Chasing History: Prehistoric Mammal Species

Hey everybody my name is Chase Pipes and you're watching Chasing History brought to you by the American Digger magazine and you are watching the educational arm of the Smoky Mountain Relic Room and we're we're so far not near anything. Anytime you see this guy right here that means we are not near any sense of civilization. We're out with Tyree Lampf with Utah Dump Digger on Facebook. If you guys haven't had a chance go on to Utah Dump Digger on Facebook follow Ty. This is when it comes to fossils it doesn't matter what it is if it's dead in a rock he's on it. We're out hunting the White River Formation and this is you know right at the end of the Eocene the beginning of the Oligocene era. This is about 20-30 million years old somewhere around here. This is where you've got mammals you know exploding onto the scene and doing some really really weird mammal stuff. I mean you've got bear, pig, dogs, cat, wolf, bears. You've got things with tusks and horns that don't belong to anything that are all all evolutionary dead ends. It was all there was wide open because the dinosaurs had disappeared and everything was wide open and they were just trying to fill all these niches and who could get there first and use the resources and and some of the things would work for a little while and somebody else would come along and evolve better and boom they'd be gone. One of the things about this site too that's kind of fun is it's got all these brachiopods all these snail shells. Oh yeah these things are awesome. They're all over in this layer with these fossils. Yeah this shows that it was a marine environment that this was laid down in. Stream bed, shallow shoreline, something like that. One of these neat things about this whole environment we're in is it preserved a lot of things that you don't normally see. We've got the mammals, we've got brachiopods, we've got the shells and the little animals that are living in the water but one of these interesting things that you see are these nice little round balls and these are dung beetle balls. So the dung beetles were making their little balls to lay their eggs in and they got buried up with the same flood that buried up this animal and there you have it. And this is probably the most precarious fossil I've ever seen and we're going to see if I can grab it without dropping down a 30 foot hole. One fossil this looks to be like a large oriodont. Now we're digging the white river formation which is whoa look at that skull crust that is awesome. Taking the white river formation this is end of the Eocene beginning of the Oligocene. See if we can get the most important part. Look at that. All right guys we're out here hunting a white river formation and we have found an awesome freaking skull. We got a whole skull coming out right there. There's the there's the jaw of it right there and then here there's the canine there and the jaw section here and we've got bones coming up here but this is the whole thing. It looks to be a cracodon which is like a wolf bear thing. So you know that's the thing about digging the white river is there's you've got all these crazy species of mammals that are just it's the birth of mammals and it's when mammals are trying to figure out exactly what's going on. All right guys so here's what we're doing we're climbing up this whole draw that you see behind me and all in through here this top cap layer which you see behind we've got fossils spilling out all over the place. Let's head on up and see what more we can find. See what's cool about this is this is a period of history where you know mammals are just now starting to try to figure everything out. You know the dinosaurs are dead and gone you know there's and mammals which you know during the period of dinosaurs were these little teeny tiny little little things and they started exploded onto the onto the scene and since all the major predators were gone these little shrew like things just turned into giant giant animals and what's neat is is you know evolutionary they just went on so many different branches. I mean they were doing all kinds of crazy things like pig bear dog cat wolf coyote moose bear pig there's there's a lot of weird mammals in this period it is hilarious. All right so we made it back to camp and we just want to show you so this is what we've this this is what me and Tony picked up yesterday this is just the loose pieces that's how many fossils we've got here i mean there is we're only picking up identifiable pieces we're not picking up random chunks these are nice limb ends jaws great pieces of tooth limb ends i mean this is just this is insane i mean it is a five gallon bucket full of stuff in one day in one day i mean it just goes and goes and they're all good you know there's yeah limb ends lots of bracks lots of pieces parts i mean that's articulated there's three toes stuck together right there oh you know it's just neat little piece that you there's a really cool articulated piece right there i don't know how many pieces of heads and jaws and teeth limb ends but see when we tell you guys that fossils aren't rare we mean they're not rare when you're in the right places like this is they're everywhere there's just not a lot of people out there hunting this stuff and give it you know all of this stuff is stuff that washed away that washed out that was on the way to be destroyed i can't tell you how many jaw sections like this that you know one piece was up here one piece was here one piece was down here and it was all on its way to be to be being destroyed yeah we made it about 50 yards 50 60 feet from the four wheelers found several things we just filmed the skull that was blown up around the corner popped over the hill here's another one this is what jaw and more limbs that are blown up weathering out coming down this hill there's pieces and parts all over there's more back here where it's harder to see but if you look you can see all these pieces come and scattered all the way down the hill and once they hit the bottom of these cracks the way this clay is they'll just be buried they're gone forever once they hit the bottom of the mud flat they're gone they're done so you've got only five or six feet from where they weathered out to where they're completely lost forever now one thing we noticed while we were sitting here is we could look over at the next hill let me run over there i'll point it out just to show how many and how close this stuff is together sometimes it's another skull just right here or half a skull it's all weathered out the nose is gone the back half of the skull is gone already and it's getting ready to roll off the hill this won't last the next rainstorm here's the next one these are just big bone that's coming out but all along this layer to every 20 30 feet there's another one of these for miles that's just insane man that's just about half a skull most of it's gone already that's crazy but look at the teeth that's it one more rainstorm oh yeah that's already i mean it's all blown up and that would be gone it's gone so when this was buried it was probably complete skull you can see how bad it's falling apart already back's gone nose is gone still has lower jaws they're not too bad of shape now they're over it on but that's just the whole front end of the skull there's the part of the eye socket there it's like it would have been here and here it's just gone you know one more rainstorm this thing would have been just off the mountain this probably showed up this past rainstorm that we had too i'd say yep but right where we're filming fossil after fossil after fossil after fossil and it's the skulls that's what's crazy jaw sections jaw sections skull skull limb i think it was the not so chewy bits that's we find a lot of limb ends that are broke off that the centers are missing out of and stuff and they were harder tougher pieces like the jaws are tougher harder not as much meat on them so they weren't depredated they weren't ate as much that makes a lot of sense so this is a limb and we were taking a picture of a cross there that ran over here to show you now if you look you can see these pieces scattered all down this little ravine right here now these pieces are all just loose weathered out blown up falling down the mountain there's nothing left of this limb that's probably where it came from up here and it's there's a couple more and it's eroding out there and as it erodes out it's blowing up and falling down as soon as it hits the clay at the bottom it's gone these pieces have not got any real value to them they're not articulated ends there's nothing there's nothing scientific about these they're just blowing up and washing away so one of the things you notice is the same things that happened back millions of years ago hundreds of thousands of years ago are still happening today and a lot of times when we're out walking around we find just pieces of fossils ends of limbs things like that and people are always asking they automatically assume that we're finding complete skeletons and a lot of times you don't because when you walk around just like today you find the ends of limbs the harder pieces that are surviving longer the predators are eating it the marrows rotting out so if this got buried down here in this creek bottom now several million years from now when it washed back out that's all you'd find and the next piece might be hundreds of yards away it just depends on how fast it was buried and deposited and how much was predated and how far was broke down before it got buried now do you see that in the dinosaur era or just in the mammal every every era every every era happened all the time anytime something dies you know when you're out walking around you know how often you see a complete deer skeleton laid out perfectly on the ground not very often you'll find a leg you'll find a bone you'll find stuff scattered all the way down one ravine so and it's the same thing with the dinosaurs the same thing with the mammals same thing every era that makes a lot of sense you can see the gnaw marks on it yeah you can see chew marks you can see how it's broken up the marrow is rotting out it's getting hollow just don't survive no i really hope that you guys enjoyed you know us taking you out this has been like a bucket list item for me to come out and dig this stuff from the early mammals because i mean this is this is just a part of you know everybody knows the dinosaurs and everybody knows the the Pleistocene ice age stuff but there's this huge chunk right there in the middle you know 20 30 40 million years that nobody really knows about that nobody really talks about and there are some fantastic fossils but the thing is is that we need people out there collecting it you know there's more of these fossils out there being destroyed than anybody could collect in their lifetime i mean they're all over the place and they're all mostly species that we know about you know ty works really hard that if he comes across a species that is new to science he gets it there you know but there's a lot of this stuff you know all you know this this one day's worth of hunting you know in school kits or in the hands of somebody that's never held a fossil before can do more good to inspire the next generation like you guys out there to learn about science because in a time when the people believe that the earth is flat and the earth is only 6 000 years old we need scientists desperately badly you know this is one of the reasons why we get people that think the earth is only 6 000 years old because they're we gotta have scientists and you're not gonna get inspired to go into science by you know watching a movie or reading a book you know you're gonna get inspired to go into science by out going out here and collecting this stuff or having this stuff available to you and that's what we're trying to do you know you know here's the thing guys is that if you want to be a part of this you know you you can there's nothing stopping you get off of that couch get out of youtube and get out here find a local fossil club find a local rock club and get out and you know and become a part of this you know there's places to go wherever you live there's fossils there you just got to look into it so ty you got anything else you want to close with before we get no i mean just give your local rock club a call go outdoors enjoy it there's something to find no matter where you're at you said it's the best it's just no matter where you live there's something fun you can do in the outdoors and you can learn and you can save this stuff and that's the biggest thing is is getting out there and saving this stuff you know this was a whole animal and just time time destroyed it so you know and if we hadn't come picked it up these would all this would even this wouldn't be here no so it's important to get out there and hunt this stuff ty thank you so much thank you for taking us on a bucket list item dude oh this is so so awesome man we really appreciate it and thank you guys for watching ty where can people get a hold of you if they want to get a hold of you best thing to do is look on utah dump digger on facebook give us a take a look make comments make comments on these videos i mean share these videos spread the word around what we're doing and if there's something you like something you don't like talk to us about it send us comments and make comments and just tell us what you think comments comments find ty on facebook utah dump digger join up tell him you saw him on chasing history and follow him because ty's digging if it's in the ground and it can be dug up this guy is yeah i mean two days we're digging a trike yeah you know triceratops he's digging dinosaurs after this we're going fossil fish but get out there explore this country so thank you guys for watching we sure appreciate it be sure to like and subscribe to this youtube episode check out our other youtube episodes on our channel chasing history we've got a podcast chasing history radio you guys can check this out we are chasing history the educational arm of the smoky mountain relic room be sure to check us out and remember guys history rocks excuse me little mammal from the eocene oligocene are you on twitter no chief i'm not on twitter because twitter sucks that's right little mammal creature bear pig thingy from the eocene twitter does suck oh my god there's so many there's so many look are you crunching so you just the cameraman just took a big bite of a cracker there's so many forgot to turn the mic on son of a bitch you know i don't like multiple takes i'm sorry look a jaw there's another job oh my god another job look that's not a job oh yeah chase just go right up there up the canyon of death and then you can go right down there down the canyon of death sure there's yeah why not canyon of death this is how chase dies i'll take it oh head head head head head head head head head head head femur head head head head jaw