delila5's Blog

 
This is the Oreodont in the story.

In the summer of 1987 like so many summers before, my mother and I loaded the truck and headed for the Texas state line, on our way to the Nebraska badlands to hunt fossils. We could hardly wait to get there to unload the truck and hit the ground running in search of fossils. My love affair with the badlands of north western Nebraska and the fossils from that area began over thirty years ago.

Though the years mother and I became friends with ranchers in the area that allowed us to hunt their properties. The summer of 1987 we were to hunt an area of badlands that we had hunted before more than once. The area was abundant in fossil turtles of all sizes, bones fossil horse, camel, deer and always oreodonts. The first two weeks there we hunted a number of new areas, finding the usual jaw fragments, oreodont skulls, countless random vertebra and way too many unknown bone pieces.

Over the weeks to come we spent our days walking, searching the walls of the many small canyons, draws and dry creek beds for fossils and artifacts. The evenings were spent cleaning and labeling the finds of the day, to be pack away and shipped home. On the last week there we had one more area to hunt, the one from the previous year.

The day had been long and hot, the collecting had been slow, most of my water was gone and I still had to make it back to the truck before dark. As I started back the way I come, maybe it was the light or shadows, but there it was, something I had missed. There was a small patch of bone exposed at the base of a low ridge, one I had walked by earlier. I began probing around what I thought was just another oreodont skull, then I struck more bone off to the side of the skull, more bone that turned out to be a foot. What I thought was just another oreodont skull, turned out to be a skeleton complete from the tip of the tail to the toe nails.

Oreodonts are a common fossil found in the badlands, but not always completely articulated ones and this oreodont had a secret. Why was she all there? There appeared to be damage to the upper spine and what looked to be a puncture in one shoulder blade. Having sustained that type of injury it is unlikely that the oreodont would have been able to run away from an attacker. So why were no bones missing? Where were the scavengers? As a rule when an animal dies it’s rare that the remains lay intact undisturbed in anyway, this oreodont appeared to have just lain down to sleep.

The sun was starting to go down and I needed to find my way out of the canyon before dark. I would need more than Elmer's glue, foil and duct tape to bring this one out in one piece. I returned the next day with friends from the museum at Fort Robinson,to begin the removal of the dirt that had been covering it for millions of years. Slowly but surely by late afternoon the specimen was safely incased in a plaster jacket, boards had been attached to the bottom as handles, making it easier to carry out of the canyon it was found in.

The canyon can be seen in the distance in the picture below.
 

Now that little oreodont lives in Texas and her secret belongs to me. The mystery of what happened to that oreodont, why were there no bones missing? The answer to why that oreodont looked as if it lay down to sleep, was she only waiting to be found?

The badlands of the western US are particularly rich in mammal fossils from the late Eocene to Miocene. The Brule Formation is exposed over a huge area in Nebraska that yields abundant fossils as layers are eroded. This diverse group of stocky prehistoric mammals were thought to live in burrows and graze amid the grasslands, prairies and savannas of North and Central America throughout much of the Cenozoic era.

 

A dream in which I was the only player...

Many a night and hour have I spent playing at fantasy...

A fantasy where I could be anyone or anything I wanted to be...

When you play alone that's how it must be...

When your a dreamer and player of fantasy....

Fantasy is as close to me as the turn of my head...

Or the blink of my eye and I'm there...

As easy as changing the cloths I'm wearing or the song I'm play...

When your and audience of one...

You are always the star...