Albuquerque, NM – A New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science researcher was part of a team that identified an Ice Age relative of the muskox from fossils uncovered in Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
This new species, Speleotherium logani, was identified in a paper authored by New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science (NMMNHS) paleontology curator Gary Morgan, along with first author Richard White, Jim Mead, and Sandy Swift of the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, South Dakota. The findings were published in a recent edition of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin.
“New Mexico is known as a hotbed for dinosaur fossils, but discoveries like this remind us that our state’s fossil record extends long after the Cretaceous extinction,” said NMMNHS Executive Director Dr. Anthony Fiorillo. “This discovery offers new clues about what mammals were living in New Mexico during the last Ice Age.”
Speleotherium logani was named for researcher Lloyd Logan, the paleontologist who led the exploration uncovering the fossils in 1976 and 1977. These fossils, which include a perfect skull and much of the animal’s skeleton, were discovered in the aptly named Muskox Cave in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. For more than four decades, the fossils were stored in the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
In 2023, the research team began to study the fossils and realized that they belonged to a new species, a previously unknown relative of the muskox. Comparisons with bones of both the front and hind legs in the Muskox Cave collection allowed researchers to identify bones of this new species from four other fossil sites, including U-Bar Cave in the bootheel region of southwestern New Mexico, two caves in Mexico and a cave in Belize.
“Fossils of most large Ice Age mammals, such as mammoths. mastodons, ground sloths, and sabretooth cats, were discovered more than a century ago, with only a few new species, including Speleotherium logani, recognized within the past few decades,” Morgan said. “The discovery of Speleotherium in Muskox Cave and U-Bar Cave attests to the extraordinarily rich fossil record of Ice Age mammals in New Mexico.”
Speleotherium lived during the Late Pleistocene Period, which ended less than 12,000 years ago. The species is closely related to the modern muskox, found north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. Its horns resemble those of the modern muskox, and played a key role in helping researchers identify Speleotherium as a new species. Speleotherium was slightly smaller than its modern cousins, up to four feet tall at the shoulder and weighing between 400 to 700 pounds.
Fossils from Speleotherium have been found farther south than those from any of its relatives. Researchers believe the mammal lived in rocky, mountainous regions of the southwestern US and Mesoamerica, with habits much like those of the mountain goat from the Northern Rocky Mountains.
About the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science The New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science is a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, under the leadership of the Board of Trustees of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science. Programs and exhibits are generously supported by the New Mexico Museum of Natural History Foundation, through the generous support of donors. Established in 1986, the mission of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science is to preserve and interpret the distinctive natural and scientific heritage of our state through extraordinary collections, research, exhibits, and programs designed to ignite a passion for lifelong learning. The NMMNHS offers exhibitions, programs, and workshops in Geoscience, including Paleontology and Mineralogy, Bioscience, and Space Science. It is the Southwest’s largest repository for fossils and includes a Planetarium and a large format 3D DynaTheater. The Museum is closed temporarily for renovations.
