While hiking a couple of weeks ago in Badlands National Park, Vicky looked down and saw something. It was not like other skulls we have come across, so we didn't handle it.
Instead, we took photos, a GPS coordinate, and sent the information to Park Headquarters. We didn't make a blog entry about it until the Park Service had time to check it out--we didn't want anyone else locating it.
It is at Vicky's feet here.
We got word back this morning that they had located the fossil. Here is what we got:
We were able to relocate the fossils that you found by navigating to the GPS coordinates you provided. The fossils you found include a skull and lower jaws from the oreodont Merycoidodon. Oreodonts were a common and diverse group of herbivourous mammals that have left no modern descendants.
The orange color on the bones is due to oxidation of the iron bearing minerals trapped within the bones during fossilization. It is common to see iron staining on bones at Badlands National Park, particularly in the area of (we X'd out to keep poachers out of the area). This is due to higher concentrations of heavy minerals in the sediments such as Iron and and in some areas, Uranium.
The fossils were weathering out of sediments from the Scenic Member of the Brule Formation. Fossils found in this rock unit are around 32-30.3 million years old and are part of the Oligocene Epoch of the Paleogene Period. This time period was roughly about half way between present time and when dinosaurs roamed North America 65 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous.
Here is a photo of the animal:
It's not like we found a Tyrannosaurus Rex or anything (although we were sort of hoping that it was an as-yet undiscovered species so it could be named VickyusDanus Rex). But we are pretty pleased with our find.
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