Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey, brain
Speaker 1: Stuff laur in the focal bomb here. Not all fossils
Speaker 1: are bones, or shells or teeth. Most of us would
Speaker 1: agree that mammoth tusks and Stegosaurus spikes are pretty darn cool.
Speaker 1: And yet the fossil record is not limited to old
Speaker 1: body parts. Fossils are defined as any naturally preserved remains
Speaker 1: or traces of life forms that existed in the geologic past,
Speaker 1: and that covers a lot of ground. And that's sort
Speaker 1: of a pun because a fossil can take the form
Speaker 1: of a footprint, the leaf impression, or a filled in
Speaker 1: tunnel left behind by prehistoric land beavers. One of the
Speaker 1: strangest fossils ever discovered is actually a cave. About fifteen
Speaker 1: million years ago and what's now eastern Washington State, a
Speaker 1: volcanic fissure eruption sent lava streaming into a shallow river
Speaker 1: or lake where a rhino happened to be wallowing. A
Speaker 1: layer of basaltic rock formed around the beast, preserving the
Speaker 1: outline of its well cooked body long after the flesh
Speaker 1: rotted away, leaving only a few bones. For millions of years,
Speaker 1: this rhino shaped hole in the earth lay hidden in
Speaker 1: the cliffs of Washington's Grant County near Blue Lake, a
Speaker 1: popular hiking destination. By the nineteen thirties, erosion had worn
Speaker 1: a hole into one end of the subterranean creature mold,
Speaker 1: exposing it to the open air. Here's the story of
Speaker 1: how the Blue Lake Rhino Cave came to be and
Speaker 1: how four Seattle RockHounds accidentally discovered it. Only five species
Speaker 1: of rhino are alive today, and none of the living
Speaker 1: five species are indigenous to North or South America. However,
Speaker 1: from about forty to seventy million years ago, rhinos were
Speaker 1: common in North America somewhere hippo like semi aquatic animals.
Speaker 1: Others had wicked tusks instead of the nasal horns we
Speaker 1: see in their modern day counterparts. Paleontologists think that the
Speaker 1: Blue Lake rhino cave likely formed around the corps of
Speaker 1: a Die sathereum. While female Di sah Aium were hornless,
Speaker 1: each adult male had a pair of small horns sitting
Speaker 1: side by side near the tip of his snout. The
Speaker 1: dimensions of the Blue Lake cave tell us that the
Speaker 1: disratherium who left it behind was about eight feet that's
Speaker 1: two point four meters long from snout to rear, and
Speaker 1: stood a little bit less than four feet that's one
Speaker 1: point two meters tall at the shoulder. In life, the
Speaker 1: animal probably weighed about a ton or so. Nobody knows
Speaker 1: if the creature had already died when it became entombed. However,
Speaker 1: judging by the contours of the mold, it seems the
Speaker 1: body was rather bloated. This could indicate the decomposition was
Speaker 1: already setting in. Also, the legs are pointed skyward, telling
Speaker 1: us the rhino may have been floating on its back
Speaker 1: in a state of rigor mortis. The cave's walls are
Speaker 1: made of fifteen million year old pillow basalt, a kind
Speaker 1: of igneous rock that normally forms when lava contacts cold
Speaker 1: water and rapidly cools down. So dead or alive, the
Speaker 1: diceratherium must have been hanging out in a body of
Speaker 1: water during a volcanic eruption. Then the lava came pouring in.
Speaker 1: Maybe it got knocked over anyway, a lava can hit
Speaker 1: temperatures of more than one thousand, six hundred degrees fahrenheit
Speaker 1: that's nine degrees celsius. Ordinarily, this ultra hot material would
Speaker 1: have burned right through to be skin, flesh, and bone,
Speaker 1: but instead, the cold water converted the molten rock into
Speaker 1: a tightly packed layer of hardening pillow basalt. The corpse
Speaker 1: eventually rotted away, and even most of its bones disappeared,
Speaker 1: yet the mold that enveloped the body stayed largely intact,
Speaker 1: largely but not entirely. When you think about it, the
Speaker 1: fact that we even know this weird little cave exists
Speaker 1: is pretty amazing. Millions of years after the thing formed,
Speaker 1: flowing water carved and opening in the mold right about
Speaker 1: where the rhino's hind quarters used to be, yet erosion
Speaker 1: hasn't destroyed it completely. Today, the cave's entrance is big
Speaker 1: enough for an adult person to enter, but getting inside
Speaker 1: may prove difficult for some visitors. You see, the Blue
Speaker 1: Lake Rhino Cave is located in the face of a
Speaker 1: cliff about three hundred feet or ninety one above the
Speaker 1: lake that shares its name. During the summer of nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty five, two adventurous couples from Seattle were hiking around
Speaker 1: the cliff in searge of petrified wood. On their trip,
Speaker 1: the quartet happened to discover the cave, they had the
Speaker 1: honor of becoming the first people in recorded history to
Speaker 1: enter the prehistoric rhino mold. Inside, they noticed a handful
Speaker 1: of fragmentary animal bone fossils, including a partial jaw. These
Speaker 1: were sent to paleobotanist George F. Beck of Central Washington University,
Speaker 1: who couldn't resist visiting the site for himself. Upon gathering
Speaker 1: more bones, he enlisted California Institute of Technology paleontologist Chester
Speaker 1: Stock to identify them. Stock determined that the bony bits
Speaker 1: came from an extinct rhino. Soon scientific community realized that
Speaker 1: the cave itself was a full bodied cast of that
Speaker 1: very same animal, a beast who last drew breath fifteen
Speaker 1: million years ago. In ninety eight, a team from the
Speaker 1: University of California at Berkeley heroically scaled the cliff and
Speaker 1: filled the cave with plaster, eating a three dimensional duplicate
Speaker 1: of the interior. Also, an exact hollow replica of the
Speaker 1: cave was put on display at Seattle's Work Museum, where
Speaker 1: it still stands today. Today's episode was written by Mark
Speaker 1: Vancini and produced by Tyler clayg. Brain Stuff is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heeart Radio's how Stuff Works. For more
Speaker 1: in this and lots of other well preserved topics, visit
Speaker 1: our home planet how stuff Works dot com and for more.
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