Prehistoric rhinoceros fossil plus#

Based on the mold and on the bones, Durham and Savage, along with Walter Chappell, who had first visited the cave in 1936, proposed that the rhino was in the genus Diceratherium and that it lived around 23 million years ago. The seven-foot long replica ended up at the University of California Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley, where the pair worked. In order to better determine the shape of the fossil mold, two of the research team, Wyatt Durham and Donald Savage, made a plaster cast of the cave. As the basalt continued to flow, it built up layers of pillows that molded around the dead rhino and preserved its form. Geologists refer to such water-cooled basalt as pillow lava because of its shape. The water cooled the outside layer of the basalt but it remained liquid within and still somewhat mobile. Its bloated, upside-down body floated in a shallow lake, when molten rock flowed into the water. The researchers proposed that the mold formed following the death of the rhinoceros. Not until 1951, did a formal report appear and to this day no one has found any additional animal molds in the basalt of Eastern Washington. Neither happened, though Beck had noted molds of petrified wood near the rhinoceros.

Prehistoric rhinoceros fossil plus#

He further hoped that additional molds of animals, plus petrified bones, would be forthcoming. Beck hoped Stock would soon provide a detailed account. Chester Stock of the California Institute of Technology for critical examination. He described the mold as a “supposed rhinoceros” and added that he had forward the bones to Dr. Beck and an assistant visited the cave the following month.īeck published his first article on the cave in late 1935. At the time the geology department did not have a vertebrate paleontologist so the bones were given to George Beck, a paleontologist at the Washington State Normal School (now Central Washington University). He gives them to Ruth Peabody, who takes later them to the University of Washington. Opposite the entrance he also discovers and removes part of a jaw, with teeth. Upon entering, Haakon Friele finds bone fragments scattered on the ground. The quartet is looking for petrified wood when they find a small cave on a narrow ledge about 300 feet above the lake. Peabody and Haakon and Asiang Friele are exploring a basalt cliff in Jasper Canyon at the east end of Blue Lake, about 25 miles north of Soap Lake, Washington. It is one of the most unusual fossils known. A basalt flow had covered the dead and bloated beast, preserving a mold of its body in stone. Word of the bones soon reaches geologist George Beck at Washington State Normal School (now Central Washington University), who examines the bones and the cave and determines that the cave is a mold of a rhinoceros that died 15 million years ago. They notice it has an unusual shape, sort of like the mold of large, upside down animal.

In July 1935, two Seattle couples hiking near Blue Lake in Grant County in Eastern Washington clamber into a cave of basalt.