August 17 Last Chance for New Knox County Naturalist Program

Lori Totman, director of the Knox County Parks District,  shows a photo of flowering bloodroot in one of the field guides she recommends, the National Wildlife Federation's "Field Guide to Wildflowers of North America" by David M. Brandenburg.  She mentioned she knew Brandenburg but was too modest to mention that she is mentioned in the book's acknowledgements for her help when she worked at the Dawes Arboretum, where Brandenburg is a botanist. 

August 17 Last Chance for New Knox County Naturalist Program

Knox  County’s chance to have its first Ohio Certified Naturalist Program, like Licking County’s, is endangered as the deadline for getting at least 15 applicants approaches:  August 17.

As of August 3, I was only the 8^th applicant.  The program is a great chance to learn about Nature and then share it with others so more and more people become environmental stewards. 

Our Backyards Are Frontiers of Ecology

The backyards and countryside and parks of counties like ours are the real frontiers of ecology, the places where we can make a difference in the survival of wildlife, from monarch butterflies that winter in Mexico to polar bears in the Arctic, where ice is melting because of practices in our country.

To become a certified naturalist, we need to complete 40 hours of classroom and field instruction between August 25 and September 29.  Then we need to perform 40 hours of volunteer service that can range from leading tours to monitoring bluebird houses to logging computer data, depending on individual interests.

Interested persons should call 740-397-0401 or e-mail Sabrina Schirtzinger at schirtzinger.55@osu.edu.

For more information, read the article “Deadline approaching for naturalist program”, (page A-6 , August 10, Mount Vernon News.

Schirtzinger, Knox County Ohio State University Extension Educator for Agriculture and Natural Resources, is organizing the program.  One of the program's many instructors is Knox County Parks Division director.  She got her start as a professional naturalist and served as a Volunteer Naturalist in Licking County.  She also worked at the Dawes Arboretum.  Her colleague at Dawes, David Brandenburg, is another instructor in the program.  He wrote the National Wildlife Federation's "Field Guide to Wildflowers of North America."

The program is patterned after the Master Gardener program. 

As one example of the countless projects participants can engage in, Totman cited expanding and maintaining Wolf Run Park’s small trail of 12 bluebird houses, adding maybe 12 more near Upper Gilchrest and Yauger Roads.  Or, she said, we could build bluebird trails in Honey Run Highlands Park.

Proving that the possibilities of service projects are endless, organizations involved with the program, in addition to the Knox County Park Division and Extension, include the Brown Family Environmental Center at Kenyon College and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Division of Wildlife.

Another possibility is education and outreach work with Schirtzinger, working with adults or children.  Totman said that they would “play on the strengths of the volunteers.”  

Examples also include leading bird walks, removing non-native plants, creating National Wildlife Federation certified wildlife habitat in our backyards, planting milkweed for Monarch butterflies, and counting birds at park feeders for Project FeederWatch.  For those who don’t want to get down and dirty, there is office work such as data entry.  My Cider Press articles might qualify, as might my wildlife gardens, my moth counting, and the school tours of the Brown Center I’ve volunteered for.

Totman said there is a need for long-term collection of data on populations of all species of wildlife—“insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, mollusks, etc.”--on the County’s approximate 1,150 acres of parkland, to spot trends.  I know that parks consultant Gary Moore told me long ago that data like my moth counts are valuable in documenting the biodiversity value of parkland.

The training topics include Watersheds & Aquatic Life, Plants, Geology, Herpetology, Ornithology, and Mammals.

To get a taste of what you might learn by becoming a volunteer, check out the following article I wrote for the June 2015 issue of the Apple Valley Cider Press.  The story is about two tours I covered, one by Totman and one by Heather Doherty of the Brown Family Enviornmental Center.  Both are instructors in the naturalist program that will only begin if more people enroll!

Heather Doherty, program manager for the Brown Family Environmental Center, shows plants to children at a wildflower hike.   (Photo by Don Comis)

May’s Fertility 

Well into a wildflower hike in the shaded woods of Honey Run Falls near Millwood on May 9, Lori Totman, Knox County Park District Director, revealed her secret motivation for the hike:  To show us the valued native spring ephemeral woodland flowers to inspire us to help her remove the non-native plants that threaten these treasures.

“We want you to know what’s here, what we can lose to non-native invasive plants,” she said.

Saving Honey Run Falls’ Treasures

She mentioned this when she reached one of the major offenders, garlic mustard plants, after we passed native spring beauties, blue violets, Dutchman’s breeches, squirrel corn, bloodroot, Mayapples, wild blue phlox, wild ginger, kidney leaf buttercup, butterweed, white trillium, hepatica, and true Solomon’s seal.

Then we reached a clump of garlic mustard, at which point Totman offered us a free pass for removing the invasive pest along any public trail in the county parks.  Some of the dozen who came for the walk dutifully pulled clumps of mustard and carried them off.

The Knox County Park District website (http://www.knoxcountyparks.org) asks anyone interested in pulling invasive plants or helping in other ways to send an email to info@knoxcountypark.org, or call (740) 392-7275.

Later we saw Jacob’s ladder, jewelweed, false Solomon’s seal, and other wildflowers.

Totman taught me that most of these native woodland flowers are early bloomers because they have to be done flowering before the forest leaf canopy fills in and shades them out.

Wildflowers We Can Eat

We started seeing native wildflowers right in the parking lot at the beginning of the walk— pink spring beauties and blue violets.  A common theme with many wildflowers emerged right then when Totman mentioned both are edible.  Native Americans ate the tubers of spring beauties and the flowers and leaves of blue violets can be eaten too.  The blue violet leaves and flowers can be used in salad.  The leaves can be eaten raw or sautéed like spinach.  The flowers add a peppery taste to salads.  “Or dip the flowers in sugar for cake decorations,” Totman added.  Also the flowers can be brewed as a tea that will be “more blue than purple”, she said.

Sautéing came up in discussions of other wildflowers as well.

Obviously, we aren’t allowed to remove more than a taste when we find them on parkland, unlike the garlic mustard.

We must avoid Mayapple plants because every part of them is poisonous, except the “apples” they produce in August.  But you have to beat wildlife to the punch to get any.

I could see why these flowers are called “ephemeral”—many of the flowers were gone by the day of our hike, including the flowers of bloodroot and hepatica, which blooms in mid-March.  And the flowers of Dutchman’s breeches were on their way out.

It reminded me of how quickly things can change in May, like the blossoms on my crabapple tree disappearing so quickly, probably sped up by the mini-heat wave in early May.  A friend told me he saw the same thing with his apple trees, the blossoms not surviving long enough to attract a lot of bees as they did last year.

Love Along the Kokosing

By the time we reached the end of the hike, at a sandy beach along the Kokosing River, we had seen about 30 different species of native wildflowers.  The beautiful scene by the river, with huge boulders and two boats, was a fitting climax to a walk through shaded woodlands with colorful flowers and beautiful rock formations and cliffs and a gorgeous waterfall cooling off children and picnickers, including the Amish.  We even got to see a man propose to his girlfriend on a large boulder overlooking the river!

The preview of summer had packed the park, at least the falls, and filled the park’s two parking lots.

For wildlife, we saw an American toad, heard a frog plop into water, and heard gray tree frogs and two migrating birds—an Acadian flycatcher and a yellow warbler.

Celebrating Spring’s Fertility Rites at Kenyon

On a May 2 wildflower hike at the Brown Family Environmental Center at Kenyon College, Program Manager Heather Doherty said that she heard her first tree frogs that day.  Now, they’ve replaced spring peepers as serenades outside my bedroom/office window. 

I celebrated spring May 2 on the Brown Center’s 1.5 mile Fern Trail.  That hike was not capped by any marriage proposals, but it did end with an outside dance performance by Kenyon students, which I saw as a celebration of the Center’s woods and fields.

During the hike, we saw some flowers not seen at Honey Run, such as a trillium that Doherty accurately called “smelly” and “ugly”, planted in a garden near the beginning of the walk.  Doherty explained that the trillium’s smell is designed to attract flies to pollinate the plant.  We also saw flowering bluebells, speedwell (one of the first to flower in spring), dead nettle, and bedstraw.

Doherty reminded us that we can tell that dead nettle is in the mint family because of its square stem.  I recognized the purplish flowering plant as a common weed in my garden and widespread in a farm field I drove by since the walk.

We also saw mustard plants (bittercress) which explode when touched, sending out seeds.  I recognize them in my garden too, and they may have been the plants that coated my shirt with pollen after I walked through them.

The star of the Kenyon walk for me was Grant Metcalf, 4.  First of all he wore the kind of outfit I’d like to live in—cargo pants and a cargo vest, with an official looking “Metro Parks Columbus” patch.  (Of course, my patch would read “Knox County Parks”.) Second, there wasn’t an edible plant he didn’t eat on the walk, including dead nettle, violets, and chickweed.

He particularly liked bedstraw plants because the entire plant sticks to people’s clothes when thrown on them.  And throw them he did.

On our way back to the hike’s starting point, after watching the dance, Doherty opened one of the Center’s many bluebird houses to show us three small pale blue eggs.

From the proposal we witnessed at Honey Run to the bluebird eggs and flowers producing seed, we sure celebrated May’s fertility on those two walks!

Check out my website (www.doncomis.simplesite.com) and blog (www.donaldcomis.blogspot.com) for more photos and stories.  For example, by searching for my “Visiting Guy Denny's Ohio Prairie” blog of July 27, 2014, you can read about my experience last year at an event that was repeated this past July, with a link to the Owl Creek Conservancy’s website list of this and other upcoming events in the 14th annual “Explore the Nature of Knox County” 2015 series.

Note:  Anyone with comments or suggestions is welcome to send me an e-mail at doncomis@centurylink.net or post comments on my website or blog.

Uncovering the World of the Cedar Creek Mastodon

Volunteers at the Cedar Creek Mastodon Site in Morrow County, Ohio., on October 25, 2014.  The exposed white plastic corrugated drainage pipe in the foreground triggered the excavation when the digging for it exposed two mastodon teeth in September 2013.   The soybean farmer installed the pipe to drain water flowing from upland (background) toward Cedar Creek Bog, which is not too far from this pipe, but not shown in photo.  In October, a trench was cut nearby to the bog to compare soil layers of the bog, excavation pits, and surrounding land.  (Photo by Don Comis)

At the time the Cedar Creek mastodon died, it was not far from a bog surrounding a quiet shallow lake, with abundant growth of algae and other plants, as well as freshwater mollusks, like ram’s horns snails.  This lake was once the deepest part of a large glacial lake that covered the Cedar Fork Valley in Morrow County, Ohio, about 15,000 years ago, when the last of the glaciers that had covered two-thirds of Ohio melted.  The glaciers are what carved out the U-shaped Cedar Fork Valley.

The large lake was created by the melting, during a warming period between 20,000 and 15,000 years ago.   The water was dammed in by glacial walls.  When those walls melted, the lake drained, leaving only the deepest remnant, which began to fill with mud from decayed peat.   As the climate warmed much more abruptly, the mud layer became a marl layer, lime-rich mud, within 500 years.   Around the time of the Cedar Creek mastodon, another cooling period began, abruptly changing the mud back to peat as water levels dropped further.

The lake that the mastodon and early man walked near was filled with plant and animal life.  The coarse gravels at the base of the mastodon site were the bed of a pre-glacial stream that fed the lake.

Entombing Bones and Artifacts

The mud with broken pieces of rocks above the gravel likely came from debris flows as water flowed from the surrounding higher elevations, “entombing the bones and artifacts under a slurry of muddy debris,” according to a preliminary report by Gregory Wiles and his College of Wooster (Ohio) Climate Change class.

Wiles sent the report recently to excavation leader Nigel Brush, associate professor of geology at Ohio’s Ashland University.  The report also says that the high calcium carbonate content of the mud helped preserve the mastodon bones and associated man-made objects.

The report presents results of analyses of soil cores taken in and around the bog and nearby mastodon site, soil mapping, observations of soil layers in  a trench dug in October, connecting the bog and the mastodon site, as well as radiocarbon dating.   Analyzing these cores reveals the periodic warming and cooling of the planet over the past 15,000 years, caused by changes in the earth’s movements as it rotates and revolves around the sun, changes in ocean circulation, and changes in greenhouse gas levels.

Last September, Wiles--with Tom Lowell and  his graduate student Stephanie Allard, at the University of Cincinnati, and University of Illinois student Jacklyn Rodriguez--collected the sediment cores from the bog.  Earlier, in August, the College of Wooster students had used soil probes to map soil depths down to 20 feet in the bog.

Two Million Years of  Climate Change

The report’s introduction says that, “The Earth has spent the last 2 million years in a state of constant flux, moving between 20 periods of intense cold and glacier cover and periods of warming and glacial melt.”

Wiles and his students also participate in a tree ring project that seeks answers to the question of whether the widespread deforestation and the draining of wetlands by the early Ohio settlers could have caused a major drought in the early 1800’s, revealed by studying tree growth rings in old trees throughout Ohio.  Their blog  says:  “This question is relevant to the ever-present striving of climate scientists to investigate the relative roles of natural climate variability and anthropogenic [caused by man] change.”

Many of Ohio’s  trees date back to the 1600s, including some at Kenyon College  in Gambier, Ohio, near my Apple Valley home.  The group studies old trees, including places in Wayne County, such as the Johnson Woods State Nature Preserve  as well as the Secrest Arboretum, and on the campus of the College of Wooster.

The group made its last visit to the mastodon site on Nov. 13, also reported on the group’s blog , which includes more information as well as photos and a  "Tree Detective" video on the tree ring project.  Project participants also document the ages of barns as well as changes in climate by examining the tree rings from core samples taken from barn beams and comparing them to old living trees around the barn and throughout Ohio.

I have a website where I post information and photos on archaeology finds as well as all other aspects of Nature and natural history.  I began this blog and website to catch the spillover from the monthly stories I write for the Apple Valley Cider Press, mainly a regular "Nature Article" feature.  All of my writing is done on a volunteer basis.

Who Got to Mastodon First? Ice Age Wolves, Bears, or Man?

The Morrow County, Ohio, Cedar Creek Mastodon, might have met this fate, its dead carcass scavenged by dire wolves and other predators such as bears and saber-toothed "tigers", not to mention vultures.  This 1911 illustration  of dire wolves fighting with the tiger in the  LaBrea Tar Pits of California is in the public domain..

Life wasn’t easy in the Ice Age, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s beginning to look like Ohio’s Morrow County Mastodon might have been torn apart by a pack of Ice Age wolves.

We know that there was at least one wolf that bit into the mastodon’s bones because the excavation uncovered forensic evidence left behind by the guilty party—a canine tooth embedded in the bone.

There were several species of Ice Age wolves, but the “Dire” wolf  is the likeliest suspect because it depended on scavenging dead bodies more than killing, especially in the case of big game.   Although it weighed about 25 percent more than modern wolves, it was slower than other Ice Age wolf species, so it resorted to hunting in packs and killing slower moving animals like the mastodon or scavenging any corpse it stumbled into.

In the most complete report to date, to the volunteers participating in the dig, excavation leader Nigel Brush said he and his colleagues are beginning to wonder if the mastodon might have died of old age and then been eaten by the Dire wolf and other scavengers.

But they have not discarded the original hypothesis—that the mastodon was killed by Paleo-Indians   and butchered.  In that case, the scavenging was done after the men were through with the carcass.

Brush is an associate professor of geology at Ashland University in Ohio.

Brush reported that Brian Redmond , head of archaeology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, will have the bone with the embedded wolf tooth X-rayed to get a better view of the tooth.  He also wrote that, “The mastodon bones contain an abundance of gnaw and puncture marks from predators such as wolves and bears.  Among the bones of the mastodon, we have found a tooth (an incisor) and several fragments of leg bone that appear to be from some other Ice Age herbivore (perhaps a musk-ox or stag-moose ?).”

It seems to me that the scavenger hypothesis arose when Brush learned, from geological studies being done at the site, that the broken bones found in the excavation site had been carried there by water flowing from upland of the site, farther from the bog that would have made a natural trap-and-kill site for Paleo-Indians.

Brush also cited the fact that only two possible man-made cut marks on the bones have been found so far, leaving open the possibility that those cuts are not the work of human tools after all.   And most of the flint flakes found were the result of natural weathering and frost or from being washed into the excavation site, rather than from man using or making flint weapons or butchering tools.

But, Metin Eren,  an expert on lithics, the study of the human use of stone for tools, came to the lab at Ashland University and found that about a  the dozen of the flint pieces were possibly worked by people, so a few of the flakes will be sent to another lab for further analysis for blood and protein residues and edge wear from butchering.

Nick Kardulias, another lithics expert, will be doing a more detailed examination of the flint pieces and soil cores recovered from the site.  Kardulias and his students from the College of Wooster  in Ohio have been helping with the excavation along with students from Ashland University and other universities.

Dueling Hypotheses:  Man or Wolf?

He said the only way to decide between the two competing hypotheses is through the lab analyses that will continue through the winter at Ashland University.  He said that one of the critical pieces of evidence to support the Paleo-Indian kill hypothesis would be if the mastodon bones are found-- through carbon-14 testing--to be between 16,000 and 10,000 years old, when Paleo-Indians and mastodons co-existed.

Brush’ report included a Florida lab’s carbon-14 test results on samples taken from the bottom and top of the bog near the excavation site:  Plant material taken from the top of the bog dated to about 11,200 years ago,  while a wood sample from the bottom of the bog was about 12,500 years old.
Another critical piece of evidence to support the kill/butchery site hypothesis, he wrote, would be if they found mastodon blood and protein residues on some of the flint pieces they found that appeared to be used to butcher.   A fourth piece of critical evidence would be confirmation that the possible cut marks on two mastodon bones “are indeed cut marks.”

Brush discounted speculation that some of the rounded stones found near the bones were used to hammer bones to crush them, saying that the stones could just be one of the many cobble stones found  in the natural stone-and-gravel deposits below the excavation site.   He reported that, “We have washed dozens of these cobbles in the lab and have yet to find any fresh surface alteration that we could unequivocally equate with human tool use.”

Occam’s Razor

At that point in his report, Brush wrote that “Occam’s Razor is often quite useful in science:  The simplest explanation is usually the best explanation.  Given the highly battered condition of the cobbles thus far recovered from the site, natural weathering appears to be a much more likely explanation than human utilization.”  He showed a number of the possible hammerstones and other possible stone tools to several other professional archaeologists and all agreed  with Brush.

Brush also cites another axiom from his scientific experience:  “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

As part of this search for strong evidence, Greg Wiles, professor of geology at the College of Wooster, will submit two charcoal samples for carbon-14 dating to the same Florida lab that dated the bog samples, to see if the soil layer where the mastodon bones were found are in the same age range as the bog.  And, Redmond will submit a collagen sample, from one of the four mastodon teeth found, to the Florida lab for carbon dating--hoping there is enough collagen present to do the test.   Earlier this fall, Redmond had submitted a thoracic vertebrae from the Morrow County mastodon, but heavy weathering had removed too much collagen for carbon dating to succeed.

Brush’ report also said that Gregory McDonald, a bone specialist and senior curator of natural history at the National Park Service in Fort Collins, Colorado, might have time to visit the Ashland lab to identify some of the mastodon bones, when he speaks on December 12 at the Cleveland Museum, on "The Snowmastodon Project" .

Note:  What I call the Morrow County mastodon is officially called the Cedar Creek Mastodon, for the creek that runs near the excavation site.  Also, I have a website where I post information and photos on archaeology finds as well as all other aspects of Nature and natural history.  I began this blog and website to catch the spillover from the monthly stories I write for the Apple Valley Cider Press, mainly a regular "Nature Article" feature.  All of my writing is done on a volunteer basis.

Fragments of a  leg bone found at the Cedar Creek Mastodon Site could be that of the stag-moose, possibly another victim of the bone-crushing teeth of the Ice Age dire wolf.  (1912 illustration in public domain.) 

Leave the Predictions to Weatherbug, Not Woolly Bears!

The wide reddish-brown band on this woolly bear caterpillar could raise false hopes of a mild winter.  All the wide brown band tells you is that this caterpillar is mature and well fed.  That's good preparation for this creature as it crosses a bike path to seek shelter for the winter.  The caterpillar can survive even frozen solid.  (Photo by Don Comis)

On my annual walk from Kenyon College to my home in Apple Valley, using the Koksosing Gap Trail for 4.5 miles of the approximately 8-mile walk, I saw my first all-black caterpillar—well, actually I saw two of them, along with a few woolly bear caterpillars.

I probably had seen black caterpillars before but thought they were woolly bear caterpillars predicting a totally bad winter.   But I've learned that the width of the middle reddish-brown band on the brown and black woolly bears being a predictor of the severity of the upcoming winter is a myth.  Ironically it was started by a scientist, but later disproved.  Now scientists know that the only thing more brown on a woolly bear means is that the woolly bear is older, or  better fed, or both.

 The caterpillars are born mostly black and the brown band grows wider as the caterpillar gets bigger, with age and diet.

Since I saw two of these all-black caterpillars on Nov. 10, I believe they  are the caterpillars of the giant leopard tiger moth,not woolly bears--which become Isabella moths next year.   (Photo by Don Comis)

I also learned that woolly bears become Isabella tiger moths in the spring.   I found that out when I sent a photo of a woolly bear to the “Butterflies and Moths of North America” website and added that moth to my list of 111 moth species in Knox County, mostly found in Apple Valley.

But, fortuitously, the day before my big walk on Monday, Nov.10, I read a column in the Sunday Columbus Dispatch by John Switzer, one of my two favorite Nature columnists in the Sunday paper. Switzer was describing his daily walks in the country in November and mentions not only the woolly bear-Isabella connection, but also the fact that the all-black caterpillars become giant leopard tiger moths.  He quotes my other favorite Columbus Dispatch columnist, Jim McCormac, as saying that this moth is quite attractive.  McCormac, whose blog convinced me to use “blogspot.com” for my blog, also told Switzer that almost all the furry caterpillars we see in the fall turn into one of the many species of tiger moths.

Switzer says that in addition to black and brown, the furry fall caterpillars also come in blond and reddish-blonde.   At Apple Valley, I've seen two different species that are white—the banded tussock or pale tiger moth and the hickory tussock or hickory tiger moth.  I managed to photograph both the caterpillar and moth stages of the hickory tiger moth.

Certainly if Switzer, a former weather columnist, had any hopes left of a mild winter after seeing a woolly bear with a wide brown band, it's gone as the second snow of the season is falling tonight, one that could bring 2 to 3 inches--and be followed by below zero nights!  The snow came earlier than usual this year, with Cleveland getting 8 to 10 inches recently.

But then what does a woolly bear care about weather when it can survive the winter frozen solid?

The funny thing is that the very first blog I wrote, on Nov. 6, 2013, was on the woolly bear’s inability to predict weather.  Up to recently it had remained in the top five most popular of my postings, until the weekly mastodon reports wiped it and all other topics out of the top five.

White is one of the many colors the furry tiger moth caterpillars come in, depending on the species.  This is the hickory tiger moth caterpillar.  (Photo by Don Comis)

Note:  I also have a website where I post information and photos on archaeology finds as well as all other aspects of natural history.  This blog and website began to catch the spillover from the monthly stories I write for the Apple Valley Cider Press, mainly a regular "Nature Article" feature.

Mastodon Dig Turns to Lab for Answers

A look at the Nov. 9, 2014 mastodon dig.  It's likely that some or all of the mastodon bones were washed into the excavation site from upland drainage thousands of years ago.  (Photo by Don Comis)

You can see how cold it was on Nov. 9 by the winter clothing worn by volunteers.  (Photo by Don Comis)

As the search for mastodon bones on a soybean farm in Morrow County, Ohio, winds down before winter, the work shifts to a lab at Ashland University where the excavated materials will be analyzed to decide if it’s worth continuing the excavation in the spring.

Excavation leader, Dr. Nigel Brush-- Ashland University associate professor of geology--wrote in an e-mail answer to my questions, that the lab tests “will provide the final answer” as to whether the mastodon was killed and butchered by Paleo-Indians, as it appears.

Right Site?

Even if the answer is “yes”, the next question is whether the excavation site is the butchery site.  Brush wrote that, “Based on the geological work that is being done at the site, it is appearing more and more likely that the bones were brought to their present location by a debris flow from a site at a higher elevation. “  He added that an upland kill and butchery site doesn’t make as much sense as the current excavation site, which is right near the remnants of an ancient bog where the animal could have been trapped in the soft sediment by its weight.

The bog traces back to the Pleistocene era when it was a muddy glacial lake.

Students from Ohio’s Wooster College’s Climate Change class sank a probe more than 20 feet into the mud, gaining a record of environmental change over about the past 15,000 years.   Brush said, “They also found possible evidence for an old preglacial stream channel running through the bog."

Discovering the Ice Age

Students from Brush’  'Discovering the Ice Age” class are also among the volunteers on the dig.  

Since the skeleton parts found so far are very crushed and shattered, the focus of the excavation shifted after the first month, from recovering a complete skeleton for exhibit, to finding evidence of Paleo-Indians killing and butchering a mastodon.

Brush’s e-mail to me continued, “We have ample evidence from Ohio and surrounding states that Paleoindians were present during this time period.  Butchery sites are not as common, although their number is steadily growing (due to the work of Dan Fisher at the University of Michigan, and other archaeologists).

Paleo-Indian (also written as "Paleoindian") is the term for the first people to arrive in North America, about 16,000 years ago, near the end of the Ice Age.  The website www.Indians.org says that, “Their name, Paleo, actually comes from the Greek word “palaios,” meaning ancient.”

Tools, such as flint scrapers, used to possibly butcher the mastodon are being sent to another lab for DNA analysis to test for mastodon blood.  At the Ashland lab, bones and other materials are being power washed with water and examined for cut marks made by butchering tools.

Scavengers

Brush wrote, “There are a lot of gnaw and bite marks on the bone”, suggesting the possibility that the mastodon merely died of old age, its corpse eaten by scavenging animals.  But, it’s also possible that the scavengers were just mopping up what was left after the Paleo-Indians butchered it.

On Nov. 9, volunteers found another possible hammerstone, a large round stone used to as a hammer or maul to crush things.  Amateur “surface hunters” identify hammerstones by the pecks or pockmarks caused as the stones are pounded on things.   The latest hammerstone was found in the same plot where at least one other hammerstone was found.  Volunteers also found possible vertebrae on Nov. 9.

We also found more pieces of flint and fragments of bones, including small pieces of tusk.

Other items found since the dig began include possible leg bones, ankle bones, rib bones, jaw bones, wrist bones, and all four lower teeth of the mastodon.   And we found pieces of flint brought to the area by man from other parts of Ohio as well as pieces of charcoal that could have come from fires used to cook parts of the mastodon.  A possible fire pit was also found.

As far as I know, the only proven weapon found was a tiny projectile point (a “Merom Expanding Stemmed point “)—a Stone Age spear or arrow head—that belonged to Native Americans who arrived long after the mastodon was extinct.  While the mastodon dates back to beyond 8,000 B.C., the projectile “only” dates to between 1,600 B.C. to 810 B.C.

Mastodon On Its Last Legs

An analysis of the mastodon’s lower four teeth by volunteer Scott Donaldson showed that the mastodon had lived to a ripe old age that likely made it more vulnerable to predation by man or beast, as explained in my previous blog.  Donaldson led the work on restoring and preserving the teeth and served as one of the crew chiefs during the excavation.

In the fall of 2013, a soybean farmer found two of the teeth, two feet apart, after they were unearthed when a ditch was dug to lay drainage pipe.  This triggered the excavation which began Aug. 23, 2014.

The Nov. 9 dig was planned as the last dig before winter, but Brush later said that, weather permitting, he would schedule one more dig, after the weekend of Nov. 15-16.

Note:  I also have a website where I post information and photos on archaeology finds as well as all other aspects of natural history.  This blog and website began to catch the spillover from the monthly stories I write for the Apple Valley Cider Press, mainly a regular "Nature Article" feature.

Teeth Show Mastodon May Have Been Easy Mark

The photo  shows the full complement of four lower teeth.  It is "looking down" on the lower jaw (jaw bone absent) and the big teeth with the rounded ends are the back teeth.  (Photo by Scott Donaldson)

More confirmation that the mastodon killed and butchered in Morrow County was old came from an analysis of all four teeth recovered from the Cedar Creek Mastodon Site in Morrow County.

Scott Donaldson, who has led the work on restoring and preserving the teeth and served as one of the crew chiefs during the excavation, wrote a summary of his analysis that was e-mailed to volunteers on Nov. 2.

In his report, Donaldson said that if a mastodon lives to “ a ripe old age”, it will go through 24 teeth, shedding badly worn teeth from the front and erupting new ones at the back of the mouth, with either two or three teeth on each side of each jaw present at a given time.

He identified this mastodon as having its last teeth (numbers 5 and 6) on each side of the lower jaw. This and the amount of wear on the teeth indicated an advanced age.

He added that “…the apparent old age suggests a degree of infirmity which possibly made the animal vulnerable to being killed by man or beast, or which might be associated with a natural death.”

In the fall of 2013, a soybean farmer found two of the teeth, two feet apart, after they were unearthed when a ditch was dug to lay drainage pipe.  This triggered the excavation which began Aug. 23, 2014, and will end with a two-day excavation the weekend of Nov. 7-9.

Donaldson says the location of one of the teeth in Unit 5, one of  several 2- by 2-meter square excavation plots, “suggests that the as yet unidentified bone material nearby is part of the lower mandible [jaw bone]” the tooth came from.   A piece of jaw bone associated with the other three teeth was also found in the excavation.

Donaldson has done graduate work in anthropology/archaeology at Kent State University.  He has also done archaeology field and lab work with Dr. David Bush of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History field school.

Note:  I also have a website where I post information and photos on archaeology finds as well as all other aspects of natural history.  This blog and website began to catch the spillover from the monthly stories I write for the Apple Valley Cider Press, mainly a regular "Nature Article" feature.

From Christmas Bird Count to Road-Kill Bugs

An interesting set of articles in the current issue of Audubon Magazine.

The November/December 2014 issue of Audubon Magazine has an interesting set of articles on “three innovators who have led the charge in studying birds”—Chan Robbins (“The Pioneer”); Sam Droege (“The Incubator”); and, Jessica Zelt (“The Futurist”).

The articles, under the umbrella of “Citizen Science: Passing the Torch”, show how the torch was passed from 96-year-old Robbins to 56-year-old Droege to 31-year-old Zelt.

At least as far as birds go, the Audubon Christmas Bird Count —which both Robbins and Droege have participated in—at 115 years old, is the oldest citizen science project.  Robbins in fact, through his father who participated in the very first of these counts, has a lineage back to the entire 115 years of bird citizen science.

The Audubon bird count is the oldest citizen science project period, at least since the end of the era in which all science was done by citizen scientists rather than professionals.  It is definitely, as the magazine states, “the world’s oldest continuous wildlife census”.

I am fortunate enough to be preparing for about my 12th consecutive Christmas bird count.  From 2003 through 2011, I participated in the counts on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland.   Droege also participated in those counts, since his office is on the grounds of the Center, from which I retired after the 2011 Christmas bird count.  Droege is a biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, which is headquartered on 12,840 acres adjacent to the Agricultural Center’s 7,000 acres.   Robbins has studied these grounds for more than 70 years.

Robbins created the 50-year-old annual Breeding Bird Survey, a citizen science project that Droege was hired to take over in 1985.  I had the honor of interviewing Robbins twice about his life’s work.

The Johnny Appleseed of Citizen Science

Droege has formed local teams to participate in many citizen science projects, including Bioblitz , Frogwatch USA, and Cricket Crawl .  His professional research activities include work on developing native bee survey techniques and monitoring programs, surveys of saltmarsh birds and surveys of Rusty Blackbirds.  The bee survey work could spawn a national citizen science project.

Droege hired Zelt in 2008 to digitize about six million records of bird arrivals and departures, dating back to 1880.  Over the next six years, she managed to turn the task into a citizen science empire .

I've blogged about both Robbins (9/19/14 , 8/24/14, and 7/17/14)  and Droege (9-16-14, 6/29/14, 6/22/14, and 11/19/13) before.

Bug Road-Kill?

The magazine’s cover has the intriguing title of “115 Years of Citizen Science:  From the Christmas Bird Count to…Road-Killed Bugs?”

Although I knew of a regional U.S. project in which volunteers count road-kill as a measure of animal populations, this was the first I had heard of a road-killed bugs project.  In this project 250 volunteers drove around with adhesive on their front bumpers and license plates to capture bugs that splatter against cars.  Scientists analyzed the results and determined that each car kills two bugs for every 6.2 miles traveled.   The project is limited to the Netherlands currently, but with one in the United Kingdom, the U.S. can’t be far behind.  The magazine says that in the U.S., more than 300 million cars each travel 13,500 miles a year, on average, “so bug mortalities add up”.

Science Wants You!

In addition to the bug road-kill project, the magazine lists six other citizen science projects at the bottom of four of the pages of the three articles, under the title of “Scientists Want You”:

• Frogwatch USA 
• Kestrel nest watch 
• Project Budburst watch  
• Celebrate Urban Birds
• Yard Map  
• Christmas Bird Count    (The Christmas Bird Count occurs each year between  December 14 to January 5, with the one day count date varying by location.  For example,  now that I am in Howard, Ohio, I will participate in the Dec. 21 count sponsored by the Brown Family Environmental Center at Kenyon College in Gambier.  To register for this event, e-mail  dohertyh@kenyon.edu or call 740-427-5052.)