http://www.mycountyparks.com/county/Floyd/Park/Fossil-Prairie-Park-Preserve-and-Center.aspx
http://ashfall.unl.edu/
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/evotourism/evolution-world-tour-ashfall-fossil-beds-nebraska-6171451/
I first learned about Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park in Royal Nebraska, from an article in Smithsonian’s magazine called Evolution World Tour, in the section titled: “ Ashfall Fossil Beds, Nebraska,” which said:
Prehistoric rhinoceroses and horses died of volcanic ash inhalation 12 million years ago – their fossils are studied now as a perfect example of natural selection.
I confess I had no real idea how far Royal Nebraska is from Minneapolis where I live, so I used Google Map and discovered it’s about six and half, seven hours, depending on the route. I selected a route through Sioux Falls, South Dakota, because I figured me and my partner would want to stay overnight someplace with decent but not terribly expensive hotels, and I was curious to see the Great Plains Zoo in Sioux Falls.
The drive in my then-new Kia Rio (jealous much?) was…I’m going to say “serene” here. It’s not fair to call it boring, because it has a real beauty to it, but it’s not a dramatic beauty like pounding surf; it’s a quiet, static kind of beauty. Lush rolling hills, sheets of cornfield extending to the horizon, sky sky and geez there’s more sky. But this is not an unpleasant drive, and the right MP3 player music mix really helps.
About the Great Plains Zoo (http://www.greatzoo.org): This is not a bad zoo by any means, but for those of us who have grown accustomed now to the more animal-friendly habitats at the Minnesota Zoo, and the increasingly better habitats at Como Zoo, it seems comparatively stark and unintentionally mean-spirited. There are rhinos there, and that was a big part of the draw for me. I was really interested in seeing a live African one on the same trip as I saw its distant Nebraska cousin’s fossilized bones. Circle of life? Something.
But the paddock for the rhinos was rather small and while the animals were in no way mistreated or neglected, I couldn’t help feeling a wave of the same sort of sadness that used to overtake me at Como Zoo, seeing, say, the polar bear in an enclosure not much larger than my apartment. Como has moved to correct much of that last-century cruelty; I hope all zoos are able to find the resources to follow suit.
Oh. And the MAIN reason for going to this zoo was their alleged axolotl. It’s a marine salamander, extinct in the wild, and from only one small region of Mexico. A real freak show, this salamander—it reaches sexual maturity while still a “tadpole,” so it keeps its frilly lion’s mane of gills and lives an entirely aquatic life. It’s an example of what’s called “neotany,” and some scientists have speculated that humans might also, in their evolutionary history, have benefited from some neotany, because baby chimpanzees and bonobos look “more human” than the adults of those species do.
At any rate. Axolotl. All kinds of cool. Nowhere to be found, despite it’s having appeared on their website of animals to see. We asked around and they no longer have an axolotl, which at the time disappointed me quite a bit. But I fixed that by getting my own this spring. Her name is Rose (Axol Rose) and she’s doing great. Take that, Great Plains Zoo!
The actual Ashfall park is in a remote-but-easy-to-find location, set among rolling hills mostly covered in cornfields. It’s nice, new, and modern, with a newish interpretive center that does a great job of explaining, for example, the evolution of horses represented at the site. And the main attraction is a huge barn- or hangar-like structure that shelteringly covers the actual site. The site is an active dig, and you can observe paleontologists carefully digging among the amazing riot of shapes.
Mike Voorhies, the paleontologist who made this discovery with his wife Jan back in the 1970s, was onsite, still digging and answering questions. I can’t promise that everyone will be so lucky as to have the actual number one expert on Ashfall present to, with great generosity, respond to a series of questions, but if it happened to us, maybe it’s not SO unusual.
A long way to come just to see a graveyard? I suppose the case could be made. But I thought it was awesome, and like in some great myth for me the bones seemed to come alive and I could imagine the rhinos and camels and horses and other animals alive in that very different time when Nebraska—NEBRASKA!—looked more like the African plains.
The OTHER fossil site possibly worth driving to is still a fair distance, but only about a third as far as Ashfall: Fossil Prairie in Rockford, Iowa. It’s approximately two and half hours from Minneapolis, in the northeast corner of Iowa. I took advantage on the trip of seeing and staying at the Frank Lloyd Wright hotel in nearby Mason City, but other more modest accommodations are also available in the area if you plan to make an overnighter out of the trip.
The thing about the fossil center (fossilcenter.com) is NOT that it is site to spectacular specimens like in Ashfall, but that they are abundant, easy to find, and available for collection. These are fossils from the Devonian, all marine animals, so you won’t find any dinosaurs or mammoths or anything, but there is-for me, at least—a special thrill that comes from finding shells and coral and other animals that have been dead for almost half a billion years. I went the morning after a very heavy thunderstorm, and the torrents of rain washed the soil and sand away from some areas, leaving behind a number of exposed fossil shells. I described it as “beachcombing the Devonian,” and I found it thrilling.
Trips are sometimes complicated to arrange, and seldom entirely convenient. They can cost money, and they for sure cost time—some of it being pretty bored. All I can say is, if you plan right and are open to it, these mega-field trips are totally worth the effort for the budding paleontologist and her parents or friends.
Final note: I stopped somewhere along the way, on my drive down to the Fossil Center, that I will have much more to say about in a later post, but wanted to put here as a further enticement to make the trip. At about the one-third mark or so, in Owatonna, Minnesota, is the Reptile & Amphibian Discovery (RAD) Zoo, and it’s well-worth the stop as long as you’re buzzing nearby. As I said, more on that later, but take a peek:
http://www.theradzoo.com/
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