Which Member Of The Expedition Discovered And Documented Many Plants, Animals, And Minerals?
Taking the Long View
When President Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark beyond America, no one in usa—or Europe—knew what they would observe. Their discoveries defied expectations, debunked myths, and unearthed treasures that would simply be fully understood generations later.
A Corps of Discovery in an Age of Discovery
Thomas Jefferson trained equally a lawyer and became a statesman, merely he had an intense involvement in natural history. He was fascinated with fossils and what they tell virtually the past. He studied fossils from New York and Kentucky, including bones of mastodons, mammoths and sloths retrieved from bogs and table salt licks. (In fact, the Academy of Nebraska Country Museum has a mastodon tooth that was collected for Jefferson by William Clark in 1807.) He even wrote a newspaper about a behemothic fossil hook he studied, presuming that information technology must accept come from an beast of the lion kind, but of most exaggerated size. Really, the large claw was from a behemothic ground sloth.
In 1803, President Jefferson negotiated the Louisiana Purchase and commissioned an exploration of the new territory, with documentation of natural history as a major goal. He thought the interior of the continent might be home to exotic life forms such every bit elephants, lions, and even 'living fossils' (animal species thought to be extinct but actually still in existence). Prior to their expedition, Lewis and Clark were instructed to collect remains of animals and plants, especially those "deemed rare or extinct."
Achievements
Fossils had been discovered by Native Americans as well every bit past early trappers and surveyors. Salt licks and bogs yielded "petrified" remains of mysterious animals. In 1803, Dr. William Goforth had collected several tons of prehistoric bones at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, which was a salt lick and fossil bed over 15,000 years old. The basic drew the attending of naturalists and roused Jefferson's involvement.
To prepare for the Corps of Discovery expedition, Jefferson arranged for Lewis to travel to Big Bone Lick to railroad train with Charles Wilson Peale in collecting fossil remains. (Jefferson was an agile supporter of the Peale Museum, which held many "natural curiosities.")
Lewis and Clark were keen observers. During their mission of exploration, they remembered the bones they had examined and the lessons they had learned while at the excavation in Kentucky.
Lewis and Clark didn't collect nearly as many fossils every bit they did other specimens. They didn't have the time to search around for embedded bones and dig fossils from solid rock. Some of what they dug upward probably deteriorated during travel. Some specimens were sent dorsum during the trek, just were later lost. For example, a set of specimens was sent back to Fort Mandan and from there to the American Philosophical Guild in 1805. From there, the specimens were sent to scientists for study, just were never returned.
Expedition member Sgt. Patrick Gass found a fossil fish jaw. In S Dakota, the Corps as well plant the backbone of a 45-pes long "fish." It was later identified equally a plesiosaur, an aquatic reptile of the Mesozoic Era. Sgt. Gass's fish fragment is preserved today. Some fossils from the trek are thought to exist among the collections in the Smithsonian. But nigh of what was nerveless has been lost.
Like Jefferson, Lewis and Clark thought that the unexplored territory might contain living versions of animals found fossilized elsewhere. And they did find one 'living fossil.' They could tell the bighorn sheep they encountered in the Westward were the same as one of the unknown animals whose basic they had examined at Large Bone Lick.
Information technology was an historic period of discovery; the age of scientific discipline was to come up later. Even and then, the Corps of Discovery specimens were significant because they raised the visibility of these mysterious animals and served every bit an eye-opener for the science that would become paleontology.
Subsequently the expedition, Jefferson sent Clark back to Big Os Lick to search for fossils, and Clark unearthed a mastodon tooth forth with many other specimens that Jefferson was happy to receive and examine.
Connections
Following the work of the Corps of Discovery, Joseph Leidy entered the scene. Leidy was the father of American paleontology, the offset great scientist in America. He provided a scientific description of virtually all of the fossils constitute in North American prior to the mid 1850'south. His biography was entitled "The Last Human Who Knew Everything". It was an apt clarification of this achieved scientist.
Leidy described the first fossil nerveless from the Badlands—the first os ever found of a new family of mammals known as brontotheres or titanotheres. Alexander Culbertson, a trader, probably found the bone, a partial jaw, and gave it to Dr. Hiram Prout, who sent information technology on to Leidy.
The jawbone caught the interest of Eastern naturalists and paleontologists. Its discovery propelled scientists to explore the unknown regions of the West, starting in the 1850's. Many authorities surveys were carried out; including the Hayden Surveys of 1852 and 1857, and it was Leidy who described their extensive collections.
Sadly, with the opening of the Western fossil fields, paleontologists and friends O.C. Marsh and E. D. Cope became biting rivals in what would be called the "Os Wars", each striving for the latest and greatest discoveries. This competition was and then distasteful to Leidy that he turned away from paleontology completely.
A Os to Pick
Name That Fossil
Examine each prototype and so click on the paradigm to notice out if you're right.
Which is a fossil? Is either one a fossil? Are they both fossils?
This is a fossil tortoise.
Some fossils are easier to recognize than others.
Y'all might be looking at a fossil if:
- you're in a location where other fossils have been plant;
- if there is a difference in color betwixt the surrounding stone and the possible fossil;
- if the possible fossil is smoother than the stone around it;
- if information technology has a break and you tin meet its within looks different from its exterior.
The more you know about the different types of fossils, the better yous'll be equally a paleo sleuth. Just remember to get permission to search and/or collect specimens. Collecting fossils on public land is illegal without a permit.
This is a septarian concretion or nodule. Information technology'southward non a fossil.
A concretion is non a fossil itself. Some telephone call concretions pseudo fossils.
This type or concretion was formed 50 to 70 1000000 years ago when volcanic eruptions caused expressionless sea life to chemically attract to sediments and form mud balls. When the oceans receded, the balls dried and croaky.
There are many types of concretions. Some resemble eggs or spheres. Sometimes a concretion is formed around an actual fossil.
Uncover More Facts
President Jefferson had hoped that in the vastness of the new territory, Lewis and Clark would find massive creatures such as elephants roaming the countryside. Of course, they never did, but in the winter of 1804, Lewis wrote, "On the south side of this river (perhaps the the Osage) 30 leagues below the Osage Hamlet, there is a large lick, at which some specimens of the basic of the mammoth have been constitute; these basic are said to exist in considerable quantities merely those which have been obtained as still, were in an imperfect country." It would fall to after paleo sleuths to uncover the full story of the mammoths in America.
Source: http://paleosleuths.org/lewis_and_clark.html
Posted by: robinscomagese.blogspot.com
0 Response to "Which Member Of The Expedition Discovered And Documented Many Plants, Animals, And Minerals?"
Post a Comment