JackCentral

For the past eight years some NAU students and professors have been frequenting an excavation site in the northern Mexico state of Senora. Professor James Mead, a geology instructor and paleontology expert, usually takes students down on multiple occasions over the course of the year.
The expeditions began when some mammalogist colleagues of Mead were studying bats near a Mexican village. According to Mead, some of the village elders brought some bones they believed could be connected to a local mythical creature to the mammalogist’s attention.  The mammalogists told the villagers this probably was not the case, but they would refer it to someone with expert knowledge on the subject.
They contacted Mead and his excitement propelled him to make his first visit within days, bringing several of his students along.
Generally, this type of dig for fossils plateaus, or yields little new material, after a certain number of expeditions. Mead said he expected to uncover very few important findings at the site by this point, but to his surprise they have continued to unearth important discoveries.
“I expected it [to plateau] a couple of years ago, so obviously whatever I tell you is a lie,” Mead said with a smile. “But I would think that within the next couple of years the spot we are digging will plateau.”
Mead said the area they are working in still has much potential, because it is full of lava flows which can yield fossils from many time frames.
Although most of what they have found has been approximately 40,000 to 50,000 years old, Mead believes some of the surrounding lava flows in the area could date back 100,000 or even a million years.
“So it is like a concert,” Mead said. “Each time you can have a concert but it might be a little bit different flavor, a different group. That is what we’re getting here, that’s what makes it fun.”
Many of the most important discoveries the NAU group has made are small animals, such as fish, clams and snails. Mead suggests that these are some of the most important finds because they can tell people about the climate and environment of the time period in that area.
He said he thinks the work they are doing has uncovered what was, 50,000 years ago, a tropical marsh. Mead said this is important because most of North America was covered in glaciers during this time period.
It is widely considered that climates and region types simply moved further south while this ice age was occuring, but Mead suggests the cooler climate provided an opportunity for increased moisture.
He used the example of southern Arizona’s current climate, where most of the precipitation comes during the summer and the rain quickly evaporates.
“During the glacial period, if it was cooler, maybe you didn’t have hot summers,” Mead said. “Now that 12 inches [of rain] is still there because it has not evaporated. We’re finding that that system may have allowed for that far south, northern Mexico, to have tropics.  We have a lot to learn.”
Mead said most of the technical work is done by NAU students, and some of the students he brought along during the first excavation trip still come back to go on the expeditions now.
Mead enjoys bringing students down to the Mexican desert because most of the participants are already familiar with the temperature and climate, which is very similar to that of southern Arizona. He said taking students down to Mexico, especially undergraduates, is a great hands-on experience.
The students’ trip during spring break uncovered important findings that surprised many of the members of the group. They dug up a Dire Wolf jaw, a slightly larger ancestor of the gray wolf. This animal was not expected to have been in the area during the time period.
John-Paul Hodnett, a biological sciences senior and an undergraduate student of Mead’s, has written a paper about the Dire Wolf finding that is soon to be published, which Mead finds very exciting.
“This is a way for the undergraduates to get experience,” Mead said. “I guess you could say we insist on it, not in a negative way.  When you get real-life scenarios and experience, then you’re at the front of the line in the job market, whatever field you are in.”
Sandy Swift, the collections manager at the Laboratory of Quaternary Paleontology on the mountain campus, also attends the digs in Mexico. Swift and Mead both emphasized the impact their visits had on the nearby villagers.
“We don’t go down there just for the fossils, we go down there for the people too, in the villages,” Swift said. “I personally like going down there and taking students so they can see a different way of living, a different lifestyle.”
Swift is responsible for the trips preparations, including nutrition and securing adequate gear. She always brings more food and supplies than they will need to give the extras to the villagers.
Mead also makes a point to bring a lot of female students down to the digs. He believes it is important to show the girls in the village that they have potential and their role in life is not necessarily confined to the cultural norm the children experience now.
They both think that their trip has done much for the Mexicans living near the dig, where according to Sandy a family of five to seven people may make about $11 a month.
Mead said some of the families are unable to send their children to school because they can not come up with the $40 for fees.
“We pay their school fees that they have, that they can’t usually pay,” Mead said. “We’ve done that for a number of years now, for a couple of kids.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 12:17 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.