Alton Dooley

Alton Dooley

Jul 13, 2016

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Fifth stop - University of Wyoming

Today we made our fifth Mastodons of Unusual Size stop, at the University of Wyoming Geological Museum in Laramie. We knew there would not be much to see here, but given the scarcity of mastodons in this region we were hoping for anything.

It turns out that, while there is a fair amount of mammoth material at the museum, there are only two mastodon teeth:

Both of these teeth are m3s, but unfortunately both are missing their anterior lophids, so we couldn't measure them. And, as it turns out, it appears that both teeth are originally from Illinois, not Wyoming! With these teeth accounted for, as far as we've been able to determine no mastodons are known from Wyoming.

From here we head south into Colorado for our next stop. 

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About This Project

American mastodons lived all across North America during the Ice Age. Paleontologists long suspected that western mastodons differed in subtle ways from eastern ones, and our initial data suggest they may have been distinctive in size and tooth proportions. We plan to examine various museum collections to build a robust database of mastodon measurements, allowing us to document regional population differences and helping us understand ecosystem variation and animal dispersal during the Ice Age.

Blast off!

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