Some Super State Fossils Trivia Quiz

Answer: Sabre-toothed tiger

The sabre-toothed tiger lived throughout the Western Hemisphere during the Pleistocene epoch, from 1.8 million to 10,000 years ago. Some paleontologists blame its extinction on the arrival of humans, while others credit the climate fluctuations of the last ice age for its demise.

Answer: Stegosaurus

Stegosaurus' unique features have lead to some singular attention both popular and academic culture. The dinosaur's discoverer, Othniel Charles Marsh, postulated that a hollow space at the end of its spinal cord was essentially a second brain controlling the animal's formidable tail; as stegosaurus' cranial capacity suggested one of the smallest brains in the dinosaur world, this was probably a reasonable hypothesis, though most paleontologists today think this space housed a glycogen body for energy storage. Marsh discovered his stegosaurus north of Morrison, Colorado. That area, now known as the Morrison Formation, has proven to be one of the richest sources for dinosaur remains in the world.

In the 1980s, cartoonist Gary Larson inadvertently contributed to the stegosaurus' descriptive anatomy. Larson's comic "The Far Side" featured a caveman lecturing on the stegosaurus. One of his slides featured the dinosaur's tail spikes, which the lecturer identified as the "thagomizer...after the late Thag Simmons". In 1993, a paleontologist Ken Carpenter used the term in an academic paper, and the name has increasingly been used in museum work and dinosaur scholarship.

Answer: Tully Monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium)

The Mazon Creek find is a unique area of fossil preservation where the detailed impressions of many soft-bodied animals have been discovered. Though the Tully Monster has never been found outside of Illinois, its fossils are actually very plentiful there - thus the binomial surname "gregarium", meaning common.

The Tully Monster had a very long nose with a claw at the tip. On the other end were fins not unlike a cuttlefish's. It lived in the Pennsylvanian period about 300 million years ago. In many ways, it has remained a scientific conundrum since its discovery in 1958.

Answer: Trilobites

Though lay hobbyists (like your humble narrator) tend to lump trilobites together, they were actually a very diverse order of marine animals, and were one of the most numerous marine animals of the Paleozoic era, which lasted from 542 to 251 million years ago; in more recognizable terms, this is the era before the dinosaurs. That said, trilobites began to decline midway through the Devonian period (about 400 million years ago) and by the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction which cleared the way for the dinosaurs' ascendance, they were relatively rare.

The three states above have honored their memory by selecting Isotelus maximus as the official fossil of Ohio, Phacops rara as the state fossil of Pennsylvania, and Calymene celebra as the state fossil of Wisconsin.

Answer: Triceratops

Triceratops is often depicted as a brave soul fighting off the fierce Tyrannosaurus Rex, but that characterization may not be entirely valid; there is no fossil evidence that the two species battled it out with any regularity, and current thought is that Triceratops' signature horns were used in mating rituals as is common with goats today. Another distinction often attached to Triceratops is that it was the last dinosaur; though this may be an exaggeration, it is true that over 80% of late cretaceous large dinosaur specimens found in North America are Triceratops remains, lending this canard a certain air of truth.

Shortly after this quiz went online, a multi-author study in the 'Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology' concluded that Triceratops--as commonly understood--was actually a juvenile form of Torosaurus. However, since Triceratops was named first, it is Torosaurus that will be written out of the dinosaur taxonomy. Presumably, this has allowed South Dakotans to breathe a sigh of relief.

Answer: Allosaurus

Allosaurus is technically the genus name for several species of dinosaurs, most of which share a relatively sleek hunting physique that makes for an exciting museum exhibit. Though not a direct ancestor of the more famous Tyrannosaurus Rex, Allosaurus held a similar role as an apex predator in its Jurassic heyday.

There is some dispute as to whether Oklahoma's state fossil, Saurophaganax, is a species of Allosaurus or a genus of its own. Current thought is that it is its own genus, though I think most paleontologists are glad they just have to deal with the bones of these creatures--they'd be pretty intimidating if they were still alive!

Answer: Thomas Jefferson

Chesapecten jeffersonius was the first fossil to be scientifically identified in North America, appearing in the work of English naturalist Martin Lister in 1687. Academy of Natural Sciences scholar Thomas Say formally named the prehistoric mollusk in 1822, and it was voted Virginia state fossil in 1993.

In 1797, Thomas Jefferson himself presented an academic paper on some bones found in present-day West Virginia, proposing the name "Megalonyx" for the discovery. This scholarly work, presented to the American Philosophical Society, is widely considered to be the beginning of vertebrate paleontology in the United States. Scientist Caspar Wistar later identified the bones as coming from a wide-ranging ground sloth, which he named "Megalonyx jeffersonii" after President Jefferson. It was voted West Virginia state fossil in 2008.

Answer: Horse

Popularly known as the "Hagerman Horse", this species lived from 3.5 million years ago to the last ice age. Beginning in 1928 and continuing into the 1930s, many specimens of Equus simplicidens were pulled from a quarry around Hagerman, Idaho. Though earlier ancestors of the modern horse have been found elsewhere, the Hagerman Horse is the earliest known species of the genus Equus, to which all modern horses and zebras belong.

Answer: Mammoths

The state fossil of Alaska is the Wooly Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), while the state fossil of Washington is the Colombian Mammoth (Mammuthus columbi). In 1967, Nebraska's legislature voted the mammoth as the first state fossil in the United States without specifying a species. Though both Wooly Mammoth and Colombian Mammoth fossils have been found in Nebraska, the state's best-known specimen is the Imperial Mammoth (Mammuthus imperator) on display at the State Museum in Lincoln, known to most Nebraskans as Elephant Hall.

The mammoth on display there, nicknamed "Archie", was excavated in Lincoln County in the 1920s, and remains the largest mammoth on display anywhere. It also bears mentioning that mammoth fossils have been found in each of Nebraska's 93 counties.

Answer: True

Capitalsaurus was designated the official dinosaur of the nation's capital in 1998 by unanimous vote of the Council of the District of Colombia. However, even that city's Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History acknowledges that the fragmentary remains, unearthed in 1898 during a sewer renovation, do not constitute a new species, and "the name 'Capitalsaurus' has no validity." The fossil is cataloged USNM 3049 in that museum's collection.