Paleontologists dig Ice Age fossils in Virginia

While excavations at the Gray Fossil Site continue, paleontologists and students from East Tennessee State University are searching for clues to the past at other fossil sites across the region.

Dr. Blaine Schubert, who directs ETSU’s Don Sundquist Center of Excellence in Paleontology, is cleaning the specimens from his most recent excavation at Saltville, Va., where he spent two weeks this past summer with students, volunteers, and colleagues.

Saltville has been known for its Ice Age fossils since Thomas Jefferson reported large bones from the valley in 1782, and excavations have occurred there on a sporadic basis ever since.  ETSU became involved when Dr. Steven Wallace, associate professor of Geosciences, led digs at the site in 2003 and 2004.  Schubert took over the Saltville project after joining the ETSU faculty in 2006 and has been taking a group of students there for the past three years.

“We are very excited for this opportunity to study an extraordinary Ice Age fossil site, but we are equally as grateful about the diverse educational experience this offers our students,” said Schubert.

“The Gray Fossil Site and Saltville are very different.  Saltville fossils date back 16,000 to 17,000 years, so it is much more recent than Gray and therefore the plants and animals are different.  Also, the fossils are in old lake sediments that still hold water, so a pump runs constantly while the digging occurs.  Students are seeing different types of fossils from a younger time period, while learning how to excavate in an unusual setting – mud…and we get covered in it!”

Among those specimens found in Saltville are extinct mammoths, mastodons, musk-ox, and giant short-faced bears and ground sloths.  In addition, some animals and plants, like caribou, spruce, and fir, have been found that now live much farther north.

“Temperatures were colder here 16,000 years ago and this allowed more cool-adapted organisms to live in this area,” Schubert said.  “The last Ice Age ended around 13,000 years ago as temperatures warmed.  This coincided with the extinction of our mega-fauna and the first evidence of humans hunting large game in North America.  We still have a lot to learn about this climatic change and the extinction, and Saltville’s fossils are helping.”

In addition to finding bones, teeth, and plants, the team has recovered some fossils that have unique stories to tell.  For example, a mammoth skeleton shows evidence of extreme scavenging, displayed by exceptionally large bite marks.

“Something as big as a giant short-faced bear had been munching on it,” Schubert said.

“Though it has been suggested that these massive bears scavenged on mammoths, this represents the best potential evidence for it.  For perspective, giant short-faced bears were up to five-and-a-half feet at  the shoulder when on all their fours!”  Schubert and Wallace recently published a paper on this scavenging evidence in the international research journal Boreas.

Schubert noted that “one of the most exciting finds this year was potential dung from a large herbivore, like a mammoth or a ground sloth.”   He is now working with Dr. Jim Mead, fossil dung expert and chair of the ETSU Department of Geosciences, to determine which animal may have deposited it.

Items found from Saltville are housed at the ETSU and General Shale Brick Natural History Museum and Visitor Center at the Gray Fossil Site, and specimens are currently on display.  In addition to the excavations, Schubert said his team hosted children from the region in a “Kid’s Day” paleontology event at the Saltville site and offered a one-day paleontology experience for North Side Elementary teachers and ETSU faculty, staff and graduate students affiliated with the GK-12 program.