In the grassy High Plains of Northwest Nebraska, the landscape is punctuated by flat top buttes, and a few isolated landforms reminiscent of the badlands. A layer of sandstone builds the foundation of the area, sitting over a remarkable bonebed.

The grasslands provided good grazing, and James Cook acquired his ranch here, where the wetlands meet the prairie. Unbeknownst to him when he purchased the land, as his cattle grazed on the nodding heads of grain, beneath their feet lay a remarkable history of animals that came before them, the mammals of the Miocene Epoch. 

Dinosaur fossils tickle everyone’s imagination – but other, more recent (albeit still ancient) paleontology discoveries give rise to a continuum of long extinct animals indigenous to a region. As much as we tend to think of museums as focusing on dinosaurs, with examples such as the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton named Sue, which is housed at the Field Museum in Chicago, museums also have extensive displays on the history of the rise of mammals.

Agate Fossil Beds tells the story of a treasure trove of mammal fossils in America’s Midwest.

Written By Lauren Eisenberg Davis

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