Dr. Behrensmeyer studying an animal skull

What Brought All These Bones Together?

Feast or famine...or something else? The most likely theory is that there was a drought. The bones of Menoceras, a small rhinoceros, and Moropus, a horse-like creature, are all preserved and in good condition. That means the animals died at about the same time, and their bones weren't damaged by scavengers and weathering before being buried. They probably gathered beside a dwindling waterhole and starved to death. Within months, silt covered the tangle of bones.

Anna K. Behrensmeyer, a research curator of paleobiology at this Museum, solves such puzzles using a specialty science called taphonomy to learn more about the history of life...and death...in the geologic past.

Finding the Past in the Present
To better understand how bones become fossils, Behrensmeyer looks for places where lots of bones accumulate today. She has studied the chewed and broken remains of many hyena feasts in Kenya's Amboseli Park. In northern Kenya she came upon the bones of a huge domestic herd that perished when a freak storm suddenly lowered the temperature. Unlike the pristine bones from Agate Springs, these bones were broken and weathered after long exposure to the elements.

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