Recent Museum Additions

Marine dinosaur or toothed diving-bird?

Hesperornis

Although some scientists suggest that Hesperornis (HES-per-OR-nis) is the only marine (lived mainly in the ocean) dinosaur found in the fossil record today, it is agreed by the majority that it was a bird.

Hesperornis was the largest, flightless, diving-bird of the late Cretaceous (89 to 65 million years ago). They reached 6.5 feet (2 meters) in length. Its wings were small and probably used for steering when diving underwater. They had powerful hind legs developed for swimming, but their feet were not webbed like aquatic birds of today. Their long jaws contained many sharp teeth and it looked more similar to a dinosaur than a modern bird.

Did birds evolve from dinosaurs? Take a look at this display before you decide.

The Sierra College Natural History Museum would like to thank Stanley Davis of Vacaville, California for his generous donation of this specimen.

Located in the LRC, 2nd floor lobby

Hawver Cave

Discovered in 1906 by Auburn dentist-palentologist J.C. Hawver, Hawver Cave has yielded fossils going back 5.3 million years.

This new display includes skulls and bones of dire wolf, saber-tooth cat, ground sloth, mammoth and bison.

A digital slide show gives a visual history of the cave.

Photos of specimens in the display are located here.

Bygone Bigger Bison

A new fossil addition was found in a Yukon gold mine. Not gold, but the skull and horns of an extinct Ice Age bison, Bison antiquus. It is one of two skulls found in the mine. It was donated to the Museum by Stanley Davis of Vacaville. From horn tip to horn tip is 8' 4". It probably stood seven feet tall at the shoulder when it lived about 13,000 years ago in Alaska. They were larger than today's plains bison and may have evolved into today's bison as the climate changed out of the Ice Age. Males were larger than females and we believe this skull is male.

Do trilobites taste like chicken?

The new trilobite display in the museum will not answer that question, but may answer other questions that you may have about these ancient marine creatures. Trilobites were shelled, segmented arthropods somewhat similar to modern-day horseshoe crabs of our eastern coast. They were all marine animals and lived in earth’s ancient seas 570 to 230 million years ago. There are over 15,000 known species of trilobites identified from the fossil record. Unfortunately all 15,000 could not fit in this case, so only a select few are represented in the upper portion of the case. The lower portion of the case has been allocated to museum volunteer Tom Johnston who has collected, identified, and donated his California trilobites to the museum.

Watch Out!

Insects have infested a wall of the Museum and continue to increase in number. Clark! We need you…NOT. The infestation is due to the addition of a new display called Local Insects. Leave your fly swatters and Raid behind, these bugs are already dead. This case shows some of the variety of insects that we interact with on a daily basis, insects that move so fast that we can’t see what they look like, and insects that are normally hidden away from our view. What kind of bug is that, you ask? This case will help you answer that question and open your eyes to the variety of insects that inhabit our area. Students and museum helpers continually add new specimens to this collection. This new case compliments an older and very popular display containing butterflies. A framed identification guide called “Butterflies and Moths - Familiar North American Species” helps fill the gap between the two cases.

Local Find

A fossilized back bone segment of an elephant, possibly a Gomphothere, was donated to the museum by Christopher Bronny. This thoracic vertebra probably eroded out of the 10 million year old Mehrten formation. It was found in Sacramento County and is now a new addition to the museum’s Ancient Elephant display case.

Summer Trip Treasures

The recovery of two fossilized elephant teeth during the June 17-25, 2006 Field Paleontology and Ancient Environments class was a highlight of the trip. Students were lead into the desolate terrain of eastern Oregon and western Idaho in search of fossil vertebrate bones. Trip leader and professor of geology Dick Hilton, and student George Miller were the finders of these impressive 7 million year old Drewsey formation treasures from Oregon. The mastodon molars are now on display in the Ancient Elephant case.

Got Hard Parts?

The marine life forms that created these 600 million year old or older tracks, trails, and other imprints didn’t…, or did they? With no evidence of skeletons or body fossils, it’s hard to say. Only the fine sediment that filled their detailed workings preserve their activities. Perhaps these trace fossils were created by soft-bodied critters that lived prior to the “Cambrian Explosion” and animals with hard parts? Sierra College staff and volunteers explore California’s Mojave Desert in search of the answers to these questions. Some of the specimens found on these expeditions are displayed in the History of Life case. One specimen found by volunteer Tom Johnston shows a portion of the face of the critter that dug the burrow.

Dumped Hawksbill

One man’s garbage is the Sierra College Natural History Museum’s treasure. A Sierra College student found this stuffed Hawksbill sea turtle in a discarded pile of rubbish. Realizing that the best place for the specimen was in a museum, the student gave it to Sierra College. After some patching and painting it’s almost as good as new. The turtle is now a wall mount in the museum.

Chalicothere skull

The museum exhibits have gotten even better. The skull case was rearranged to make room for three more skulls, a chalicothere replica related to horses and rhinos, a real okapi or small brown giraffe from the Congo rainforest, and an African elephant shrew replica.

Patricia Whalen of Loomis donated an impressive personal collection of taxidermy mounts. Two were used to upgrade the prior African antelope collection and three more (Black wildebeest, Lechwe and Reedbuck) were additions. The duplicates are being loaned to the local high schools to strengthen their instructional programs. The American pronghorn, Rattlesnake skin and skeleton and male Mallard duck went to Woodcreek, Bison to Del Oro, Red Hartebeest to Granite Bay, Oryx to Lincoln, Nyala to Placer, Impala to Nevada Union.

Fossil cycad cone

The extinct, fossil, cone bearing cycadeoid from southeastern Utah, donated by Betty Lemkau of Castro Valley, was partially identified by Walt Wright at the 5th annual Petrified Wood Identification Workshop. Signage now briefly explains its story. It was found in southeastern Utah near Cycad Hill north of Arches National Monument. The finder sat on it to eat lunch before he recognized what it was. It is a cone bearing plant that was intermediate in form and biology between a fat fern and a short palm tree, but it is more closely related to conifer trees. Our specimen shows numerous small female cones. Like the living male cycads in the ancient forests exhibit, its male cones produced pollen, but when the pollen germinated it probably released motile sperm to fertilize the seeds as happens in living cycads and Ginkgo trees. Modern cycads are either male or female, but the fossil form may have had both genders in one plant. It still needs some cleaning and polishing. Someday our specimen may help clarify the biology and taxonomy of this poorly known group of early plants.

Sabertooth skull

The Fossils For Fun Club has loaned us their tar pit finish California sabertooth cat (Smilodon) skull for display. Dick Marasso built a display stand for it. In the near future a glyptodont case (giant South American armadillo relative) will be added It was donated by Stanley Davis of Vacaville.