Several new prehistoric species discovered to previously inhabit McKay area
By Logan Bagett on Thursday, May 9th, 2024 in Columbia Basin News Eastern/Southeast Oregon News More Top Stories
PENDLETON – Some exciting news has recently come out of the McKay Reservoir area near Pendleton. Some paleontologists even call the news bone-crushing. A paper recently published in the Journal of Paleontology highlights occurrences of mammals from five-to-six million years ago that were previously unknown to that area, including a bone-crushing dog.
John Day Fossil Beds Chief Paleontologist Dr. Nicholas Famoso was recently in Elkhorn Media Group Studios and explained that he, along with Dr. John Orcutt of Gonzaga University and his team, have been working in the area and are excited to share the news of their discoveries.
Famoso informed listeners as to what they found:
“We described a whole bunch of animals that we didn’t previously know were there, or we revised things that we didn’t know. So, there [are] two new kinds of horses out there; two kinds of camels—like, a giant camel, and a llama-like camel; and a dog that we didn’t previously know. It was a big, bone-crushing dog.”
Another species discovered to the area, Dromomerycidae, is an extinct animal that looked like a deer, but has no modern relatives. Famoso said the discovery of this animal was the first of its kind in the Northwest, and the discovery of one of the horses described was the first of its kind this side of the Rocky Mountains.
Famoso noted that it is illegal to collect fossils from McKay Reservoir and surrounding lands without a permit.
Listen to the full podcast with Dr. Nick Famoso below:
The publication in the Journal of Paleontology can be viewed and downloaded below:
