Keep On Stumpin'

[Guest Smilodon]

Did you know that you had a species of prehistoric animal named in your honor? I thought you should know that.

Clues:

-Pliocene

-North America

-Extinct species, genus, AND family

-I found this in a throwaway box o' stuff but the story of finding the type specimen is the most hard core collecting story ever. EVER.

[ashcraft]

Did you know that you had a species of prehistoric animal named in your honor? I thought you should know that.

Clues:

-Pliocene

-North America

-Extinct species, genus, AND family

-I found this in a throwaway box o' stuff but the story of finding the type specimen is the most hard core collecting story ever. EVER.

As usual, nothing comes to mind. Don't see any spongy bone, is it a horn core of some type (I am assuming vertebrate, which I guess I shouldn't)

King of the Ill Informed

Brent Ashcraft

[Guest Smilodon]

Did you know that you had a species of prehistoric animal named in your honor? I thought you should know that.

Clues:

-Pliocene

-North America

-Extinct species, genus, AND family

-I found this in a throwaway box o' stuff but the story of finding the type specimen is the most hard core collecting story ever. EVER.

As usual, nothing comes to mind. Don't see any spongy bone, is it a horn core of some type (I am assuming vertebrate, which I guess I shouldn't)

King of the Ill Informed

Brent Ashcraft

My digicam is on the fritz, and I couldn't get a good close up of the spongy core. That's actually a clue in and of itself.

Reasonable guessing is part of the fun of Stumpin' (OK - the outrageous guesses too)

[Auspex]

My first impression was antler.

[Harry Pristis]

Here's my outrageous guess -- looks like a Protoceratid horn core. (Just kidding! It doesn't look like much of anything, but the other clues are a giveaway.)

This species name was a sop to collectors in Florida after the Florida State Museum pushed for new fossil legislation restricting collecting. Frank Garcia was close to the museum people at the time. He testified at a house committee meeting in favor of restricting collecting. I was there when Frank passed to the state representatives a cast of the horns of this animal.

Tallahassee, 1983. I'll never forget Frank getting up to testify before the House subcommittee that was hearing the proposed Florida fossil legislation. Frank was holding a cast of a Kyptoceras amatorum (antelope-like critter) horn core. The museum director, Dave Webb and other museum minions were in the gallery. Frank was the Museum's guy at the moment, urging the representatives to give the Museum title to fossils found on river bottoms and other state land.

Frank was solemn as he took his seat, all eyes were on him. He held the cast of the horn core in his left hand . . . he put his right hand on his heart . . . he blurted out "FOSSILS IS SACRED!" It was just chuckles after that, hyper-dramatic stuff about "time travelers" and such.

When he was finished, Frank passed the horn core down the bank of representatives for examination. Holding the horn core in his hand, one representative turned to another and said, "Looks like the hood ornament on your Cadillac, Joe!" Everyone (except Frank, I suppose, and the Museum people) had a good laugh.

The fossil legislation died that afternoon in the House of Representatives. It was revived later in the Senate and passed in a rush on the closing day of that session.

------Harry Pristis

[Guest Smilodon]

My first impression was antler.

And your first impression would be CORRECT - but here at Stumpin' Central, we need the beast and we then reveal "The Rest of the Story." - if there is one. And there is a whopper about finding the type specimen from the discoverer.

[Guest Smilodon]

Here's my outrageous guess -- looks like a Protoceratid horn core. (Just kidding! It doesn't look like much of anything, but the other clues are a giveaway.)

------Harry Pristis

Awww, buzzkill, Harry. But that isn't the story I was going to tell. As for not looking like anything, perhaps the photos look that way, but I sure knew what it was when I first saw it in the box and Garcia just smiled when I showed it to him.

Back after dinner.

[Harry Pristis]

And your first impression would be CORRECT - but here at Stumpin' Central, we need the beast and we then reveal "The Rest of the Story." - if there is one. And there is a whopper about finding the type specimen from the discoverer.

I agree that 'Auspex' made a reasonable guess of "antler." I disagree that he was correct.

"Antlers are the usually large and complex bony appendages of most deer species, mostly worn by males; only female caribou and reindeer have antlers, though these are normally smaller than those of the males. Each antler grows from an attachment point on the skull called a pedicle. While an antler is growing it is covered with highly vascular skin called velvet, which supplies oxygen and nutrients to the growing bone; once the antler has achieved its proper size, the velvet is lost and the antler's bone dies. This dead bone structure is the mature antler. Antlers are shed after each mating season."

The stumper is not from a deer (Family CERVIDAE) which annually sheds its horns. It is from a protoceratid (Family PROTOCERATIDAE) which did not shed its horns -- there is no pedicle. Protoceratids did not have antlers.

There are no more protoceratids, but you can make a similar comparison between mule deer and pronghorn antelope. Antelope do not have antlers.

You can call them horns, but the horny material is long gone in protoceratid fossils. The technical term is "horn core" which is a boney projection from the skull.

[lordpiney]

hippocamelus?

[Guest Smilodon]

I agree that 'Auspex' made a reasonable guess of "antler." I disagree that he was correct.

Harry is correct. Not sure why I misspoke. Brent, a thousand pardons and Auspex, please return your half an "atta"

[Guest Smilodon]

Ok, storytime.

We find our intrepid collector (not me) in 1979 in a full (right) leg plaster cast. Used to collecting nearly every day after work he's now been home for 3 months essentially housebound. He can take it no more and climbs into his car, throws his right leg across to the passenger side, uses a crutch in his right hand for the gas pedal, left foot for the brake and left hand on the steering wheel and drives out to to his favorite phosphate mine to just sit in his car and look. After about a month he can't stand it anymore and gets out of his car to collect around it on crutches and finds some interesting mammal fossils. One day he brings his binoculars to scope things out and finds an 80 foot tall spoil pile with the same matrix at its top about 100 yards away surrounded by water.

Being bulletproof, our collector decides to go for it. In full leg cast and crutches he loads an inflatable raft, full dive tank, life preserve, trenching tool, backpack, food, water and supplies and drives with one leg to collect that spoil pile that looked so promising, ALONE. He uses the dive tank to inflate the raft and somehow loads everything in without capsizing, paddles the hundred yards with his trenching tool, manages to roll out onto the slick slimy clay on the other side, finds something to secure the raft, empties it and starts crutching around and climbing. Finding fossils along the way, he reaches the summit and finds a 3ft long curved horn with an orbit attached looking back at him. He fell to the ground, brushed the soft matrix away and revealed a partial skull and upper jaw with teeth, then the other horn, more skull, teeth, and bones.

AND he donated it all to the Florida Museum of Natural History. The description of the beast comes tomorrow.

[MikeD]

That's an entertaining story. I don't suppose he had a camera? That would be a good picture.

[Harry Pristis]

That's an entertaining story. I don't suppose he had a camera? That would be a good picture.

The way I heard this story, the collector crawled across the water-filled mine cut using the scuba tank to breathe. He didn't have a second-stage regulator, so he had to take hits of air directly from the J-valve of the tank. Or was that a K-valve.

[Guest Smilodon]

The way I heard this story...

Perhaps the story has evolved over the years. Yes, those oldtimers do get larger than life, don't they. One miller to another

[siteseer]

Perhaps the story has evolved over the years. Yes, those oldtimers do get larger than life, don't they. One miller to another

And don't forget to add an alligator to the story next time with it getting a foot longer with each retelling.

Oh, and Mr. Pristis, nice correction on pointing out the difference between and antler and a horn (deer vs. pronghorns and Kyptoceras). It's a technicality but it's a good reminder for us city boys and something the novices should hear. BTW, I think I know who you are. I believe I visited your house once - met you at Tucson probably twenty years ago. If I'm right, how's Birdie?