Visit Ashfall an Introduction
In 1971, paleontologist Michael Voorhies from the University of Nebraska State Museum uncovered a significant find on Melvin Colson’s farm in northeastern Nebraska while exploring with his wife, Jane. They discovered a small piece of bone from a baby rhinoceros embedded in the gully wall, signaling the start of a remarkable excavation project. Remarkably, the skeletons uncovered at the site, including that of a pregnant rhino with her unborn calf still intact, were found with bones still connected.
Six years post-discovery, the excavation began in earnest, supported by funding from the National Geographic Society after Voorhies presented initial findings. The site yielded an abundance of fossils, including rhinos, horses, camels, birds, turtles, and small deer, indicating a much larger fossil deposit. In 1991, after two decades of extensive research, the Ashfall site was officially opened as a state historical park for public education and enjoyment.
See the discoveries of Ashfall Fossil Beds, called the Pompeii of prehistoric animals, as Stephanie Arne talks with longtime superintendent and former paleontology intern himself, Rick Otto.
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[Host, Stephanie Arne] Fossils hidden in the state's geology reveal a fascinating story. Nebraska's prehistoric past is preserved in a way you can only see at Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park.
(gentle upbeat music)
[Host, Stephanie Arne] Did you know creatures we think of only living in Africa and Asia once roamed Nebraska 12 million years ago? Ancestors of horses, rhinos, and even camels lived right here. Unfortunately, this wildlife was wiped out by the fallout of the eruption of a super volcano.
This rhino barn is here to protect the dig site, but it also allows visitors to see the paleontologists in action. In fact, you can even ask them what they're working on.
(gentle upbeat music continues)
[Host, Stephanie Arne] I was very lucky to get to go where guests normally are not allowed and join the interns on the fossil digging floor.
Nick Thurber is an asphalt intern who also has his master's degree in paleontology. What am I going to be able to do today?
[Intern, Nick Thurber] Yeah, so this right here is a half of a skeleton of a rhinoceros. This is our most common fossil here at Ashfall
and it's buried in volcanic ash, so that's what this gray, powdery rock is covering the bones,and that's what we're gonna
be digging into today.
[Host] You have more tools than I have.
[Intern, Nick Thurber] I have more tools, yes.
[Host] Show me how you use them.
[Intern, Nick Thurber] Yeah, so this is probably our most common tool. It's just your trowel, if you will, a pointed trowel, and we use this mainly for excavating kind of away from the fossils into the ash. You just do nice smooth strokes. You wanna keep the ground nice and level, so when you do come upon a fossil, you don't overly expose it or undercut it in any way.
[Host] Just-
[Intern, Nick Thurber] Yeah.
[Host] Brush it and-
[Intern, Nick Thurber] Well, yes, do a quick brush with the brush, get away all the loose ash. Don't try to cut too deep into it. Paleontology is a very time-consuming and meticulous job. You don't wanna damage these bones that have been here millions of years
and even closer to the bones, we use things like this dentist pick, but yeah, so.
[Host] Oh my gosh, it is very meticulous.
[Intern, Nick Thurber] It is, this whole skeleton, we've been working on this for about two years now, and-
[Host] What!
[Intern, Nick Thurber] It was all covered in ash when I started working on it, so.
[Host] Did it look like some of these blocks?
[Intern, Nick Thurber] Yeah, we all started up pretty high and you slowly work your way down using trowels. I found most of those ribs closest to that wall. This right here, that kind of circular sphere of a bone is actually the end of a hip bone and I found that about a month ago, and that was a kind of a big surprise.
[Host] Oh my gosh, this is really, really cool.
[Intern, Nick Thurber] Yeah.
(gentle music)
[Rick Otto] This is where the Ashfall story begins. In 1971, paleontologist Michael Voorhies was scouting for fossils in the area, and when he walked up the gully behind us, so behind where I'm standing, he spotted the jawbone of a rhino calf where the yellow flag is. And after a little more excavation, he realized that it wasn't just a jawbone, the entire skeleton was buried on the hillside.
[Host] It's taken over 30 summers for paleontology interns to uncover the fossils that can currently be seen at Ashfall. There's more work to be done, probably another 15 seasons of diligent interns just brushing away, removing the ash and making new discoveries.
[Intern, Victoria Bain-Vrba] So if you look here, this is actually the foot of this horse right here.
[Host] Whoa.
[Intern, Victoria Bain-Vrba] Yeah. It extends all the way underneath this rhino. And so we know that the horses died first, and then there's a couple inches of ash here, about four to six, and then the rhinos died right on top of them.
[Host] This site has been called the Pompeii of prehistoric animals. Let's find out why.
[Rick Otto] Quite often when we want to go somewhere and view fossils, we go to a museum where the fossils have been taken out of the ground and put on display, but here you're looking at the actual fossil bed. Not only are the skeletons fully complete, they're still preserved in the round, they're three-dimensional. I know of no other location where so many three-dimensionally preserved skeletons have been found.
[Host] This is basically a paleontologist's dream, I would guess, right?
[Rick Otto] Oh, it is, you know, here the wealth of information is just incredible. Only one species of rhino has been found here, but five different species of horses, five different species of horses living together at the same place at the same time.
[Host] There's other animals as well, right?
[Rick Otto] Three different species of camels, little saber-toothed deer, members of the musk deer family. All of the bird species that have been found here are new to science. They had not been found at any other fossil site. Nebraska has a great fossil record,
and it is much more than than what you see here at Ashfall. It goes back at least 100 million years, and even older than that.
[Host] So the next time you think about Nebraska's past, remember, it started long before our traditional thoughts of the frontier when Native Americans and pioneers traveled the Wild West.
The prehistoric fossils at Ashfall Fossil Beds show you just how far back our Nebraska history stretches.
