For decades, a 30 million-year-old-fossil sat entombed in rock in an Oregon museum collection. When it was first found, paleontologists thought it might be an early relative of sheep, camels and pigs whose fossilized skeletons are, in the researchers’ view, abundant.
Later, they realized it was an early dog fossil, and now, University of Michigan paleontologist Anne Kort has confirmed that it’s one of the most complete fossils of a pre-Ice Age dog found in North America, a canid called Mesocyon coryphaeus. In fact, the species, first named in 1879, had only been previously identified by single skulls.
Kort was tasked with describing the fossil as part of a special issue of the Journal of Paleontology, celebrating the 50th anniversary of John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, or JODA. She says the fossil was initially discovered in the late 1980s, near the monument in Oregon, on Bureau of Land Management lands.
At the time, paleontologists carefully extracted the fossil and its surrounding rock and wrapped it for protection in a plaster jacket. In the 1990s, researchers separated the head for display, then determining it was a kind of dog. Park paleontologists including Jennifer Cavin, co-author of the study, uncovered the rest of the skeleton in 2012, realizing how complete the skeleton was.
“They thought at first it was an oreodont, which we like to call sheep-camel-pigs,” said Kort, who was a postdoctoral scholar at U-M’s Museum of Paleontology. “This was the most magical, fun project to just be handed on a silver platter.”
Read the full article in Michigan News.
Image credit: Nicholas Famoso, John Day Fossil Beds National Monument
Fossil image credit: Anne Kort, University of Michigan
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