Hi Linda–I’m wondering how it went at your meeting last week and if any other Belgrade mammals surfaced? So far from our conversations, and member feedback to you, I recall a beautiful Archaeohippus tooth set and peccaries. These are all interesting and important.
I’ve also been wrestling with the problem of the age and context of the fossils based on the fact that they are rarely collected within the sediments. The horse Archaeohippus is diagnostic for the early or middle Miocene, but the peccary may be longer-lived and could actually be from much younger units, even Pleistocene as Chuck has previously noted as well.
There is a relatively new technique called rare-earth element sourcing that we could potentially use to tell use the relative ages of individual fossils collected within the Belgrade Quarry.
I’m wondering if perhaps sometime I could come up and talk with your club about the importance of the fossils, PLUS this new rare-earth element technique?
I look forward to hearing from you. More later–Bruce