LAS CRUCES, N.M. (AP) – The skull of a mastodon-like animal has been unearthed in a mining pit in southern New Mexico.
It crumbled after researchers tried to excavate it from the site near Mesquite, and it will now have to be painstakingly reassembled.
“We have a big job of putting it together again,” said New Mexico State University biologist and Paleozoic museum curator Peter Houde.
The fossil belonged to a spiral-tusked animal, a member of the genus Cuvieronius, that resembled an elephant. It’s believed to be between 1 million and 2 million years old. Before crumbling, the fossil spanned 8 feet.
Workers at the mining pit, owned by Las Cruces developer Eddie Binns, excavated much the fossil before Houde reached the specimen.
While Cuvieronius skulls might seem to be sturdy, they’re actually peppered with air cavities. Without these spaces, Houde said, the animal’s head would have been too heavy for it to move. He said the air spaces make such specimens delicate, not to mention the fossil is made up of much of the original calcium phosphate that helped make up the bone.
When Houde first visited the fossil, much of the dirt that had surrounded the specimen, especially toward the back of the head, had already been removed by the workers. Houde and his helpers tried to stabilize it with a glue-like substance.
To apply the stabilizer, the bone had to dry out, which was difficult because it was reburied each night to prevent vandalism and theft.
It would have been ideal had the discoverers left the specimen alone so it could be excavated within the surrounding dirt. Still, Houde said, the department is grateful to get it because the specimen did belong to Binns, who wasn’t obligated to turn it over to New Mexico State University.
“He’s an alum of NMSU; he has a real commitment to the community and wanted to see it stay here,” Houde said.
Houde said most large-scale fossil finds locally occur on state or federal land, the repository for which is in Albuquerque.
“That’s what makes this in many ways significant to us _ almost anything else found goes off to distant places,” he said.
Undergraduate biology student Drew Gentry, 25, helped Houde with the work about once or twice a week for the past month. He, too, said the fossil was delicate.
“New Mexico State doesn’t have the active program in paleontology other schools in the area do. We were working with our own resources and our own labor,” said Gentry. “With more resources, time and people, things would have turned out differently. We didn’t have a lot of things we needed.”
Houde said Cuvieronius was a stocky animal with teeth adapted to eating grass. Specimens are found in the fossil record from various locales around the world and date back as early as 25 million years ago, Houde said. It was believed to have gone extinct in North America earlier than in South America, where it’s known to have been hunted by people. Most specimens are from South America.
The recent specimen, known as the Binns Cuvieronius, roamed the ancient Rio Grande, Houde said. After it died, it was likely carried by the river and caught on a sandbar.
Houde hopes to eventually hang the skull in an atrium of the biology department. It will be useful to encourage public interest in fossils and could be used by researchers, he said.
Gentry said restoring the skull will likely be a multiyear process.
“I gained that patience is the most valuable resource in paleontology,” he said of his work in the recent dig. “Patience is the key word in any situation. Never rush anything. It’s the greatest resource you can use.”
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Information from: Las Cruces Sun-News, http://www.lcsun-news.com
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AP-WS-09-19-10 1809EDT