Ashfall to host Fossil and Artifact Identification Day

Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park will host its 2017 Fossil and Artifact Identification Day from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Aug. 12 at the park near Royal.

Mike Voorhies, professor emeritus in earth and atmospheric sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Rob Bozell, highway archeology program manager at the Nebraska State Historical Society, will help identify items. Visitors can bring a single item or a whole collection to be identified. Past discoveries include leg bones and teeth from camels, mastodons and mammoths, stone points, pottery and a petrified tree trunk weighing 500 pounds.

Ashfall Fossil Beds, a cooperative project of the university and the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, is a national natural landmark with complete skeletons left in place for viewing. The research center and active dig site allows visitors to watch as paleontologists unearth barrel-bodied rhinos and other animals entombed by ash from a supervolcanic eruption 12 million years ago.

For hours and location information, click here or call 402-893-2000.

Angie Fox | NU State Museum