The dry, rugged, badlands of Tule Springs National Monument/National Parks Conservation Association
A window into the last Ice Age in the present-day desert outside of Las Vegas brings a missing link into the National Park System along with a small, but enticing, possibility that fossilized human remains are buried next to those of ancient bison, camels, and even lions.
Today this landscape appears barren, a nearly 23,000-acre slice of tortured badlands constantly undergoing change as the elements push and tear at it. But held within it is a trove of prehistory.
"Tule Springs is a nice example that contributes to filling the gaps," said Vince Santucci, a senior geologist/paleontologist for the National Park Service. "What I mean by that is that prior to Tule Springs, we did not have a National Park Service unit dedicated to specifically preserving and interpreting a park for Ice Age, or Pleistocene, paleontology. And now Tule Springs provides that."
The term Ice Age is synonymous with the Pleistocene, he explained. "Technically - there were for four glacial periods and four interglacial periods during the Pleistocene. The Pleistocene ended approximately 10,000 to 11,000 years before present. To the non-scientist this is often referred to as the end of the last Ice Age. The paleoclimate in southern Nevada during late Pleistocene would have supported a lush and verdant wetlands."
The site, long overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, was designated a national monument under Park Service management by Congress through a rider to the massive defense authorization bill passed in December and signed into law by President Obama. While it will take some time for it to be transferred to Park Service staff and readied for the public, the fact that the designation has been bestowed excites Santucci.
"If we look at representative parks that tell a major story about the history and evolution of life in North America, we have parks for most of the major time periods. These names might not be familiar to you, but for example if we go back in time, the Pliocene, we have Hagerman Fossil Beds (National Monument). For the Miocene we have Agate Fossil Beds (National Monument), for the Oligocene we have Badlands (National Park) and John Day (Fossil Beds National Monument)," he said. 'For the Eocene we have Florissant (Fossil Beds National Monument) and Fossil Butte (National Monument). For the Jurassic we have Dinosaur (National Monument), for the Triassic we have Petrified Forest (National Park), for the Permian we have Guadalupe Mountains (National Park).
"We didn't have a dedicated park before Tule Springs for the Pleistocene. And so, not only does that include that gap in the fossil record representation of the National Park System, but also it's probably one of the very, very interesting time periods for the history of life."
What makes Tule Springs so interesting largely are the fossil records that have been deciphered so far and which point to long-extinct Camelops, American lions that weighed half-a-ton, Dire wolves, saber-toothed cats, and horses that would be described as miniatures today. There were bison that were ancient relatives of those that graze in Yellowstone National Park today, mammoths, and ground sloths. Fossil remains from a period ranging from 200,000 years ago to 7,000 years ago are among the paleontological stories to be coaxed out of the ground.
What might have so far gone unnoticed is the tantalizing aspect of Tule Springs.
"The known fossil areas, whether it's really been mapped or mapped (during land transfer studies), there were just slightly less than 13,000 acres that were studied, and not all of that had fossil resources that are important contiguous resources," said Lynn Davis, the Nevada program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association.
A Columbian Mammoth tusk being excavated from the Upper Las Vegas Wash within what is now Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument/Copyright, San Bernardino County Museum
The area has been studied for decades, work that helped provide the foundation for lobbying to have Tule Springs included in the park system.
"In the '60s, actually, this area was defined as a very significant fossil site. A bunch of scientists descended on the area, it really was, in the U.S., in '62, '63, the 'big dig' site," Ms. Davis explained. "And they were looking for evidence of man and Ice Age animals.
"And they didn't find it."
While several follow-up digs have led to a general consensus that humans did not co-exist with the fauna detailed in the fossil record at Tule Springs, Santucci doesn't entirely rule it out.
"It is the most proximal (fossil collection) to modern flora and fauna," the paleontologist said in further explaining the importance of Tule Springs to the park system. "Second of all, things that occurred during the Pleistocene, the ice ages, the first advent of humans in contact with these ancient organisms, all helped to shape the configuration and the composition of what survived the end of the Pleistocene and those major extinction events that occurred, and what now has come to represent the modern fauna and flora of the United States."
In the 1960s, trenches, which remain visible today, were actually dug with equipment to search for fossils/NPCA
The stories to be told in ongoing research at Tule Springs also relate to one of today's much-debated topics: climate change.
"What we see in the Pleistocene is most recognizable to the American public in terms of what they already know about modern organisms and their distribution. But of course, we lost some very important organisms at the end of the Ice Age: the mammoth, the saber-tooth cat, the camel, the horse, the sloth and other organisms," Santucci said. "A lot of that story is related to climate change, and so since climate change is such an important buzz word these days, and it's an important concept for us to recognize. The stories and the values that we can gain from understanding that transition from the Pleistocene into the Holocene, the recent, and the associated climate change stories are very, very important ones, because we see adaptation of organisms across the landscape by virtue of shifts in their geographic location, their bio-geographic location as they move across the continent.
"... if we only look at a snapshot in time today to try to understand these issues, it's just a blink in the eye and it doesn't provide that powerful temporal perspective of looking at the historical biological information about what the distribution of organisms was 1,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, a 100,000 years ago.'
How the park unit will develop remains to be seen exactly, although there's expected to be both an ongoing research component as well as an educational one for visitors.
"Fossils appeal to the kid in all of us, and already the local school district, the Clark County School District, has started working on curriculum as part as science education," said Ms. Davis of the NPCA. "We'd expect that, one, that there will be some excavations going that people can actully see. Not necessarily with the goal of extracting things from the place at a rapid, breakneck speed, but allowing people to see the work of science and to see that work of discovery.
"And then we would anticipate that there would be, of course, educational components to it," she added. "One part of the deal, actually, which has a land component, a transfer of BLM land that is nearby, for UNLV. So they have designs on really beefing up their geo-sciences program. That campus area will be used for a number of academic topics. The proximity is expected to be greatly enhancing for their geo-sciences program.'
How quickly the Park Service can get up and running at Tule Springs remains to be seen, although the BLM has the site in good shape.
"BLM has been a very good partner, even as this effort (to have Tule Springs added to the park system) edged forward," the NPCA representative said. "They never stopped their commitment to keeping the resource."
Comments
A few references for a better understanding:
http://www.sfu.museum/journey/an-en/postsecondaire-postsecondary/tule_sp...
Vol. 3, No. 3 (Apr., 1965), pp. 172-188
Published by: Arizona-Nevada Academy of Science
Article Stable URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/40022772
It's a city park, not a national park, but the La Brea Tarpits in LA are a notable example of a park dedicated to preserving and interpreting a park for Pleistocne paleontology.
I can't really think of other examples.
I suppose there's some stuff in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area:
http://www.nps.gov/samo/naturescience/fossils.htm
Here, the fossils aren't the primary focus of the park, but they are there!
The paleontological resources at Tule Springs seem to be significant, perhaps enough so to warrant inclusion in the National Park System. But one must take issue with the statement, "We didn’t have a dedicated park before Tule Springs for the Pleistocene." The Ice Age National Scenic Trail (IATR) and Ice Age National Scientific Reserve are dedicated to preserving and interpreting Pleistocene resources. Both are located in WI in part because the last period of the Pleistocene is known by geologists as the Wisconsin Glaciation.
Of course one could argue that the IATR and Ice Age National Scientific Reserve are neither "parks" nor "units" of the National Park System. But this is largely because the National Park Service opposed an Ice Age National Park in Wisconsin when Congressman Henry Reuss repeatedly introduced legislation for it beginning in the late 1950s and continues to oppose administratively granting unit status for the IATR. Instead, NPS administrators mollified the Ice Age National Park movement by pushing for the National Scientific Reserve instead. (For more on the National Scientific Reserve, see http://pedestrianview.blogspot.com/2012/03/coulda-woulda-shoulda-national.html and http://pedestrianview.blogspot.com/2012/05/more-on-national-scientific-reserve.html .)
A different path could have been chosen and is still possible.
In 1961 another NPS geologist described the potential of an Ice Age National Park in WI. In his report, "Preliminary Geological Report on 1961 Field Study of Proposed Ice Age Area in Wisconsin", NPS geologist Robert Rose wrote, "This report is based on a field study conducted during the last half of April, 1961. Its purpose is to identify and describe more specifically the more important segments considered in a proposed area of the National Park System which would feature the story of continental glaciation in America... Evidences of continental glaciation are to be found throughout North America north of the southernmost limit of the advance of the ice. Wisconsin is particularly rich in its abundance of varied evidences of glaciation located relatively close together … [and] offers the best opportunity for the establishment of a unit of the National Park System featuring continental glaciation... [T]hrough proper utilization of the high quality resources which occur in the State of Wisconsin, one of the greatest stories in the natural history of North America could be illustrated and adequately interpreted. Here is an opportunity to develop a story using features intimately associated with the lives and livelihood of millions of people living in the northern portion of the great midcontinent section of America. The area owes its agricultural richness to soil produced and distributed by the continental glaciers. It seems that the National Park Service could not embark on an adventure more important and broader in vision than that of using some of the same features that yield up essential necessities of life in the form of food, minerals and fiber, to enrich the cultural lives of these same people and the thousands from elsewhere who will be attracted to this great unit of the National Park System when established, adequately developed and fully interpreted. This could well rank among the greatest of the many significant adventures upon which the Service has embarked in the past or with which it may become intimately identified in the future."
The great adventure remains possible. Ramp up an IATR land acquisition program that would require fewer parcels than NPS acquired for the Appalachian Trail and it will happen.
I assumed this was excluded because the focus of the IATR is more geological than paleontological (which is why I used the Santa Monicas as a counter example). But I think it was just an overstatement by an understandably enthusiastic Park scientist.
No, you're assumption is correct, rdm24. I specifically asked about the Ice Age National Scenic Trail and he pointed out that that is largely geologic, not paleontologic.
Thank you, Kurt Repanshek, for the clarification. I guess I was so excited by the tree that I missed the forest.