Squamates (lizards, legless lizards and snakes), Late Eocene-Early Oligocene White River Group, M&M Ranch Nebraska

[MarcoSr]

I collected thousands of micro Squamate (lizards, legless lizards and snakes) specimens from anthill matrix from my sons’ Eocene/Oligocene, White River Group, M&M Ranch in Nebraska in 2016 and 2017 that I donated to the Smithsonian Institution.  I spent over 3,000 hours over a year and a half picking the specimens from the anthill matrix.  All of the squamate specimens have been with a squamate researcher in Germany since late 2017/early 2018.  Unfortunately Covid and two other major projects that the researcher was working on, a major Messel Pit publication and a climate paper, delayed the study of my specimens.  However, based upon recent communications with the researcher, the study of these squamate specimens should begin in earnest this summer.  Because my specimens closely span the Eocene/Oligocene boundary in Nebraska, the researcher is eager to use these specimens to describe in practice his climate theories and how climate affected the evolution of squamate species.  I just had a major publication, Korth Boyd Person Anderson 2022 Fossil mammals from ant mounds situated on exposures of the Big Cottonwood Creek Member of the Chadron Formation latest Eocene early Oligocene Sioux County Nebraska, published this May on the mammal micro specimens from the M&M Ranch, that I donated to the South Dakota School of Mines Geology Museum, and look forward to a major publication on these squamate specimens.  Below I’ll show a few of the donated specimens and hopefully use this thread to update the progress of the study and eventually the progress of the publication.

 

Below are a few pictures of the anthills that the Squamate specimens came from.  The Squamate researcher currently has specimens from 19 different anthill sites in the flats (latest Eocene to early Oligocene) of the M&M Ranch.

 

 

 

 

 

Below are Squamate specimens from several of the anthill sites, so you can see the large quantity of specimens that I found from each anthill site:

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few pictures of the lizard Specimens.

Lizard skull cap:

 

 

 

 

Lizard  premaxilla:

 

 

 

 

Lizard jaws:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lizard osteoderms.

Glyptosaur osteoderms.  These are the most common shape found.  Note the variety of colors.  Note these are not Peltosaurus per the researcher.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Additional Glyptosaur (Not 100% sure of this ID)osteoderms of different shapes:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another species Osteoderm:

 

 

 

 

A few pictures of some amphisbaenian (legless lizard) specimens.

Amphisbaenian jaw pieces:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amphisbaenian vertebrae:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snake skull pieces and jaw pieces are rarely found as fossils because of their fragile nature.  Snakes are typically described and identified by their vertebrae.

Snake vertebrae:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also sent over 200,000 (number estimated based on weight and weight of 100 specimen samples) cranial and post cranial bone pieces/fragments that I could not recognize to the squamate researcher.  He picked several thousand squamate cranial and post cranial bone specimens from these bone pieces/fragments that will also be part of his study.  Below is a picture of these bones picked from a single anthill site, so you can see the quantity of these bones.

 

 

 

 

Marco Sr.

[hadrosauridae]

Wow, those pics are amazing.  Such tiny fossils!

[jpc]

wonderful stuff, marco.  I bet you answered this in a previous post, but how do you do the nice photos with black background?

 

[rocket]

great work! And fantastic material, most of the collectors do not find them, too small :-)

but the smaller ones often tell scientifically the bigger stories!

[Tidgy's Dad]

Beautiful and very, very interesting. 

I look forward to future posts with much anticipation. 

[Troodon]

Ant hills are the best, thanks for the photos.  Wide array of finds which is super.

[fossilhunter21]

Those are some very tiny fossils! Nice job on the photos, they look amazing.

 

Thank you for sharing,

 

-Micah

[MarcoSr]

8 hours ago, jpc said:

wonderful stuff, marco.  I bet you answered this in a previous post, but how do you do the nice photos with black background?

 

 

Jean-Pierre

 

I take the pictures of the specimens on black velvet with my Dino-Lite AM4815ZT digital microscope.  I use the freeware Paint.net to crop the pictures and make any other necessary minor picture changes like rotate the specimen, change the brightness or clean-up the black background.  Because of the magnification, the black cloth used can need cleanup.  I've found velvet requires much less cleanup than other black cloth backgrounds.

 

Marco Sr.

[MarcoSr]

10 hours ago, hadrosauridae said:

Wow, those pics are amazing.  Such tiny fossils!

 

8 hours ago, jpc said:

wonderful stuff, marco.  I bet you answered this in a previous post, but how do you do the nice photos with black background?

 

 

3 hours ago, rocket said:

great work! And fantastic material, most of the collectors do not find them, too small :-)

but the smaller ones often tell scientifically the bigger stories!

 

2 hours ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

Beautiful and very, very interesting. 

I look forward to future posts with much anticipation. 

 

1 hour ago, Troodon said:

Ant hills are the best, thanks for the photos.  Wide array of finds which is super.

 

56 minutes ago, fossilhunter21 said:

Those are some very tiny fossils! Nice job on the photos, they look amazing.

 

Thank you for sharing,

 

-Micah

 

Thank you.

 

The squamate researcher's climate theories are somewhat outside of current mainline thinking.  I'm really excited that the eventual publication, looking at my specimens through the lens of his climate theories, could be somewhat groundbreaking.  Because my squamate specimens come from anthills that are in formation aged just before and just after the Eocene/Oligocene boundary/contact, the publication on them will be an ideal setting to interweave his climate theories.  Dr. Boyd, a geologist, spent time at our ranch studying and confirming the stratigraphy/geology of each anthill site, which was detailed in the publication of the mammal specimens from the M&M Ranch.  This will be of great value to the squamate researcher.

 

Marco Sr.

[jcbshark]

Fantastic finds and pics as always Marcoit's amazing what you find in all the hours it takes to go through the micro material! Crazy to think of some of the stuff I never see even doing the work to find it itself yet not recovering it. Great work!

 

 

Edited May 28, 2022 by jcbshark

[PFOOLEY]

Superb reference!

 

Thank you.

[Sjfriend]

All your hard work and dedication! Great work sir  As a reptile lover something like this might be the easiest way for me to get a "snake" fossil. Now I just have to go to Nebraska, dig up 1000 ant hills and start looking lol.