Fossils help us uncover the prehistoric past of the region
By Amber Kanuckel
September 27, 2016
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If you go back far enough in Holmes County history, youll find a wealth of information about some of the prehistoric creatures and peoples that lived here. Over the past century or more several notable discoveries have been made by prominent researchers and archaeologists. You, yourself, can make some of these discoveries. If youve ever searched among tumbled banks of sandstone and shale, youve probably found fossilized seashells or another marine species.
Of these types of fossils, which are incredibly in the area, Mark Wilson, paleontologist and professor of geology at the College of Wooster, said, Those fossils would be mostly Carboniferous (an ancient geologic time period). They are about 300 million years old.
These are among the oldest fossils you can find in Holmes County.
For archaeologists in Holmes County many of the most notable finds are much younger than that. The Millersburg Ground Sloth, for instance, was recently radiocarbon dated to about 13,000 years ago. These sloths are known as the Jefferson Ground Sloths, named for Thomas Jefferson, who was the first person to write about them in the United States in 1799.
The story behind the Millersburg Ground Sloth is an interesting one. It was first found in December 1890 on Abraham Drushells farm, which was near Millersburg. Workmen were digging a ditch when they came across the fossils. The bones were buried in peat. Part of the spine with a rib still attached and part of a leg were found. Later researchers and excavators went back and found more of the sloth: more of the spine, the hind legs, eleven claws and several other pieces. To date, the remains of the Millersburg Ground Sloth represent the most complete ground sloth specimen ever found.
One of the state geologists at the time, Professor Edward Orton, came to Holmes County to inspect the fossils and said, The find is the most important in the history of the state, and as to the fine preservation of the bones, I have never seen anything equal to them.
When alive the Millersburg Ground Sloth would have been approximately 11 feet long, weighing between 1,000 and 1,500 pounds far larger than the sloths that inhabit Central and South America today.
Another important discovery is the Martins Creek Mastodon. This discovery was first made in 1928, just two miles west of the site where the Millersburg Ground Sloth was found. Workers were digging a ditch and found the fossils. A decade later J.J. Miller, then owner of the property, was digging in the same area and found eight teeth and a femur.
More recently in 1993 Dr. Nigel Brush, former curator of the Killbuck Valley Museum and current professor of geology at Ashland University, excavated the site. He turned up more pieces of the skeleton and interestingly also found flint flakes, deer bones and the bones of beaver, muskrat and shrew.
There was also a rock shelter, and at that site tools were found, archaeologist Nick Kardulias said. Testing proved that they were used on animals about 12,000 years ago.
A paper written by Brush and Richard Yerkes found four of the 10 tested artifacts were used in this way.
That testing included two different tools, a metallurgical microscope and stereo microscopy, both showing the tools discovered at the Martins Creek site were used for cutting meat and skinning animals. Between the mastodon, other bones and the tool discovery, it is thought that perhaps prehistoric people used the Martins Creek site to butcher and prepare the game they hunted.
According to the writings of Wilson, other smaller discoveries have been made. Two interesting fossils come from the swamps of the region, just a few miles south of Wooster, one being a woolly mammoth tooth and the other an incredibly rare mastodon tusk.
Wilson writes, Such tusks are rather rare because the ivory tends to disintegrate faster than tooth and bone.
As productive as some of the sites throughout Holmes County and the surrounding region have been, it is likely more archaeological discoveries are waiting to be found. Will the next discovery come through the work of archaeologists? Or like the Millersburg Ground Sloth and the Martins Creek Mastodon, will the discovery be a happy accident?
Only time will tell.
