Depression-Era Workers Found Strange Fossilized Beasts in 'Texas Serengeti'

[Judi Lynn]

By Laura Geggel, Associate Editor | April 12, 2019 11:29am ET

- click for image -

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An illustration showing the ancient animals — such as elephant-like gomphotheres, rhinos, horses and antelopes with slingshot-shaped horns — that lived near what is now Beeville, Texas, about 12 million years ago.
Credit: Jay Matternes/The Smithsonian Institution


About 12 million years ago, antelopes with slingshot-like horns and beasts that weren't quite elephants but that had long trunks and tusks tramped across the "Texas Serengeti" searching for food and caring for their babies.

Little was known about this ancient menagerie until, during the Great Depression, the government created the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and tasked some of the organization's employees with finding and preserving thousands of fossils from the Miocene, an epoch that lasted from about 23 million to 5 million years ago.

Now, after more than 80 years in storage at The University of Texas at Austin, these fossils are finally being studied. The fossils have even revealed a previously unknown genus of gomphothere, an extinct elephant relative with a shovel-like lower jaw, and the oldest fossils on record of both the American alligator and an extinct dog relative. [Photos: These Animals Used to Be Giant]

These fossils, collected from 1939 to 1941, are an absolute treasure trove, scientists said. In the nearly 4,000 specimens, found at dig sites near Beeville, a city about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southeast of San Antonio, there are 50 species of fossil vertebrates (animals with backbones), including five species of fish, seven reptiles, two birds and 36 mammals.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/65220-fossils-show-texas-serengeti.html

[eppur_se_muova]

1. Very interesting ! These were apparently typical sedimentary deposits ...

I had wondered for a minute if these had been buried in volcanic ash, like the big deposit at Ashfall, NE.