KIMBALL – "Everything old is new again." That's an old Anne Murray number that fits what Shane Tucker is doing on the location of the Kimball Bypass.
He is bringing old things to the light of day.
Shane Tucker is the Highway Salvage Paleontologist who is finding some pretty amazing fossil remains in the dirt work underway on the Kimball Bypass.
Fossil remains of a giant land tortoise were among the first bones he found. It was three feet long and a foot and a half wide.The proper name for this creature is Geochelone. It is similar to the Galapagos turtles of today.
Tucker also found Teleoceras hicksi, a barrel-bodied rhinoceros, and bones of a long legged rhino named Aphelops.
His eagle eye has also come across bones of a three toed horse, elephants and early forms of camels, rabbits and antelope. Not the whole creature, just a few bone fragments.He has also found remains of Borophagus secundus, a carnivorous dog with a crushing bite. The creature's bite was powerful enough to cause a hole that looked machine-made in the leg bone of another early mammal.
Tucker dodges around the earth moving equipment as the machines scrape and load earth as the Bypass roadbed is shaped. When he spots something of interest, he signals the heavy equipment operator to give him some room and time to check out the possible fossil remains. He does not shut down the operation but gets the contractor to shift to another work location so he can investigate.
Tucker said, "Western Nebraska was underwater during the dinosaur age, so we don't find their bones. We do find lots of mammals remains."
He said the bed rock in the Kimball area is of Tertiary geologic period, mainly Ogallala formation of six to nine million years of age.
"The area was of Savannah type, lots of vegetation, not so many trees, with wide but shallow streams, " he said.
The direction of drainage was from the Rocky Mountains northeastward towards Hudson Bay.Tucker works in cooperation with the state Department of Roads and the UN Museum. He looks for fossils at these highway construction projects and goes to the construction site before, during and after construction.
Since there hasn't been very much recent road construction in western Nebraska, the area isn't very well represented in the state's paleontological records. There are only four Kimball County fossils in the state museum at present.
Wildcat Hills south of Scottsbluff is the site of some significant paleontologic discoveries made as Highway 71 was improved through that area.
Tucker is a ten year veteran of the Highway Salvage project. He said it has taken about that long for him to get comfortable in his search of the fossil record.
Tucker said there have been a few dinosaur footprints found in eastern Nebraska but no major finds of dinosaur bones have occurred.
Tucker reiterated that the fossil remains found in western Nebraska were of mammal life. He said plant fossil remains are found.
Several local people brought fossils they had found on their farm or in their observations living in Kimball County. One Kimball County gentleman brought in a fossil bone which Tucker immediately identified as the round part on the end of a rhino leg bone, as that ball fit into the rhino's hip socket.
Tucker presented all this information at a public meeting held at the Kimball Public Library on Feb. 17. Twenty-eight area residents attended the session that was arranged and publicized by Carolyn Brown, the Library Director.
Tucker gave a fascinating presentation of a look into history just east of Kimball. He will continue to monitor and investigate as dirt work continues on the Bypass.
