East Tennesseans Assist in Excavation of Prehistoric Fossils

East Tennessee State University paleontologists recently returned from conducting excavations at an Ice Age fossil site in Saltville, Va., where they rediscovered the location of a giant short-faced bear that researchers had been trying to relocate, leading to the discovery of more of the creature’s remains.

The ETSU research team consists of Dr. Blaine Schubert, Dr. Jim Mead and Brian Compton. Schubert is the director of the Don Sundquist Center of Excellence in Paleontology, director of the ETSU and General Shale Brick Natural History Museum, and an associate professor in the Department of Geosciences. Mead is professor and chair of the Department of Geosciences and a curator at the museum. Compton is a surveyor and preparator at the museum.

ETSU’s Sandra Swift, museum research technician, oversaw the screen washing activities, ETSU graduate students, other museum staff, students from other universities and volunteers. The ETSU Governor’s School visited the site for one day to participate in the excavations, and there was a one-day paleo-camp for kids.

The university-led excavations have focused in two areas, one of which held a mammoth skeleton that was heavily scavenged and chewed on by large carnivores. The second area contained a wide variety of fossils, ranging from giant short-faced bears to tiny salamanders and from musk-oxen to huge mammoths. This wide variety of fossils give researchers a more detailed picture of what the southern Appalachians were like at the very end of the last Ice Age, which is a time when climates were changing dramatically, people were just becoming established on the continent, and the megafauna, or large animals, were on the verge of extinction.

ETSU maintains Saltville (which ranges in age from 11,000 to 40,000 years old) and the Gray Fossil Site (which dates to 4.5 to 7 million years old).