Lost & Found: It may not be a lost mission, but this time it's for real :)

Hi Nomads,

As some of you may remember from my Santa Isabel thread from last year, I like doing reading about Baja archaeology. Although I don't tend to zoom in quite as much when I use Google Earth these days, and although I don't have any wild treasure-hunting trips to send nomads on at the moment, I do have a fun story to tell.

Anybody who has read much about Archaeology in Baja has probably come across the name "William Massey". In fact, from what I understand, his wife and son are active Baja Nomads themselves. Anyways, William Massey worked doing archaeology in Baja California starting in the 1940's. He is known for his scientific approach and his work is still quoted in many modern publications. Among his work is an article published in the Southwest Journal of Anthropology in 1947 in which he states:

"For several miles to the west of the locality where the Arroyo de Comondu leaves its canyon, there is a plain of silts dissected by washes. From the faunal remains-bison, camel, and horse-which have been collected in this fossil location,it is known that in Pleistocene times it was a marsh. No artifacts have been found in place with these Pleistocene faunal remains,but the presence of longitudinally split bison bones, and reported camel and horse bones with burned ends suggest the work of contemporaneous humans."

To translate this for us non-scientists, he said: "We found really old animal bones with tool marks that makes us think that people ate them". Since these species appear to have all gone extinct about 10,000 years ago, these fossils could go a long ways towards documenting how long people have lived in Baja.

Unfortunately, just a few years after he wrote that article he wrote in another publication that although those fossils did exist, he could no longer produce them for further analysis. There are quite a few modern publications that reference this claim and which wish that the evidence of it could be found and have further testing done, but nobody had been able to track down where the fossils went.

One day on a whim I decided to take up the subject of where the fossils may have gone, so on a lunch break from my normal job I stopped by the University of Texas to see if I couldn't find something in their wonderful latin american libraries that might help. I didn't find anything new, but as I browsed the 1947 article which I had read before, I noticed the footnote that said "Our remains were identified through the kindness of Dr R. A. Stirton."

A minor amount of googling made it clear that he was referencing Reuben Arthur Stirton, the fourth director of the University of California's Museum of Paleontology. I soon found myself browsing through the online lists of the museum's collections and found several collections by Massey, but none that could be the fossils which he had mentioned. Before long I inadvertently bumped into a search result for a collection deposited by Annie Alexander in 1948 which includes "DIST TIBIA,SCAPULA FRAG,HUMERUS,METACARPAL" from a Quarternary Bison and which was collected from "Comondu Arroyo 1" in Baja California Sur.

I also soon found that the museum has a special section about Annie Alexander's collections which mentions correspondence between her and Massey.

Needless to say I thought I was onto something, and in very short order I contacted the museum and received the following response (edited for length):

"You are a top-notch historical sleuth!"

that was my favorite part

They went on to say "the bones...were right there in the drawer! I've taken a few quick pictures...They are now attached to the specimen record in our online database here
<http://ucmpdb.berkeley.edu/cgi/ucmp_query2?&spec_id=V38331&one=T> and also accessible here
<http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_query?query_src=&where-specimen_no=V38331>"

He also noted "They are definitely blackened here and there" but that tests would need to be performed to see if the blackening was from the fossilization process.

One thing that was lost in the mix was a separate email I sent them regarding other collections that Annie Alexander deposited from the same location at the same time. The other collections are horse and camel bones which makes it likely that they are the blackened bones that Massey mentioned. If you read the 1947 article it becomes apparent that there has been a misunderstanding about which fossils are expected to show the blackening. It's not the bison bones, it's the horse and camel bones. The bison bones are expected to be longitudinally split, which the online photographs show clearly. I am very curious to see what the horse and camel bones look like.

Again, I'm hardly a professional when it comes to this subject, but the bison scapula that the museum photographed for me looks intriguing to me. I have read that these scapula were often used to make hoes in prehistoric times. As you look at the photo of the scapula, you will note that it has a couple of holes in it. The larger hole looks particularly unusual to me and, in my completely unprofessional opinion, could have been made by a projectile point or lithic tool, but this is pure speculation on my part of course.

My best guess as to why the fossils were lost in the first place is that Annie Alexander died just a couple of years after depositing the fossils and Massey must not have known what became of them.

There are a couple of professional folks who are going to try to find some time to do some testing on the fossils, but they do not know when the work might get started yet.

Let's all take our hats off to the University of California at Berkeley, and to Dr. Pat Holroyd who has been instrumental in preserving the fossils for so long and specifically for her work and success in obtaining the funds and doing the labor necessary to document them and post them online. From what I understand, before she started at the museum, the fossils were not documented and were simply stored in boxes underneath the football stadium seats.

Dr. Holroyd, Thank you!

[Edited on 7-12-2012 by elbeau]

Very cool!
In looking at the photos (had to go to the UCMP site, as your links did not work) the "burned" areas look like mineral stains to me. The other issue is, is if they were associated with humans, there would likely have been some artifacts, at a minimum some flakes, points, scrapers, grinding stones, charcoal, something. As a professional archaeologist, the person who found the fossil bones would have known what to look for. Of course, the "burned" bones he refers too may be other bones that are not in the UCMP collections.....But I have a strong feeling, that they too would turn out to be mineral deposits. Also, if there were people here longitudinally splitting bones, there would be stone tools all over the place that were used to split the bone. The split bones are likely natural.

My guess is, it is "simply" a fossil locality. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

I have dealt with Dr. Holroyd numerous times and also found her to be very helpful in paleontological research.

Quote:

Originally posted by Taco de Baja Very cool! In looking at the photos (had to go to the UCMP site, as your links did not work) the "burned" areas look like mineral stains to me. The other issue is, is if they were associated with humans, there would likely have been some artifacts, at a minimum some flakes, points, scrapers, grinding stones, charcoal, something. As a professional archaeologist, the person who found the fossil bones would have known what to look for. Of course, the "burned" bones he refers too may be other bones that are not in the UCMP collections.....But I have a strong feeling, that they too would turn out to be mineral deposits. Also, if there were people here longitudinally splitting bones, there would be stone tools all over the place that were used to split the bone. The split bones are likely natural. My guess is, it is "simply" a fossil locality. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I have dealt with Dr. Holroyd numerous times and also found her to be very helpful in paleontological research.

Now you're just trying to make me jealous!


...it's working

Isn't it fun... I get to tease you for a change with 'lost treasure' talk!

More on Bill Massey

In this book:



Below are the full pages, followed by a zoom in of the Massey parts for easier reading:

maybe if this global warming thing gets off the ground the camels will return to Baja. kinda like the swallows and Capistrano......

Tablas

BajaLera's 1972 article:

Thanks go to Taco de Baja for taking time to scan and send it to me!









The tabla is 1.45 meters long

Mexican fossils