It might get down to the brachiopods, but they deserve names too,” she said.Ī brachiopod, by the way, is a bivalve filter-feeding marine animal like a clam, which has been found in Nevada fossilized in rock formations dating back roughly 400 million years. This plant-eating giant, weighing probably two tons and. Jefferson’s ground sloth (Megalonyx jeffersoni), named after the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, was the size of a bison and was discovered near Provo in 1992 in a Lake Bonneville shoreline deposit. “We’ve got a fair amount of stuff to name. Two species of ground sloth lived in Utah during the Ice Age. Underwood thinks they can keep this going for a while. If this year’s contest is a success, the public could be asked to name other animals at the museum, including its ice age horse and its replica of Nevada’s state fossil, a giant dinosaur fish known as an ichthyosaur. In addition to being immortalized on a permanent naming plaque, the winner gets a family museum membership, a behind-the-scenes tour of the collection and a plush version of a modern-day sloth. 21, and the winner will be announced Oct. 30, when museum curators will pick their three favorites. Submissions will be accepted until 5 p.m. The museum began accepting sloth names last week in person at the front desk, via the museum’s Facebook page and by email to curator of education Stacy Irvin at said Sid, the name of the sloth from the “Ice Age” movies, is dominating the entries so far. Also, it’s fun, he said.Ī valley fifth-grader named Hagop Maknissian came up with the winning name in last year’s contest: Christopher Columbian Mammoth. Museum director Dennis McBride said naming creatures in the collection helps drum up interest in natural history and forge “a more intimate relationship” between the museum and the people it serves. “The reason we know this is we found sloth poop.” Researchers have a pretty good idea what the herbivore ate, Underwood said. The bear-sized creature sits upright on her hind legs with her long arms and claws extended menacingly, but she wouldn’t have posed much of a threat to anything other than a yucca or a Joshua tree. The display at the museum is actually a cast of the real fossils, with the blanks filled in using casts of bones from other, similar sloths. Her fossilized skeleton was discovered lying on its right side, head pointed north, with about 60 percent of the bones intact. Researchers believe the female sloth lived about 32,000 years ago and most likely died when she fell into the cave where her bones were found. Sali Underwood, the museum’s curator of natural history, called the specimen the most complete skeleton of a giant sloth anywhere in the Southwest. The sloth joined the museum’s collection in 1995, five years after some hikers found it in a cave near Devil Peak, northwest of Primm. 16, the museum at the Springs Preserve is holding its second annual Name the Fossil Contest, this time for its 9-foot-tall skeleton of an extinct Shasta ground sloth. The sloth bear, Ursus ursinus, has two subspecies Melursus ursinus ursinus. Slow on the heels of last year’s mammoth-naming contest, the Nevada State Museum in Las Vegas is looking for a cool new handle for its giant ice age sloth. this change resulted from the Ice Age, during the late Pliocene Epoch. The museum announced a name the sloth contest. 19, 2013 Nevada State Museum in Las Vegas. Characters in italic are deceased.The Shasta ground sloth as seen Thursday, Sept.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |