Northwestern Nebraska is totally different from the expected scenery of rolling green hills and farms with few trees, as I have said in previous blogs. In the extreme northwest corner between Wyoming and South Dakota craggy buttes rise up and continue into (or from) the Black Hills of South Dakota. A true badlands exists.
Depicted here is a display within Hudson-Meng Research Center northwest of Crawford and Highway 20. In the area only a few years ago, an unbelievable bed of bison bones was found under the greenery of Oglala National Grassland that is one of the most important discoveries of archaeology and paleontology in the entire United States, The bones of at least 600 bison of a different type from the current bison that you might see at Yellowstone Park are 10,000 year old remains, making the site the largest extinct bonebed in the world. A sample was gathered to place inside the research center for the public to see. Bones of a very few other creatures were mixed into the site, and -- of all things - an ancient knife.
The bones were excavated during 1971-77 by students from nearby Chadron State College. The research center is tiny and remote, situated along a pleasant, running stream bed, a building about the size of a two-bedroom house. You may be sure the studies will reveal more about the ancient hunters.
Fossils and odd rock formations at Toadstool Geologic Park are a day's hike distant, although both areas are accessible from gravel roads. Food and lodgings are several miles from either location. Read the next edition of this adventure in about a week.
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