Much to learn at museum symposium
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This last Saturday (July 15) the Washakie Museum held its annual Washakie Museum Paleontology and Archaeology Symposium. I’ve attended these through the years, and they’ve been wonderful sessions. I learned that the Big Horn Basin is considered to be a kind of heaven for geologists, and what remarkable, cutting edge work has been done here.
Some 144 people attended. The usual suspects (museum aficionados) were there, plus a lot of people I didn’t know. I guessed that this last category consisted mostly of people involved with archaeological and geological projects in the Big Horn Basin and folks from the Basin interested in such matters.
The most interesting presentation to me was one by Dr. Larry Todd, an anthropologist from the University of Wyoming. Dr. Todd told how Wyoming Buffalo jumps helped to determine the cause of Lucy’s death. “Lucy” is the famous austrolopithecine who roamed the area now known as Ethiopia about 3 million years ago. She got her name when Dr. Donald Johanson, who discovered her skeleton, appropriated part of the Beetles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” which had been playing loudly and frequently at the expedition’s camp site. An examination of fractures in her body led some scientists to conclude she died from a 50-foot fall from a tree. Others disagreed, saying the fracture pattern was common, that it probably came from events after her death. Dr. Todd told us how scientists addressed the controversy. They did a detailed CT scan on Lucy (quite a chore), allowing an evaluation of different kinds of fractures. The Wyoming bison jump was significant because it involved large creatures falling to their deaths, with characteristic patterns of bone fractures. Todd concluded that other hypotheses seemed less likely and so Lucy probably did die from the fall.
Dr. Marcel Kornfeld told the audience about the Hell Gap area (near Hartsville), which has just been designated a national historical landmark (January 2017). The remarkable thing about Hell Gap is that it was occupied over thousands of years, leaving a record of continuous activity. The supposition is that it was so used because it sits in an advantageous spot for hunter-gatherers, being next to a ponderosa pine forest and prairie, as well as having a reliable flow of water. Whatever the reasons, Hell Gap is one of the most important Paleoindian sites in the United States. This is a site in which Dr. George Frison has been extensively involved.
Dr. Frison himself made a presentation. It would be an understatement to say that George Frison is widely esteemed in this area; “revered” is probably a more accurate word to describe Washakie County’s long, warm, and abiding affection for George. Dr. Frison told about his long search to determine why a small collection of rare and varied, but ancient, projectile points was found near Hartville, Wyoming. One hypothesis was that this area was particularly good hunting. George spoke of his experiments to determine whether stone age tools could bring down a mammoth (leading to Russia and Kenya, I believe, and the Colby site near Worland). But he finally concluded that the wear patterns in this Hartville group were most likely created by the use of these points at a nearby red ochre mine. (Red ochre came up several times during the symposium, but the scientists, while presenting several plausible reasons, weren’t really sure why red ochre was so frequently encountered at Paleoindian sites).
The speakers weren’t confined to archaeologists and paleontologists from Wyoming. An excellent presentation was given by the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington showing the huge changes now being made to this famed museum (to be completed by June 2019). There will be items from the Big Horn Basin (including a depiction of the Big Horn Basin forest floor 55 million years ago), but the presenter assured the crowd that our local museum will still have the best exhibit anywhere of the Cedar Ridge dig leaf fossils.
Through the 3 ½ hours of the program, I appreciated the fact that we were all seated in air-conditioned comfort. I remembered some of the sessions when the museum sat on Obie Sue, north of Sanders Park, in a facility without air conditioning. Fascinating presentations, but the heat was stifling.
This symposium showed yet again that a good part of the most interesting things happening in our town happen at the museum.
John Davis was raised in Worland, graduating from W. H. S. in 1961. John began practicing law here in 1973 and is retired. He is the author of several books.
John Davis was raised in Worland, graduating from W. H. S. in 1961. John began practicing law here in 1973 and is retired. He is the author of several books.
