of preservation is akin to the ash-covered ruins at Pompeii. The Ashfall fossil bed is unique to Nebraska.
"This is the only location where an ancient waterhole filled with volcanic ash has been found," Otto said. "This same bed of volcanic ash is found at dozens of locations in South Dakota and Nebraska, but Ashfall is the only location that apparently was a shallow waterhole that drifted full of volcanic ash.
"There probably are other locations like this, but they have not been discovered yet."
The park is managed by the University of Nebraska system in conjunction with the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. Game and Parks bought the privately owned land in order to help facilitate excavation and education about the highly unusual area.
"Being able to give tours of the fossil site to elementary school children (is my favorite part of working at the park)," Otto said. "Giving them the opportunity to see some of the really cool things we have here in Nebraska."
Yet it is not just catastrophic events that lead to good preservation in Nebraska. Serendipity allowed for one of the most extensive bat fossil finds in the Plains. Roughly 1,200 bat skeletons ranging from mostly incomplete to mostly intact were found at a site near Red Cloud.
"These were tree dwelling bats that lived above the site. If each generation, one or two bats fell into the stream, after a thousand years, you've got a lot of bats," Corner said. "There are probably as many fossil bats from that locality as there are in the rest of the Plains.
"Bats are extremely rare in the fossil record, especially outside of a cave area."
| BREAKOUT BOX TEXT | Nebraska Fossil Facts
