Some affectionately refer to Gray as a "turtle site", because of the hundreds of fossils pond turtles.
The Gray Fossil Site is a Mio-Pliocene aged fossil deposit in northeastern Tennessee, and is thought to be between 4.5-7 million years old. The site used to be a sinkhole pond that attracted many different kinds of animals, surrounded by dense forest.
It's the only deposit of its age in the Southern Appalachians, and has yielded many interesting animals not known in North America today, including a relative of the Red Panda, Tapirs, Camels, Rhinoceroses, and Eurasian Badgers.
Both preparatory labs and the The Natural History Museum at the Gray Fossil Site are on-location, allowing visitors to watch science at work!
It's the only deposit of its age in the Southern Appalachians, and has yielded many interesting animals not known in North America today, including a relative of the Red Panda, Tapirs, Camels, Rhinoceroses, and Eurasian Badgers.
Both preparatory labs and the The Natural History Museum at the Gray Fossil Site are on-location, allowing visitors to watch science at work!
Salamanders (master's thesis)
Amphibians like the Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) still live in southern Appalachia today.
The Gray Fossil Site has North America's richest diversity of pre-Pleistocene fossil salamanders. The whole Southern Appalachian region is a salamander biodiversity hotspot and home to many species not found anywhere else in the world.
We already knew about many of the salamanders that lived there, but researchers had only looked at their vertebrae. For my Master's thesis I described an articulated specimen of a mole salamander as well as a single tooth-bearing skull bone, the vomer, from a lungless salamander. Abstract now available
Article in late-stage preparation: An articulated Ambystoma (Amphibia:Caudata) from the Mio-Pliocene Gray Fossil Site, Tennessee, USA.
We already knew about many of the salamanders that lived there, but researchers had only looked at their vertebrae. For my Master's thesis I described an articulated specimen of a mole salamander as well as a single tooth-bearing skull bone, the vomer, from a lungless salamander. Abstract now available
Article in late-stage preparation: An articulated Ambystoma (Amphibia:Caudata) from the Mio-Pliocene Gray Fossil Site, Tennessee, USA.
Learn more
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A quick summary of the site, including what the environment used to be like, and why we find the animals here that we do.
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The Gray Fossil Site is a true success story. So many fossil deposits in the U.S. are found by road construction crews, but typically the deposits are destroyed to make way for roads and buildings. It was an alligator skull that saved the day...
(This video is a number of years old, we have certainly found more tapirs since this was made!!) |