Remains of prehistoric cat found

By Laura Gossman, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.
McClatchy-Tribune Regional News
17 February 2009

Feb. 17--FILLMORE -- When cave explorer John Ackerman was digging out sediment to reach a newly discovered side passage in one of several caves he owns in Fillmore County last spring, he and his two friends unearthed a piece of Minnesota's prehistoric past.

The men were digging in Tyson Spring Cave northeast of Fillmore, about 42 miles east of Austin, when they discovered what at first looked like a cast iron stove leg.

"We didn't have a lot of tools down there, so one of the other guys started digging with it," Ackerman said Monday. "After taking a closer look, I realized we had an old bone. I grabbed it, washed it off in the cave's stream and stuffed it into my wet suit."

Later, he took it to David Mather at the Minnesota Historical Society.

Ackerman, 54, of Farmington, along with his friends Clay Kraus and Dave Gerboth, had made a stunning archeological find.

The bone was an antler of a prehistoric stag moose.

Saber-tooth cat
Two months later, Illinois State Museum paleontologist Chris Widga visited the cave with the explorers. While gently digging in the gravel of a stream bed, the explorers found a skull fragment of a saber-tooth cat, which is the state's first known fossil record of the iconic Pleistocene Era creature.

The teeth and jaw of the cat were missing, but Widga knew it was a big cat right away.

"It's such an incredible find," Ackerman said. "As cave explorers, our passion is to find, explore, protect and map caves. We definitely weren't expecting to find this."
The group kept its findings secret until the bones were identified.

Scientists believe the fossils are the first of their kind found in Minnesota. The findings mean both long extinct mammals ventured further north than previously thought.

Radio-carbon dating of the skull indicates the cat was roaming southeast Minnesota around 22,500 years ago -- which has been characterized as the Ice Age.
However, part of southeastern Minnesota wasn't touched by the glaciers and is known as "the driftless area."

Cataloguing more finds
Since those first two finds, Ackerman has collected and catalogued more than 100 bones, including a saber-tooth scapula and humerus found about a a mile and a half from where the saber-tooth skull was found.

Most of the bones were found on the cave floors, Ackerman said. He's also found bones in Bat River Cave and Goliath Cave, which is near Cherry Grove.

He said that part of the cave hadn't been explored much before, because it required scuba gear to get there.

"We had recently drilled a safe way in and had just resumed exploration activities," Ackerman said.

Ackerman established Minnesota Karst Preserve in 1990. The preserve has 36 caves, five of which are large caves.

Quarry Hill Nature Center in Rochester has offered cave tours of the privately owned caves to middle school students in the past.

For more information, go to Postbulletin.com/weblinks.
http://www.karstpreserve.com