There Were Mastodons Under My Feet!

Red cream soda and chocolate ice cream AND fossils on the same day?!? This turned out to be a top-tier holiday!

Mastodon State Historic Site preserves the Kimmswick Bone Bed, an incompletely excavated paleontological site that contains both mastodon fossils and Clovis points, giving evidence that early humans hunted them here:

There was apparently a long history (starting in at least the 1800s!) of unscientific fossil digging at this site, and the lack of preservation was further exacerbated by the full lifespan of a rock quarry. If I understood the signage correctly, everything below the level of the bluff was excavated by the quarry--

--and if that is indeed true, then it makes me physically sick to think about, because what other countless wonders must have been hauled out and crushed into gravel without anyone noticing?

In the 1970s, the entire remaining site was almost hauled out and crushed into gravel without anyone noticing, when a state highway was being planned for that exact spot. Fortunately, a public campaign saved it and helped the Missouri Department of Natural Resources buy it, but you can see from this Google Earth screenshot how close it is to the bone bed:

The bottom right of the loop trail is an extension that goes through the former dig sites for the bone bed. It's SO close to two access roads and the highway! To the south, just off-screen, is Rock Creek, which is actually where the earliest mastodon bones were reported, having been seen weathering out of the bank. The scientist who excavated and prepared them turned them into a sideshow Voltron-esque super mastodon that he exhibited around the world and later sold to the British Natural History Museum... where it was disassembled and reassembled into a proper mastodon skeleton, lol.

The Mastodon State Historic Site Museum had so many mastodon fossils excavated from Kimmswick and the neighboring Barnhart site!

This tusk is a product of rescue paleontology conducted by volunteers on the site of a car dealership that was trying to expand. Here's a former volunteer's interesting take on that excavation:

I found a travel blogger's post about visiting this museum before the tusk was conserved, so you can see how it was previously mounted and its darker appearance.

Ugh, if I was trying to build ANYTHING, I do not care what, and I uncovered a fossil, I would stop what I was doing forever and instead spend the rest of my life grubbing in the dirt with all my brand-new fossils!

So many of my favorite things all in the same frame:

I feel like often, state park sites lose out on the best artifacts, so that the visitor centers for even the most amazing state sites are somewhat sparse. Not this place, though! Check out some of their very many Clovis points!

And then much later, we get to my favorite native peoples--the Mississippians!

This site is actually just a few miles and across the river from Cahokia, which makes me wonder what Mississippian settlements might have been right here, out in the Cahokian suburbs.

On top of the bluff, above the quarry site, there is apparently also a cool cave:

With even more cool stuff found inside it!

It doesn't seem like any of these sites have been excavated since the 1980s, which in some ways is a huge bummer because who wouldn't want more mastodon bones and Clovis points in the world? But I guess if nobody has a research question that can only be solved by excavating here, then it all might as well stay tucked safely away in its soil and caves!

Okay, one more picture of the tusk before we hike!

This shelter on the hiking trail is the historical marker for the Kimmswick Bone Bed--

--but the actual excavation sites are unmarked and fully grown over. Here's where they're supposed to be:

The hiking trail basically follows the edge of the Possible Distribution of Clovis Age Sediments from the northeast down and then west to about the near edge of the Concrete Foundation of Lime Kiln. So hiking back, basically everything to the right of the trail is assorted old dig sites, and everything to the left of the trail is potential Clovis evidence.

Sounds interesting, but it actually all looks like this, lol:

But hey, that just means that mastodons and Clovis points could be ANYWHERE. They were probably right there under our feet sometimes!

Here's me with definitely a mastodon skeleton with a Clovis point sticking into it right there under my feet:

Afterward, we did everyone's least favorite thing to do when they're hot and sweaty and grubby and tired--we got back in the car and drove for another five hours, sigh.

But at least we had plenty of Southern Missouri/Northern Arkansas wildlife to entertain us:

Only one of the several alarming bumper stickers is legible in this photo, but I assure you that they were all nasty.

Next up: an old fort and a new musical!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!