Dr. Steven Wallace holds the beaver tooth recently discovered at the Gray fossil site.
(Brian Bishop / Johnson City Press)
First tooth from small, ancient beaver found at Gray Fossil Site
By Rex Barber and Brian BishopPress Staff Writers
rbarber@johnsoncitypress.com ; bbishop@johnsoncitypress.com
Ancient animals continue to be discovered at the Gray Fossil Site, as excavators uncovered the site’s first beaver tooth just days ago.
The tooth belonged to a small beaver from the genus Dipoides. In addition to the world’s largest find of tapirs, the discoveries from Gray already include a saber-toothed cat, short-faced bear, fish, ground sloth, rhino, camel, shovel-tusked elephant, horse, red panda, bird, alligator and the Eurasian badger.
“This new find helps us to better understand the types of animals that lived among the tapirs, as well as the environment in which they lived,” Steven Wallace, an associate professor of geosciences at East Tennessee State University, said in a news release about the find.
Wallace showed off the tooth during an interview at the site Thursday morning. It was about 1/4-inch long and pointed. Wallace said the beaver was probably the size of a large modern muskrat.
“But like the modern beaver it is something that would be eating wood,” Wallace said. “It would be living in sort of a pond or a little stream system or something like that. So, you know, it is in a sense the beaver you would think of, just a very small version.”
Wallace expects to find the rest of the beaver.
“This is how this fossil has worked from the very beginning,” Wallace said. “We get these little teases every so often, we find somthing new and we keep working, we keep digging, we move enough dirt and before you know it we find more of it.”
A tooth was the first fossil found of the site’s red panda. The beaver tooth was found by a volunteer. Wallace looked at it and had other experts provide their opinions. Everyone agreed; it was a beaver tooth.
Wallace said the Gray Fossil Site has about a century of finds waiting underneath the ground.
“I don’t think that’s an over-estimate of any kind, simply because we’ve literally only scratched the surface out here,” Wallace said. “In terms of only surface area, we’ve only excavated less than one percent of the whole site, let alone calculating in depth.”
The site is officially known as the East Tennessee State University and General Shale Brick Natural History Museum and Visitor Center at the Gray Fossil Site. Several dig pits are located at the site, as well as a museum offering educational tours and traveling exhibits.
In March ground should be broken on a new annex at the fossil site. The nearly $2 million project is expected to be approved by the state building commission Feb. 11. The annex will feature a café and a wet lab inside for children and adults to do work. Two outdoor classrooms will provide access to view the “elephant pit” dig site and a weather monitoring station for education about how climate may have effected the Miocene Era animals found at the site. A new 40-space parking lot also will be built at the site.
For more information on new programs or exhibits, visit www.grayfossilmuseum.com or call the museum toll free at (866) 202-6223. The fossil site and museum is located 1.8 miles from Exit 13 off Interstate 26 in Gray and is open seven days a week from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.