Bagging Badlands In Search For Primate Fossils (7/28/2007)

James Burnes and Susan Ellis - Photo Credit: Lamar University

In paleontology, discovery can be dirty. And the search can lead to some rugged places. This summer, Lamar University students and their professor, Jim Westgate, headed for the Badlands of Utah to do some paleontological prospecting.

James Burnes, a junior from Beaumont, and Susan Ellis, a master's student from Orange, helped collect more than 2,000 pounds of bulk sample from a 42-million-year-old pond deposit in what is now the desert of northeastern Utah. They believe the fossil record will show that the region was once lush, supporting a myriad of species.

After collecting, the bulk sample from the Uinta Formation in the Badlands of the Uinta Basin near Vernal was screen-washed down to around 20 pounds of material that will be examined for clues as to what caused the extinction of primates in the Rocky Mountain region about 40 million years ago.

The Lamar students, along with Westgate, were participating in a joint paleontology project between Lamar, the College of Charleston, Case Western Reserve University and the University of California Los Angeles.

The concentrate will be analyzed for micro-rodent and other mammal remains in the paleontology laboratory in Lamar University's Department of Earth and Space Sciences.

The research on samples from the late Eocene corresponds with research Westgate has conducted near Laredo, Texas, since the 1970s. That research has resulted in documentation of an Eocene-age coastal community and, most recently, the identification of new species of primates.

Shortly after returning from the Utah trip, Westgate traveled to Cairnes, Australia, to present an overview of the Laredo fossil mangrove community at the International Congress for Quaternary Research.

In October, Westgate and research colleagues Dana Cope, professor of anthropology, College of Charleston, and Chris Beard, curator, Vertebrate Paleontology Section, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, will present their findings on the Laredo primate community at the annual international meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Austin.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Lamar University

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