Fossils from giant Ice Age bear now on display for first time at UI Museum

A southwest Iowa farmer discovered the bones of the bear on his farm in 2008 and loaned them to the UI.  After a time-consuming process of analysis and verification, UI scientists have now confirmed that the find is the first verified short-faced bear specimen found in the state, say Holmes Semken, UI professor emeritus of geoscience, and Trina Roberts, associate director of the UI Museum of Natural History.

Joe and Denise Walker

                             
Joe Walker of Brayton made the discovery in the back dirt of a USDA flood control dam along Troublesome Creek, near Atlantic. “The bone was unusually large and my first thought was that it could be from something extinct,” Walker says. He had the bone identified by U.S. Department of Agriculture archaeologist Richard Rogers of Des Moines, who identified the bones, a tibia and pelvis fragment, as belonging to Arctodus simus, commonly known as the giant short-faced bear.

Joe Walker and Holmes Semken survey the land where

the bones were discovered.

The giant short-faced bear is the largest mammalian land carnivore ever to live in North America, reaching heights of over 11 feet when standing upright. They lived from 1.6 million to 11,000 years ago alongside giant ground sloths, mammoths and, near the end of the Ice Age, the first Native Americans to enter Iowa.
 
“My first reaction was what the heck is a short-faced bear?” says Walker. “I had never heard of it and had a hard time imagining that such a huge bear existed in this area. What I find most impressive about this bear species is its size, ferocity, and the fact that it co-existed with humans for a time.”

Scaled image of giant short-faced bear and early man.

Image courtesy of http://library.sandiegozoo.org

 “It's not a surprise that one was found here,” Roberts explains, “because the distribution of previous finds is quite broad across North America and surrounds Iowa. But it is a confirmation that they were here. That also means that this specimen may be important in understanding the biology of short-faced bears, because it can help us determine what traits are consistent across the species' wide range.“

Image courtesy of Barton, Miles, et al. Prehistoric

America A Journey Through The Ice Age And

Beyond. BBC Worldwide Ltd, London. 2002

UI researchers have already collaborated with colleagues at UI Hospitals and Clinics and the College of Engineering to CT-scan the specimens, allowing prototype replicas to be made that will be used for educational programming.



Giant short-faced bear tibia and polar bear

tibia being scanned at the UI Hospitals and Clinics



3-D computer rendering of the short-faced

bear tibia

 

 

Future research will likely involve chemical and physical analyses to determine diet and behavior as well as the age of the fossils, says Semken, a paleontologist who studies Pleistocene mammals. “These tests give us information about this individual bear and about the species as a whole,” Semken added. “Because specimens are rare each additional one adds unique information, especially one like this that comes from a new geographic area. For example, most of what's known about the diet of Arctodus comes from chemical analysis of Alaska specimens, and it should be quite interesting to compare that to Iowa.”

-Written by Media and Education Specialist Miles Dietz

Exploring the Galapagos Islands During Night at the Museum!

At six o’clock on a Friday night, twenty children and a few museum staff members gather in the lobby of Iowa Hall to talk about the Galapagos Islands, a small archipelago off the coast of Ecuador.  None of the children have been to the Galapagos, but the ongoing discussion helps create a picture of these islands.  Hot and volcanic, home to albatrosses, finches, and huge tortoises that glide across the water, it’s a far cry from a wintry Iowa evening. 

This Friday is just another Night at the Museum program, where children get a chance to learn about an exciting topic (previous months have included birds and my personal favorite, penguins) through games and discussions, having a lot of fun in the process.  This evening marks my fourth Night at the Museum – but for some children, this is their tenth program, or perhaps their first.  Some are nervous, some are chatty, but all happily discuss the islands before heading off to more activities.

In an upstairs room, the children play a game to learn the significance of different shaped beaks – which beak does the best job picking up pennies? What about beads? Or toothpicks? Some grapple with scissors, slicing the air as they try to get the blades around pennies.  Others persevere with two spoons, trying to scoop up beads without their hands.  And some happily pluck toothpicks with a pair of tweezers.  “I’ve got ten toothpicks!” one girl exclaims.  “Twelve!” calls out another.  Then we look at a slide show explaining the different beaks in nature, and the children try to call out the different birds they know – birds with “spoon beaks,” “scissor beaks,” “clothespin beaks,” and “tweezer beaks” all make the slide show. 

Later, the children eat pizza and watch The Wild Thornberrys – the show’s heroine, a girl named Eliza who can talk to animals, travels to the Galapagos – before heading up to Bird and Mammal Hall to play in the dark.  These halls, which are filled with all kinds of animals, somehow look different in the dark.  With your “miner helmet” on your head, you never know what your headlight might shine on next: an ostrich egg or a sparrow, a lion or a walrus.  Some of the children decide to run through the corridors, laughing hysterically and trying their hardest to scare their friends.  Others quietly work on scavenger hunts.  One little girl taps my shoulder – can you help me find this bird, she asks, and together we look through the different exhibits until we find the right bird.  She writes his name on her scavenger hunt triumphantly, proud to have found him.

At the end of the evening, the children try their hand at a turtle relay, in appreciation of the giant tortoises that roam the Galapagos.  They enthusiastically color their turtle shells, and then try to race around Mammal Hall while walking like a turtle – as the children have already discerned, it’s about both speed and technique.  (A good balance of the two is sure to provide a safe win!) As the judges, we hand out awards for Fastest Turtle and Most Turtle Like, which the children then take home to tack on the refrigerator.  And after the intensity of the turtle relay, the program ends with a necessary reading of Where the Wild Things Are in Iowa Hall.  Although some children know the story’s ending, it doesn’t diminish the potency of the writing or the intricacy of the illustrations, and one by one each child leaves, carrying a turtle shell, a booklet, and hopefully a picture of the Galapagos with them as they go.

Children often tend to see nature as birds and trees, or the Galapagos as a series of faraway islands, and nothing more.  At Night at the Museum, our job is to show them what nature really is – a wild, beautiful, and intricate world that surrounds us, in all its intensity, every day.

-Written by MNH Volunteer Catherine Babikian