The only surviving American cheetah.
Posted on 08/09/2014 2:33:26 AM PDT by blueplum
(Reuters) - Scientists excavating an ancient Wyoming sinkhole containing a rare trove of fossils of Ice Age mammals have unearthed hundreds of bones of such prehistoric animals as American cheetahs, a paleontologist said on Friday.
The two-week dig by an international team of researchers led by Des Moines University paleontologist Julie Meachen marked the first exploration of Natural Trap Cave at the base of the Bighorn Mountains in north-central Wyoming since its initial discovery in the 1970s.
Meachen said the extensive excavation that began late last month uncovered roughly 200 large bones of animals like horses that roamed North America from 12,000 to 23,000 years ago and an uncounted number of microfossils of creatures such as birds, lizards and snakes.
:snip: A number of animals that fell 85 feet to their deaths after stumbling into the 15-foot-wide mouth of the cavern were unusually well preserved by cold and damp conditions, Meachen said.
“Some bones still have collagen with intact DNA for genetic testing and some fossils are ...
(Reporting by Laura Zuckerman in Salmon, Idaho; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Beech)
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
courtesy ping
I was under the impression there were no horses in the Americas prior to being imported from Europe.
“Excavations have revealed fossils buried beneath the sediments here, including mammoth, short-faced bear, collared lemming, lion, cheetah, and camel.”
Camel. Lion.
Same here. Is this your typical bad reporting, or did horses inhabit North America at some time in the past?
I remember something about they supposedly all migrated back over the Bering and down to China, or maybe they were overhunted to extinction. I was really surprised at the cheetah find. How’d they get to Wyoming?!
Bump
They were horse “like”. Not the euro brand.
Oh my!
“I was under the impression there were no horses in the Americas prior to being imported from Europe.
Same here. Is this your typical bad reporting, or did horses inhabit North America at some time in the past?
“
The horses they’re talking about are probably no bigger than dogs. They’re in the horse family but did not survive into the times humans were here. The larger riding type horse was brought by the Spanish.
There were no horses when the Spanish got here, but there had been prior to that.
Actually the last of the ancient horses that lived in north America were nearly as big as horses of today.
http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/otherprehistoriclife/a/horses.htm
Pseudhipparion is an extinct genus of horse endemic to North America during the Miocene.... wiki
The only surviving American cheetah.
They were here and went extinct.
The ratio was six camels to one lion.
A young boy named George who was helping counted out “Camel camel camel camel camel camel lion!”
Didn’t he go to school at Mizzou ?
Microfossils?
Climate change is very real. For example, the average climate of the northern hemisphere is so cold as to cause the ground to be buried under a thousand feet of ice. The cycle of glacier on/glacier off takes place every several hundred thousand years and can be clearly seen in many ways. Even as the science is settled that glaciation has taken place, the causes are still undergoing vigorous debate.
With respect to the idea that humans are causing harmful changes to the climate at this very moment, I am waiting for some peer-reviewed papers that propose what the optimum climate is for our biosphere. The first question that would naturally flow would be where is our current climate and trend in relation to this finding.
That nobody seems interested in this vital comparison indicates that climate is primarily being studied for other purposes. Since all the urgent demands that flow from today’s climate science coincidentally converge on policy solutions that involve statism, bigger government, higher taxes, less personal liberty, the bigger picture tells me all that I need to know about “climate science”.
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