The White River Badlands: Geology and Paleontology

The White River Badlands

LIFE OF THE PAST               James O. Farlow, editor

THE WHITE RIVER

BADLANDS

GEOLOGY and PALEONTOLOGY

RACHEL C. BENTON

DENNIS O. TERRY JR.

EMMETT EVANOFF

H. GREGORY McDONALD

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The White River Badlands : geology and paleontology / Rachel C. Benton, Badlands National Park, Dennis O. Terry Jr., Temple University, Emmett Evanoff, University of Northern Colorado, H. Gregory McDonald, Park Museum Management Program, National Park Service.

pages cm. – (Life of the past)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-253-01606-5 (cl : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-0-253-01608-9 (eb) 1. Fossils – Collection and preservation – South Dakota – White River Region. 2. Paleontology – South Dakota – White River Region. I. Benton, Rachel. II. Terry, Dennis O., [date] III. Evanoff, Emmett. IV. McDonald, H. Gregory (Hugh Gregory), [date]

QE718.W54 2015

560.9783'9 – dc23

2014044309

1 2 3 4 5   20 19 18 17 16 15

We wish to dedicate this book to the Jones Family of Quinn, South Dakota. For over 26 years, Kelly, Mary, and Doug provided a home away from home for the authors and many of their students. Be it providing a place to sleep while conducting fieldwork, hosting a group of researchers for a barbecue, or simply providing a welcoming respite from the heat of the day, the Jones family and the logistical support that they provided over the years helped to make this book possible. Thank you.

Viewed at a distance, these lands exhibit the appearance of extensive villages and ancient castles, but under forms so extraordinary, and so capricious a style of architecture, that we might consider them as appertaining to some new world, or ages far remote.

Fray Pierre Jean De Smet, 1848

But it is only to the geologist that this place can have any permanent attractions. He can wind his way through the wonderful canons among some of the grandest ruins in the world. Indeed, it resembles a gigantic city fallen to decay. Domes, towers, minarets, and spires may be seen on every side, which assume a great variety of shapes when viewed in the distance. Not unfrequently, the rising or the setting sun will light up these grand old ruins with a wild, strange beauty, reminding one of a city illuminated in the night when seen from some high point. It is at the foot of these apparent architectural ruins that the curious fossil treasures are found.

F. V. Hayden, 1880

Is it of interest to you that the White River Badlands are the most famous deposits of the kind in the world? Do you know that aside from their picturesque topography they tell a marvelous nature story; a story of strange climate, strange geography, and strange animals; of jungles, and marshes, and tranquil rivers, of fierce contests for food, and life, and supremacy; of varied series of events, through ages and ages of time.

C. C. O’Harra, 1920

Contents

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INSTITUTIONAL ACRONYMS

1 History of Paleontologic and Geologic Studies in the Big Badlands

2 Sedimentary Geology of the Big Badlands

3 Paleoenvironmental and Paleoclimatic Interpretations from Paleosols

4 Postdepositional Processes and Erosion of the White River Badlands

5 Bones That Turned to Stone: Systematics

6 Death on the Landscape: Taphonomy and Paleoenvironments

7 The Big Badlands in Space and Time

8 National Park Service Policy and the Management of Fossil Resources

GLOSSARY

REFERENCES

INDEX

Preface

P.1. Map of the Big Badlands of South Dakota showing locations of specific places and features discussed in the text. The boundary of Badlands National Park is shown by the heavy dash–dot–dot line. The northern area of Badlands National Park in Pennington and Jackson counties is the North Unit. The base map is from the U.S. National Atlas Web site (http://nationalatlas.gov/mapmaker).

MAKOSICA (MAH-KOH SHEE-JAH) IS THE LAKOTA WORD for badlands, or the barren and rough country of buttes and cliffs that are cut by multitudes of deep canyons and ravines. The term badlands does not refer to anything evil about the lands but rather to the difficulty of crossing the country on foot or horse. Modern travelers crossing the Badlands Wall of South Dakota in cars on paved highways do not appreciate the difficulty these landforms posed to early travelers. The French name for this country, mauvaises terres á traverser, the bad lands to traverse, was an even more explicit description. In places in Badlands National Park, one can still walk for over 10 km at the base of the Badlands Wall and not find even a game trail that crosses the wall. Nevertheless, the Big Badlands of South Dakota is one of the most spectacular landforms in the United States and is cut in rocks containing some of the most abundant vertebrate fossils of any rocks of the Age of Mammals (Cenozoic Era) in North America. Fossils from the White River Badlands can be found in every major natural history museum in the world. Badlands National Monument (later Badlands National Park) was established to protect the unique landforms of the White River Badlands and the vast storehouse of the biological past (Badlands National Park, Statement for Management, 1992).

The Badlands, with a capital B, represents the Badlands of Western South Dakota; it is a place-name and the original basis for the geomorphic term. The word badlands has entered the geological vocabulary (when written in lowercase) as a geomorphic term describing a highly eroded landscape with little vegetative cover in arid to semiarid climates. Within the context of this book, badlands in this sense is used as a generic descriptive term as any topographic area that meets these criteria. The terms White River Badlands, Big Badlands, or just the Badlands will be used interchangeably throughout the text to refer to these exposures throughout southwestern South Dakota. The Big Badlands of western South Dakota is unquestionably the most famous of all the areas around the globe referred to as badlands, and it is certainly the most prolific in terms of fossils that have been collected and placed in museums. The White River Badlands represents all the badlands within the White River drainage basin of western South Dakota and Nebraska. This book will focus mostly on the White River Badlands of South Dakota. Badlands National Park is a 244,000-acre National Park Unit established to protect a portion of the White River Badlands, and it is the central focus of this book (Fig. P.1).

Since 1846, with the first scientific report of a partial fossil jaw from the White River Badlands, these deposits have been an important focus of paleontological research. The diversity of fossils recovered by researchers over the past 167 years from strata that span 9 million years of Earth history has provided valuable data on the evolution of North American mammals during the late Eocene and Oligocene epochs. The rocks and fossils from the White River Badlands have also provided valuable information on climate change during one of the greatest global drops in temperature during the Cenozoic. This climatic change contributed to the evolutionary changes of the fauna and flora and produced major changes in both local communities and the global Eocene/ Oligocene biosphere.

In 1920 Cleophas C. O’Harra published The White River Badlands. At the time he wrote the book, O’Harra was president of the South Dakota School of Mines in Rapid City, but it was as professor of mineralogy and geology at the School of Mines that O’Harra gathered the information upon which his book was based. When White River Badlands was published, it was considered cutting-edge research, and it has been reprinted many times since its initial publication. O’Harra included data collected from the field expeditions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including many led by him. As he mentions in his preface, the book was written with the layperson in mind, and since its publication, it has been the definitive work on the geology and paleontology of the Big Badlands in southwestern South Dakota.

The goal of our book is to build on the foundation laid by O’Harra and, like O’Harra, we summarize the research conducted by many geologists and paleontologists (including the authors) that took place over the decades after his contribution. We continue in the spirit of White River Badlands by directing our text to the many enthusiasts, both amateur and professional, with an interest in the geology and paleontology of the Big Badlands. Recognizing that this diverse audience also reflects a diversity in the amount of formal training in geology and paleontology, we have tried to provide general summaries of the subject matter, specific information, and detailed lists of references and glossaries with the sincere hope that this book will serve as a gateway for those who wish to investigate further. This book provides a broad overview of the geology and paleontology of the Badlands, and we urge all of those with a strong interest to pursue the primary literature upon which this book is based.

This book is not primarily intended as a textbook, although it could certainly serve as a supplemental text for a class on local geology or paleontology. It is a synthesis that provides the reader with a solid introduction to a classic geological area based on the research that has been completed by multiple researchers over the last 167 years. We assume that the reader has a basic background in geology and paleontology and an avid interest in the White River Badlands. As our understanding of the diversity and taxonomy of the fossils has evolved, our concepts of the geology have also evolved. Some new stratigraphic concepts have been introduced without a previous published record. These are based on many years of fieldwork and research in the Badlands by some of us. Those familiar with the geology of the Big Badlands may encounter differences in the geologic interpretations.

As a result of the enormous amount of information relating to the geology and paleontology of the White River Badlands that has been published since O’Harra’s original 1920 volume, it became obvious that certain limits had to be set. The area-level scope of the current book encompasses most of the published record of paleontological localities within Badlands National Park and extends in a 100-mile radius, with Cedar Pass as the center (Fig. P.1). The only exception is chapter 7, The Big Badlands in Space and Time, which compares the central features of this book with areas similar in age in the western United States and around the world. The temporal scope of this project is limited to the late Eocene and earlier Oligocene epochs, with only minor discussion of pre-Eocene geology and regional geologic history in order to establish a framework for discussion.

Chapter 1, History of Paleontologic and Geologic Studies in the Big Badlands, explores the history of science as it relates to the original discoveries and surveys of the White River Badlands and the individuals who have contributed to our understanding of the geology and paleontology of this area. It also discusses many of the early interpretations of how the late Eocene and Oligocene rocks in this area were deposited and how our understanding of this region has changed as the science of geology has matured.

Because a working knowledge of the regional geology is critical to understanding the fossil record and provides the primary context within which fossils are preserved, it is covered in three different but complementary chapters.

Chapter 2, Sedimentary Geology of the Big Badlands, outlines the depositional environments and sediment sources which produced the rocks included today within the White River Badlands. Each formal rock unit within the White River Group will be described in great detail. Within the science of geology, it is crucial to be able to recognize individual rock units and correlate them across broad expanses. A preliminary discussion of the Sharps Formation within the Arikaree Group will also be discussed.

Chapter 3, Paleoenvironmental and Paleoclimatic Interpretations from Paleosols, explores the process in which paleosols (ancient soils) were formed and preserved in the Badlands and what role they play in interpreting ancient environments and climate. This chapter also summarizes much of the paleosol research that has been completed since 1983.

Chapter 4, Postdepositional Processes and Erosion of the White River Badlands, examines the post-Oligocene geologic features of the White River Badlands. Many of the features now exposed in the White River rocks were formed after burial of the sediments and while they were turning into sedimentary rocks (diagenesis). About 5 million years ago, the major geologic processes in this area switched from depositional to erosional, eventually creating many of the famous landforms in the Big Badlands of today. Faulting associated with post-Oligocene extensional tectonics in the Great Plains has had a profound impact on the preservation and distribution of Cenozoic rocks the White River Badlands. Finally, although wind played a large role in the origin of the White River rocks millions of years ago, it still has a role in forming sand dunes across the region and redistributing the ancient dust into the agricultural fields of eastern South Dakota and Iowa.

By far the most significant scientific features of the Big Badlands are its fossils, primarily mammal fossils. The next two chapters introduce the fauna and discuss how the fossils accumulated across the ancient landscapes of the White River Badlands.

Chapter 5, Bones That Turned to Stone: Systematics, focuses on the fossil plants, animals, and trace fossils of the White River Badlands. These discussions are based on the published record of body and trace fossils found in and around Badlands National Park, with our discussions organized as genera, including seven invertebrates, one fish, one amphibian, 14 reptiles, seven birds, and 88 mammals. This chapter is written in the style of a field guide so that the reader has a summary of important features to identify a particular fossil at the genus level. This chapter also includes photo plates of many of the fossils from the White River Badlands and the diagnostic features that help with identifications. Important aspects of the evolution and paleoecology of individual taxa are also discussed.

Chapter 6, Death on the Landscape: Taphonomy and Paleoenvironments, explores the interrelated nature of fossil preservation and paleoenvironments, as well as how scientists can extract data from the rocks and fossils in order to interpret the paleoforensics of fossil bones. Two important fossil localities in Badlands National Park are used as examples to highlight the interdisciplinary nature of this research, and general discussions are provided of fossil distribution and controls on the fossilization process.

Chapter 7, The Big Badlands in Space and Time, places the White River Badlands into a larger context. We explore global events that occurred during the late Eocene and Oligocene epochs, and how ancient records from across the globe can be combined in order to develop an overall picture of paleoclimatic change during this critical interval of Earth’s history.

Chapter 8, National Park Service Policy and the Management of Fossil Resources, focuses on the management of paleontological resources at Badlands National Park. This chapter explores ongoing park projects and how we protect fossil resources, and the interface between the visitor and the abundant fossil resources – something unique to Badlands National Park.

Acknowledgments

THIS BOOK WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT the support of many professional colleagues, museum personnel, artists, former students, National Park Service employees, members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and friends and family. This endeavor goes beyond the four authors to a vast network of professionals who care deeply about the White River Badlands and have invested many years in their study and protection.

It is with great appreciation that we thank the following colleagues for their careful study and detailed observations that have provided valuable information on which this book is based. We would like to thank Marty Becker, Phil Bjork, Clint Boyd, John Chamberlain, Dan Chure, Joe DiBenedetto, Jim Evans, John Flynn, Ted Fremd, Matt Garb, Jacques Gauthier, Lance Grande, David Grandstaff, Bob Hunt, Howard Hutchison, Matthew Kohn, Bill Korth, Hannan LaGarry, Leigh Anne LaGarry, Alvis Lisenbee, James Martin, Al Mead, Jason Moore, Darrin Pagnac, Dennis Parmley, David Parris, Don Prothero, Greg Retallack, Foster Sawyer, Bill Simpson, Ellen Starck, Phil Stoffer, Richard Stucky, Bill Wall, Xiaoming Wang, Ed Welsh, and Alessandro Zanazzi.

Many of the observations and interpretations included herein are the result of interactions with numerous graduate and undergraduate students over the years. We would especially like to thank Katie Card, Anthony Cerruti, Jim and Jeff Childers, Amanda Drewicz, Leslee Everett, Lew Factor, Neil Griffis, Reko Hargrave, Patricia Jannett, Raymond Kennedy, Paul Kosmidis (posthumous), Eve Lalor, Justin Little, Bill Lukens, Matt McCoy, Christine Metzger, Jason Mintz, Doreena Patrick, Justin Spence, Gary Stinchcomb, and Brandt Wells. The field help for many years (and saving Evanoff after a bad fall) by Terry Hiester (posthumous) is especially appreciated.

Without the continued support of the National Park Service family, this book would not have been written. We would like to thank the following National Park Service personnel for their support and encouragement. From Badlands National Park, we thank Eric Brunnemann, Larry Johnson, Steve Thede, Brian Kenner, Eddie Childers, Milt Haar, Mark Slovek, Mike Carlbom, Josh Delger, Laniece Sawvell, Mindy Householder, Levi Moxness, Wayne Thompson, Adam Behlke, Christine Gardner, Lainie Fike, Phil Varela, Amanda Dopheide, Delda Findeisen, Lee Vaughan, Paul Roghair, Jenny Albrinck, Megan Cherry, Julie Johndreau, Aaron Kaye, Tyler Teuscher, Ian Knoerl, Connie Wolf, Chris Case, Steve Howard, Wolf Schwarz, Robert McGee-Ballinger, Ken Thompson, Casey Osback, Vince Littlewhiteman, Ryan Frum, Eric Yount, Pam Griswold, Tyson Nehring, Danny Baker, Linda Livermont, Jill Riggins, Valerie Reeves, Heather Tucker, and Pam Livermont. A very special thank-you goes to David Tarailo for his work on plate layouts and design. Vince Santucci, senior geologist and Washington liaison, has also provided invaluable support for this project. We would also like to thank Jerrilyn Thompson and Julie Stumpf from the National Park Service Midwest Regional Office for helping us manage some large computer image files. The Badlands Natural History Association board members and executive director, Katie Johnston, and from the Albright-Wirth Program, Katherine Callaway, also provided financial support for this project. Thanks are also due to Barbara Beasley of the U.S. Forest Service and Brent Breithaupt of the Bureau of Land Management for permits and access to other exposures of the Badlands across Nebraska and Wyoming.

Thanks also go to the many curators and collections managers that facilitated our work in the various museums housing vertebrate material from the White River Group. We would like to thank all of them, particularly the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Laurie Anderson, Sally Shelton, Samantha Hustoft, Carrie Herbel, Amy Wright, Bill Schurmann (posthumous), and Mike Ryan; the American Museum of Natural History, Ruth O’Leary, Judy Galkin, Carl Mehling, and Alex Ebrahimi-Navissi; the Yale Peabody Museum, Christopher Norris, Daniel Brinkman, Ethan France, and Annette Van Aken; the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, David Bohaska, Charyl Ito, Mike Brett-Surman, Thomas Jorstad, Michelle Pinsdorf, and Matthew Miller; the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Richard Stucky, Logan Ivy, and Rene Payne; the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History at Boulder, Jaelyn Eberle, Toni Culver, and Katie McComas; the Field Museum of Natural History; and the University of Texas at Austin, Tim Rowe, Jessica Maisano, and Matthew Colbert, for granting us permission to use our photographs and some of their photographs of their specimens for this book.

We would like to extend a special thank-you to the Oglala Sioux Tribe Tribal Historic Preservation Advisory Council for their careful review of the tribal specimen photos considered for this publication. Members include Mike Catches Enemy (ex officio advisory member/director/tribal historic preservation officer), Jhon Goes In Center (advisory member/ chair), Garvard Good Plume Jr. (advisory member), Wilmer Mesteth (advisory member), Dennis Yellow Thunder (ex officio advisory member/cultural resource specialist), and Hannan LaGarry (ex officio advisory member/paleontologist).

Several artists have contributed magnificent images to both the cover and colored plates found within the book. We extend our gratitude to Jim Carney, Laura Cunningham, Robert Hynes, and Diane Hargreaves for their creative works.

We are very grateful to Bob Sloan, Jim Farlow, Jenna Lynn Whittaker, Daniel Pyle, and Nancy Lila Lightfoot at Indiana University Press, as well as copy editor Karen Hellekson, for their help on this project. We also thank Paula Douglass for developing the index.

Finally, we extend thanks to our family and friends for their support during the project.

Institutional Acronyms

The White River Badlands

1

History of Paleontologic and Geologic Studies in the Big Badlands

1.1. Regional map of southwest South Dakota and adjacent states showing the features related to the history of the geologic and paleontologic studies of the Big Badlands. The dashed line indicates the route of the Fort Pierre–Fort Laramie road, plotted after the map of Warren (1856). The inset map of the details of the Badlands area includes the boundaries of the three units of present Badlands National Park (dash–dot lines). The base map is from the U.S. National Atlas Web site (http://nationalatlas.gov/mapmaker).

THE FIRST FOSSILS FROM THE BADLANDS OF SOUTH Dakota were collected by employees of the American Fur Company and sent to scientists in the eastern United States. The fur company had opened up a wagon road between Fort Pierre on the Missouri River and Fort John, later known as Fort Laramie, on the Platte River (Fig. 1.1). This was a much shorter route from the Missouri than the long Platte River road, and it crossed the Big Badlands in the headwaters of Bear Creek near the modern town of Scenic, then went south on the east side of Sheep Mountain Table to the White River. Various fur company employees may have collected fossils from this area in the 1840s, but it was the chief agent of the upper Missouri posts for the fur company, Alexander Culbertson, who sent fossils to St. Louis and to his father and uncle in Pennsylvania. Dr. Hiram Prout of St. Louis had been sent a lower jaw fragment of a huge mammal that he identified as Palaeotherium because of its similarity to figured specimens of this European fossil mammal. He sent a cast of this specimen and a letter to Yale University in 1846. The letter and a crude drawing of the specimen’s teeth were published in 1846. Prout described the specimen in greater detail the following year, 1847, and this became the first White River fossil mammal to be described in the scientific literature (Fig. 1.2A). The other fossils sent to Culbertson’s father and uncle eventually made their way to Dr. Joseph Leidy of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences (Fig. 1.3). One of Leidy’s many academic talents was vertebrate paleontology, and beginning with the description of the first fossil camel skull found in the United States, which he named Poebrotherium in 1847 (Fig. 1.2B), he started a long career as the preeminent vertebrate paleontologist of the United States.

These first publications on the fossils from the Badlands piqued the interest of geologists and naturalists, some of whom eventually visited the Badlands. Among these was Dr. David Dale Owen, who was making a geologic survey of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. In 1849 Owen sent one of his assistant geologists, Dr. John Evans, to the Badlands to collect fossils and to determine the age relations of the fossil-bearing rocks. Evans and his field party spent about a week in the Badlands, and all the fossils were sent to Leidy. The results of Evan’s expedition plus descriptions of the vertebrate fossils by Leidy were published in 1852. This report included the first map of the region (Fig. 1.4) and the first diagram of the Badlands (Fig. 1.5). Evans described the Badlands as follows:

To the surrounding country . . . the Mauvaises Terres present the most striking contrast. From the uniform, monotonous, open prairie, the traveler suddenly descends, one or two hundred feet, into a valley that looks as if it had sunk away from the surrounding world; leaving standing, all over it, thousands of abrupt, irregular, prismatic, and columnar masses, frequently capped with irregular pyramids, and stretching up to a height of from one to two hundred feet, or more.

So thickly are these natural towers studded over the surface of this extraordinary region, that the traveler threads his way through deep, confined, labyrinthine passages, not unlike the narrow, irregular streets and lanes of some quaint old town of the European Continent. Viewed in the distance, indeed, these rocky piles, in their endless succession, assume the appearance of massive artificial structures, decked out with all the accessories of buttress and turret, arched doorway and clustered shaft, pinnacle, and finial, and tapering spire. (Evans, 1852:197)

Thaddeus A. Culbertson was the younger half-brother of Alexander Culbertson and was educated at what is now Princeton University. He decided to travel in the summer of 1850 to the upper Missouri country to study the Native Americans along the river and to collect natural history specimens. He discussed his trip with Spencer F. Baird, who was soon to become a curator at the Smithsonian Institution. Baird urged the younger Culbertson to make a visit to the Badlands to collect fossil vertebrates. Culbertson traveled with two guides to the upper Bear Creek drainage and spent about a day collecting. He returned to Fort Pierre with a small but good collection of fossils. Culbertson returned to Washington in August 1850 but died 3 weeks after his return from complications related to tuberculosis. Baird had some of Culbertson’s journal of the trip published in 1851, but Culbertson’s entire journal was not completely published until 1952 by McDermott. All of the fossils that Evans and the Culbertson brothers collected were sent to Leidy, who published his first monograph on the Mauvaises Terres fauna in 1853.

1.2. Illustrations of the first two fossils described from the Big Badlands. (A) Diagram of "gigantic Palaeotherium" jaw published in Prout (1847). (B) Type specimen of Poebrotherium wilsoni published by Leidy (1847). This diagram is from Leidy (1853:plate 1, fig. 1). All early diagrams of White River fossils were made from specimens, not from reconstructed complete skulls and jaws.

Eighteen fifty-three was the year not only of Leidy’s first monograph but also of the second trip of Evans to the Badlands, and the first trip to the Badlands by Fielding B. Meek and Ferdinand V. Hayden (Fig. 1.3). Meek became the preeminent invertebrate paleontologist in the United States, specializing in the invertebrate fossils of the west, and Hayden would later become the director of one of the five great geologic surveys of the American West after the Civil War. In 1853 both were assistants of James Hall of the New York Geological Survey. Hall wanted collections from the upper Missouri basin, including fossils from the Badlands. Sent by Hall to St. Louis, Meek and Hayden initially met opposition to their proposed collecting trip to the Badlands by Evans, who considered the two to be interlopers in the fossil beds. However, the two groups finally cooperated and spent about a month collecting along the Fort Pierre–Fort Laramie road (Fig. 1.6). Hayden would return to the Badlands in May 1855, traveling along buffalo trails along the south side of the White River, and collecting at such areas as the Palmer Creek area of the modern South Unit of Badlands National Park (Hayden, 1856). Hayden served for the Union army as a surgeon during the Civil War, and after the war he would make one last trip to the Badlands. In May 1866 Hayden traveled from Fort Randall along the Missouri River up the Niobrara River, across the Pine Ridge, to his old fossil-collecting areas at Palmer Creek, the south end of Sheep Mountain Table, and the upper Bear Creek drainage. Hayden (1869) was disappointed in the relatively small numbers of fossils that he found in the areas that he had collected in 1853 and 1855. Apparently there had not been enough erosion to uncover fossils in the numbers that he had found in his earlier surveys. In 1869 Hayden wrote the geology discussion to Leidy’s great monograph, The Extinct Mammalian Fauna of Dakota and Nebraska. This monograph summarized all of the fossil mammals from the White River Group (named as the White River Series by Meek and Hayden in 1858) that had been collected over the previous two decades (Fig. 1.7). This work would be the best description of White River fossils for the next 70 years.

1.3. Some of the important early paleontologists who worked in the Badlands. Joseph Leidy worked at the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences and was the first to publish a monograph of the fossils from the Big Badlands. Fielding B. Meek and Ferdinand V. Hayden collected in the Badlands in 1853 and named the White River Group in 1859. John Bell Hatcher worked as a collector for O. C. Marsh at Yale and later taught at Princeton University.

1.4. Details of the Evans map compiled in 1849 showing the route to the Badlands, published in Evans (1852). The perspective on this map is to the west, as if one were traveling to the Badlands from Fort Pierre. The road from Fort Pierre to Fort Laramie is plotted with the thin dashed line (cf. Fig. 1.1).

Collecting parties from East Coast universities and museums dominated the studies of the Badlands in the late nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century. Othniel C. Marsh of the Yale Peabody Museum collected in the White River Badlands in 1874 (Schuchert and LeVene, 1940). Marsh collected primarily in northwest Nebraska, though he may have made excursions as far north as the South Dakota Badlands. While at the Red Cloud Agency, Marsh learned of the following Lakota tale from a friend, Captain James H. Cook. Cook had been shown a huge molar from a brontothere by the Lakota, and Cook’s friend, American Horse, told the following legend about the beast:

American Horse explained that the tooth had belonged to a Thunder Horse that had lived away back and that then this creature would sometimes come down to earth in thunderstorms and chase and kill buffalo. His old people told stories of how on one occasion many, many years back, this big Thunder Horse had driven a herd of buffalo right into a camp of Lacota [sic] people during a bad thunderstorm, when these people were about to starve, and that they had killed many of these buffalo with their lances and arrows. The Great Spirit had sent the Thunder Horse to help them get food when it was needed most badly. This story was handed down from the time when the Indians had no horses. (Osborn, 1929:xxi)

1.5. First image of the topography of the Badlands, published in the Evans report (1852:196). The image was made from a sketch by Eugene de Girardin, the artist on the Evans expedition. De Girardin’s sketches reproduced the topographic features of the Badlands quite well, but somehow the badland slopes and cliffs became translated by the engraver into a series of vertical pillars not seen in the Badlands.

Not long after, Marsh named one of the genera of these huge relatives of the rhinoceros Brontotherium, thunder beast. Though this genus name is not widely used today, the group is still referred to as brontotheres.

After 1874 Marsh hired collectors to send him fossils from the West. The most capable and renowned of these collectors was John Bell Hatcher (Fig. 1.3). In 1886 Marsh sent Hatcher out to the Great Plains to collect skulls and skeletons of brontotheres that occur in the lower deposits of the White River Group. Hatcher started his work in northwest Nebraska and adjacent Wyoming, but in 1887 he traveled to the Badlands east of Hermosa, South Dakota, where he collected 13 skulls, including three skulls in a single day. In the 15 months that he collected brontothere fossils during the three field seasons of 1886, 1887, and 1888, Hatcher collected 105 skulls and numerous skeletons and isolated bones of brontotheres (Hatcher, 1893:214) that totaled about 24.5 tons of fossil materials (estimated from the figures given in Schuchert and LeVene, 1940). No other collector of White River fossils has matched the volume of materials collected by Hatcher.

Between 1890 and 1910 many major museums and universities sent collecting parties to the Badlands. These included the American Museum of Natural History in New York; the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago; Princeton University; Amherst College in Massachusetts; the University of Nebraska in Lincoln; the University of Kansas in Lawrence; the University of South Dakota in Vermillion; and the South Dakota School of Mines (O’Harra, 1910). Meek and Hayden (1858) had given the name White River Series to the rocks of the South Dakota Badlands, and they subdivided the rocks by their fauna into the lower titanothere beds and the overlying turtle–Oreodon beds. Jacob L. Wortman, while working in the South Dakota Badlands in 1892 as a collector for the American Museum of Natural History, recognized an additional faunal subdivision for the White River (Wortman, 1893). He subdivided Hayden’s turtle–Oreodon beds into the lower Oreodon beds (dominated by the oreodont Merycoidodon) with the Metamynodon channels and the upper Leptauchenia beds (another kind of oreodont) with the Protoceras channels. Metamynodon is a large, primitive, odd-toed ungulate (perissodactyl) related to the rhinoceros, and Protoceras is a medium-size, even-toed ungulate (artiodactyl) that is a member of an extinct group related to the camels and deer. This three-part faunal division of the White River sequence was later formalized as the Chadronian, Orellan, and Whitneyan land mammal ages (Wood et al., 1941). The first subdivisions of the White River rocks on the basis of rock types (lithology) was made by N. H. Darton (1899) of the U.S. Geological Survey, who recognized the lower Chadron Formation as well as the upper Brule Formation in western Nebraska and South Dakota. The Chadron Formation included the basal red beds and the overlying greenish-gray claystone beds of the lower White River, while the Brule Formation included the tan mudstone and siltstone beds of the upper White River. Together, the Chadron and Brule formations make up the White River Group of South Dakota and Nebraska.

1.6. Fielding B. Meek’s sketch of the Badlands made in 1853 and published in Hayden’s geology report in Leidy’s 1869 monograph. The area shown is of the large buttes near the modern access road to Sheep Mountain Table.

Paleontologists could position their fossil localities to within these broad faunal subdivisions, but the lack of detailed maps in the 1800s prevented the detailed recording of geographic locations of fossil sites, and only rudimentary sedimentology concepts were understood. Evans (1852), Hayden (1869), and most nineteenth-century geologists thought the White River sediments had been deposited in a huge lake. Fine-grained, fairly well-bedded rocks were thought to have been deposited in quiet water, and the presence of freshwater snails and clams were used as evidence of the existence of a lake that covered a huge area of the Great Plains and butted up against the flanks of the Black Hills and Rocky Mountains. The bones of mammals and other land-dwelling organisms were thought to have washed into the lake from rivers during floods. This so-called lacustrine theory for the origin of the White River and other Tertiary rocks of the Great Plains was questioned as early as 1869 by Leidy, who found few aquatic vertebrates in the White River fossil record to support the existence of the lake. The lacustrine theory was finally debunked by Hatcher in 1902. Hatcher made his argument that the White River rocks were deposited by rivers because of the presence of ancient river channels represented by long, thin, sinuous gravel and coarse sand deposits scattered throughout the White River fine-grained mudrocks. The White River fauna included almost all land-dwelling organisms, along with extremely few aquatic vertebrates and invertebrates except in channel deposits or the thin limestone deposits. The few plant fossils (hackberry seeds, fossil roots, and rare tree stumps) also were widely distributed in the White River mudrocks. Because of his arguments and professional stature as a well-respected vertebrate paleontologist, Hatcher put the lacustrine theory to rest.

1.7. A diagram of a complete skull of Oreodon culbertsoni, published by Leidy (1869:plate 6, fig. 1). By 1869 enough complete skulls were available for complete reconstructions of some White River mammals.

For six decades, paleontologists and geologists from Princeton University made extensive studies of the rocks and fossils from the South Dakota Badlands. William Berryman Scott led the first Princeton students into the Badlands in 1882. While publishing extensively on the White River mammals, he returned with students to the area in 1890 and 1893. John Bell Hatcher had been hired as a curator of vertebrate paleontology by Princeton in 1893, and he joined Scott and the students in the Badlands that summer. Scott turned the student field camp duties over to Hatcher, who made many more extensive collections for Princeton. Hatcher left Princeton in 1900, and in 1905 Dr. William J. Sinclair was hired as vertebrate paleontologist. In 1920 he started a major study of the fossils and geology of the lowest beds of the Brule Formation in the Badlands, then called the red layer. Sinclair was not only an excellent vertebrate paleontologist but also an excellent geologist. Sinclair (1923) was one of the first to consider the detailed origins of the White River bone beds on the basis of the lithologic context and postmortem (taphonomic) features of the fossil bones. He carefully recorded the vertical positions of the fossils within the lower Brule Formation and documented vertical changes in the faunas. Sinclair’s first student, Harold R. Wanless, made one of the most extensive studies of the White River rocks in the South Dakota Badlands. Wanless (1921) studied the lithologic features of the White River Group and the distribution and origin of the rocks over a large area, mainly west of Sheep Mountain Table (Wanless, 1923). Wanless carefully recorded his observations and interpretations and his papers are still essential reading for anyone who studies the geology of the Badlands. Sinclair was to work