Retired paleontologist is 'essence' of Ashfall Fossil Beds
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By ALGIS J. LAUKAITIS / Lincoln Journal Star
ASHFALL FOSSIL BEDS — The wind scoured the ancient volcanic ash where paleontologist Michael Voorhies dug with his small trowel.
Looking very much like a boy playing in sandbox, Voorhies pushed away the fine ash that covered the end of a thigh bone of a primitive elephant that died almost 12 million years ago.
The piece of bone has a story. It belonged to an elephant that perished with camels, rhinos, three-toed horses and other prehistoric wildlife at a watering hole in what is now Northeast Nebraska.
Michael Voorhies said he collected his first real fossil, an object that looked like a tooth, in Verdigre Creek in Northeast Nebraska when he was in the fourth grade. Curious to learn what he had found, Voorhies sent the tooth off to Morrill Hall in Lincoln. He got a letter back from Lloyd Tanner, a paleontologist, explaining that his specimen was a tooth from a giant camel that lived during the Ice Age and was 1 million to 2 million years old. Tanner sent the tooth back and suggested that it would be a good specimen for the museum’s collection, which didn’t have such a tooth. Voorhies donated the tooth.
They suffocated after their lungs filled with glassy ash from a massive cloud that drifted eastward from a super volcano a thousand miles away in the Rocky Mountains.
Volcanic ash in the park averages about 2 feet deep. By comparison, the ash cloud from the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens deposited about 2 inches of ash in states downwind of the volcano. Lincoln got a fine film of Mount St. Helens dust.
Voorhies retired July 1 from the Geology Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and now holds the title of professor emeritus.
Thirty-six years ago, he discovered the baby rhino skull that led to the eventual discovery of the fossilized carcasses at the watering hole.
“This is it. There are none like it. There are other places that have volcanic ash beds but no big fossils,” Voorhies said. “This is the only place where they have found whole skeletons of animals preserved in the round.”
The Rhino Barn is the round.
Under its roof, visitors to Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park can see fossilized jaws, teeth, ribs, toes and spines of the dozens of animals that died at the watering hole.
They lay there as if covered by a gray blanket wrapped tightly around each skeleton.
“Some of these animals, we not only have the animals but the last steps they took before they keeled over,” Voorhies said.
These days, visitors often find Voorhies at the state park.
The 66-year-old paleontologist is hard to miss. He’s the guy wearing the old crumpled hat with the sweat stains and a red bandanna around his neck.
“My wife wants me to throw it away, but this is my lucky hat,” he said of his beloved fedora. “It keeps the rain away.”
He and Jane, a geologist, moved up to the Ashfall area after his retirement. The state park, which opened in 1991, is seven miles from Orchard, where Voorhies was born and where his parents, Kenny and Mary Lou, still live.
“This is the first time in 41 years that I haven’t been meeting a class at this time,” he said.
Michael Voorhies and his wife live in a small cabin on a creek not far from the park. The cabin has plywood walls, and they have no electricity or phone, he said. They cook on a propane stove, and they get their drinking water from an artesian well.
“She absolutely enjoys it,” Voorhies said. “She planned the place. She likes to get out of the city. ... She’s able to play music (the harpsichord) and cook gourmet meals. We’re just having a ball.”
They’ll come back to their home in Lincoln in late fall, he said.
Voorhies began his teaching career in 1966 at the University of Georgia, where he taught paleontology and geology. In 1975, he was hired by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
In addition to teaching at UNL, Voorhies was the curator of vertebrate paleontology, a position he held until his retirement.
In recent years, he said, curator was more of a courtesy title. Budget cuts forced the University of Nebraska State Museum to eliminate the position in 2004. Voorhies said he was fired from the museum, then rehired by the university’s Geology Department.
He admits he misses the classroom, but said it was time to go.
While he’s not quite a Luddite, Voorhies said, he had not mastered the electronic media professors use in the classroom today.
“I can’t do PowerPoint presentations and I can’t poke the right buttons on a computer,” he said.
“So, I packed up my 35mm slides and left. Yeah, it’s over.”
Now, his work is mostly focused on the state park. Plans are in the works to expand the Rhino Barn so the bones of more prehistoric skeletons can be excavated and preserved.
Without the protection of a roof and walls, the volcanic ash that supports the bones would be washed or blown away, causing the skeletons to collapse.
Voorhies also would like to finish cataloging some of the backlog of specimens back in Lincoln, including the world’s largest collection of fossil horses, which was found near Broadwater in the Nebraska Panhandle during the 1930s. High-quality fossil specimens of sabre-toothed cats, camels and sloths that have been preserved in plaster of Paris for about 70 years require his attention.
And he would like to establish a permanent paleontology lab at Ashfall.
Voorhies also wants to explore some of the places he has seen during his trips across Nebraska over the past 40 years.
“There are literally hundreds of places in the state that look intriguing — where fossils are washing out,” he said.
When he’s not talking about the Rhino Barn project with potential donors, Voorhies searches for new fossils elsewhere in the 360-acre park.
Often, he or an intern can be found sitting or kneeling with a trowel and paint brush, carefully exposing or preserving a fossil.
“The thing about Ashfall is we like to do our excavating in public,” Voorhies said. “Here at Ashfall, we like to keep things in the ground in the same place they were found.”
He also spends time answering questions from visitors about what happened at Ashfall.
“He is the essence of the fossil site,” said park Superintendent Rick Otto. “He is the on-site expert that loves to interact with everyone and anyone that visits the facility. He is very accessible.”
Ashfall and Voorhies have been featured on the PBS series Nova and in National Geographic magazine. The exposure has made him a celebrity of sorts.
Chuck Potosnyak, a teacher at Coleridge High School, recognized him on a recent field trip with five students and asked for his autograph.
“Do you guys know there is a volcanic ash named after Coleridge?” Voorhies asked the students, and then explained how such a thing happened.
“It was an honor to meet him,” Potosnyak said after listening to Voorhies talk to his students about Ashfall. “There’s not too many guys that are that famous that you get to meet.”
Said student Juston Simeon: “This is sweet.”
Voorhies described his long career as a paleontologist as a safari with a shovel.
“I’m sneaking up on these large and dangerous animals, but they have the decency to lay there.”
Reach Algis J. Laukaitis at 473-7243 or alaukaitis@journalstar.com.
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