One More For The Road

[{"type":"text","text":"Nothing more romantic than going for a ride with your sweetheart..."}]

One more for 11 8 23

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>One More For The Road: Wednesday, November 8, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Nothing more romantic than going for a ride with your sweetheart...

One More For The Road: Wednesday, November 8, 2023

 Nothing more romantic than going for a ride with your sweetheart...

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Wildlife

Summer is Wyoming’s season for turning over rocks, poking into holes and walking with a perpetual hunch looking for snakes.

Herpalogists, the zoologists who study amphibians and reptiles, are out scouring the landscape and herping, the term used when they are actively flipping rocks and searching stream beds to find Wyoming's elusive snakes in their native habitats.

Sometimes those finds can be unexpected. The fork-tongued reptiles appear on a trail when least expected. 

Recently, a foot-long “nightcrawler” suddenly moved like a snake and slithered into the rocks, its tail disappearing into the shadows. Rather than a shapeshifter, this was an elusive rubber boa, Wyoming’s tiny constrictor snake that can look like a giant worm at first glance.

These rarely seen creatures are more common in the Cowboy State than most people realize.

“I personally don't feel that any of our snakes in Wyoming are terribly rare,” said Matt Rasmussen, vice president of the 

. “However, a lot of them are very rarely encountered because they spend most of their lives either underground or under rocks.”

Rasmussen said most of the secretive snakes in Wyoming only come out at night or when conditions are right — typically warmer, humid times. The rubber boa, for instance, showed up on a day when it had rained and then the temperatures spiked hot.

Rasmussen helped found the new Herpetological Society two years ago to teach others to herp. He said it’s possible to learn more about our state by flipping rocks and seeing what is beneath.

“That's the great thing with Wyoming,” Rasmussen said. “There is so little known about the herpetofauna — the frogs, lizards, snakes, turtles, etcetera — that live here, and so little known about their distribution.”

He said Wyoming is known for “large charismatic megafauna” such as bison, elk, moose and deer rather than the harder to find animals. As a result, no widespread surveying has been done on smaller non-game species. Wyoming Game and Fish has even asked for community members to help by reporting  rarely seen reptiles and amphibians.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Elusive, Not Rare"}]

While most people think of the more common bullsnake or venomous rattlesnake when discussing reptiles, Rasmussen said Wyoming is home to many harmless snakes.

According to Rasmussen, a few snakes, such as the colorful pale milk snake and rubber boa, could be considered rare in Wyoming. However, he believes they are just harder to find and most people are not aware of them unless they stumble across them.

“There’s the plains black-headed snake, which we really don't know much about their distribution in Wyoming,” Rasmussen said. “They're just not studied and have a limited habitat.”

This tan snake with a black head is small and feeds primarily on centipedes and ant eggs. Rasmussen cautions that when found, rather than kill the strange looking snakes that are harmless, report finding them to Wyoming Game and Fish and leave them in their habitat.

In this way, Rasmussen said, herping can be fun. He encourages people to get into the action.

“There are some other really small fossorial snakes like smooth green snakes, which live along creeks in the mountains and eat caterpillars and spiders,” Rasmussen said. “Then there's the Black Hills red-bellied snake, which is a very small snake that eats slugs, worms and snails primarily.”

People are often surprised that Wyoming is home to such a large variety of snakes. He especially likes to show off a milk snake, which is harmless and eats lizards and even baby rattlesnakes.

“It is a beautiful, almost tropical-looking animal that lives right here,” Rasmussen said. “They are just rarely encountered.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A New Snake & Frog Society"}]

Rasmussen said the new society is trying to educate the community about these fascinating creatures in the Cowboy State that don't get much attention, such as the skink, a short-legged lizard. 

“We're a group of herpetological enthusiasts who would like to spread the word, educate and do outreach about these animals,” he said.

This outreach includes presentations with live animals, field trips and a conference in November. Wyoming’s reptiles and amphibians remain a mystery, Rasmussen encourages reporting sightings on the app 

“Even if you don't know what it is, post a picture because there are tens of thousands of experts who will identify that animal,” Rasmussen said. “That's really important, especially for our herpetofauna in the state.”

He also pointed out that some Wyoming snakes are on the protected list, including the midget faded rattlesnake. They made the list, according to Rasmussen, because people were capturing them and they became popular in among owners who like to keep small venomous snakes as pets.

Rasmussen said awareness is the best protection for Wyoming’s elusive reptiles and he is excited to prove to residents that we don’t have rare snakes, only secretive ones.

Snakes of Wyoming 6 27 26

<title>Many Of Wyoming’s Seldom-Seen Snakes Aren’t That Rare, They Just Like To Hide | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming's bright orange pale milk snake, rubber boa and plains black-headed snake are elusive, but not as rare as most people think — they just like to hide. Most of the state's secretive snakes only come out at night or when conditions are right.

Many Of Wyoming’s Seldom-Seen Snakes Aren’t That Rare, They Just Like To Hide

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

The first time Farmstead Cider went after old apples in Jackson Hole, it was just for the flavor. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It soon became about the bears. "}]

Every fall as apples drop and ferment in the backyards and ghost orchards of Jackson Hole, grizzlies and black bears do what comes naturally. They follow their noses straight into trouble — calorie-rich fruits that taste oh-so-good when you’re a bear desperate to fatten up for winter. 

The first harvest, though, was all about the homesick wives, Farmstead Cider’s co-owner Orion Bellorado said. They had grown up on the East Coast, where apple harvests are a big deal. 

“We started harvesting the apples in our neighborhood off of peoples’ trees that were kind of derelict,” he said. “And they were tiny, so we pressed a bunch of juice and made some cider out of it.”

The party was great and word soon got around. 

“Someone from the county found out about it and said, ‘Hey, you should really put in for this community grant to start a business,” Bellorado recalled. “‘Because we’ve really been having issues with bears.’”

That was in 2016, and the business has been going ever since, bottling 5,000 to 7,000 gallons of native-yeast cider a year and selling it across Wyoming as well as other states such as Washington and Montana. 

In the process of climbing into backyards and abandoned orchards, Bellorado stumbled onto a bigger realization. Wyoming is curiously — if quietly — rich in apples across the state.

“They are everywhere,” he said. “I mean, Lander was called Apple Town before it was called Lander. It’s full on part of this interesting tidbit of our culture and our history that’s really been left behind.”

That history is being rediscovered thanks to a project called the Wyoming Apple Project. Through it, researchers have been cataloguing a hidden network of heritage and volunteer trees that have somehow survived a century or so of drought and neglect. Researchers say these hardy survivors might point the way to a new kind of apple economy in one of the harshest fruit-growing climates in America.

You wouldn’t know it from today’s landscape of hay bales and cattle, but Wyoming was once thick with apples. Homesteaders brought apple seeds to plant in their new homes, carving out orchards that were just as essential as a root cellar to their survival.

Apples meant sauce, butter, cider, vinegar and livestock feed. They were essential calories, but also comfort — the kind that could be stored up through a long, hard winter.

By the early 1900s, experimental orchards and private growers had tested at least 218 named apple cultivars across Wyoming, including 11 that were Wyoming-bred. 

Among the most ambitious of the early apple pioneers was an experimental fruit farm in Lander, which trialed 175 different cultivars under superintendent John Steinbrecht, who also developed 10 of the 11 Wyoming-bred cultivars. 

Not far away from Steinbrecht was Lander orchardist Ed Young, who planted a prodigious 3,000-some apple trees in 1882 — an act of faith in a place better known for blizzards than fruit blossoms.

At the time, Wyoming was held up as a national example of what’s possible on the frontier. 

“A lot of those early settlers, such as Ed Young, and their success in growing apples was used in news articles back east, to bring hope to people thinking about moving West,” University of Wyoming graduate and plant physiologist Jonathan Magby told Cowboy State Daily. “It helped show them that you can successfully inhabit this remote location of the United States.”

Wyoming’s apples at that time came from everywhere — Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, Canada and even Russia. Several nurseries were involved in seeing which varieties could stand up to Wyoming’s brutal mix of cold, drought and wind, including 

At one point, at least 70 out-of-state nurseries and 20 in-state nurseries across 11 Wyoming cities were selling apple stock to Wyoming growers.

Then, slowly, the state forgot about its apples.

Wyoming’s agricultural identity shifted solidly toward cattle and general row crops. Many orchards were abandoned. Irrigation ditches shifted. Families moved away or sold off land.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Winters kept coming. "}]

And the apple trees that had been left behind continued growing. They became part of an unintended Darwinist experiment — one where only the fittest would survive. 

What’s left of the apple trees that once dotted Wyoming are now the toughest of the tough. Trees too full of Wyoming grit to give up and die.

Among the most interesting is a gnarled apple tree in Lander. Its limbs curl up to the sun like an insect on its back, and its trunk is so hollowed out, one wouldn’t be surprised to find a hobbit — or some other creature of legend — sleeping inside.

Somehow, though, this ancient tree is still alive, still leafing out, still stubbornly insisting on producing apples, despite a century or so in a place that routinely tries to freeze them to death.

Wyoming is not a state known for hardy trees. It is, after all, among the coldest and driest of states in the Lower 48. And apple trees aren’t known for being especially long-lived, either. Most never see a 100th birthday.

That makes this particular apple tree special. It’s passed a 100-year stress test, one where Wyoming wind and drought are separating the true pioneers from the pretenders.

To Magby, the Lander tree is far more than a curiosity. It’s a symbol of what Wyoming apples once were, as well as what they could be again. 

These survivors could help develop ever more hardy Wyoming stock, making apples a potential new and viable agricultural commodity. Because of that, the tree’s tissue was pulled and grafted onto new stock, so it can keep growing for another 100 years.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Like A CSI Detective"}]

Magby has been searching out all the old heritage apple trees of Wyoming using DNA finger-printing techniques more often associated with crime shows like CSI. 

So far he’s sampled 510 trees at 91 locations in 19 cities, from Lander and Sheridan to Buffalo and Casper, to figure out which trees match known cultivars and which might be lost or forgotten varieties. So far he’s found more than 150 unique genetic fingerprints that don’t match anything in old reference collections. 

Some of those varieties show up in multiple towns, suggesting they are long-lost cultivars that no longer exist anywhere else. hey are a living link to an era when Wyoming was serious apple country.

Two varieties that keep showing up, meanwhile, are Wealthy and Haralson, both bred in Minnesota. They are roughly one-third of all the identified surviving trees in his data set.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Than Charming History"}]

Magby doesn’t see Wyoming apples as a charming historical footnote. He believes these survivors are pointing the way to a viable agricultural commodity for the state, one that could lead to more products that are made in Wyoming, such as Farmstead Cider in Jackson Hole. Making products in Wyoming — referred to as value-added products — is a better bang for the buck. It keeps most of the economic value chain in-state.

Apple cider production makes a lot of sense in Wyoming, alongside the growing microbrewery scene, Magby said. People also just enjoy fresh produce that’s been grown in Wyoming, whether that’s an apple or other fruits.

“We take pride in anything that’s been produced in Wyoming,” Magby said. “So I’d love to see someone take a strong stance of producing and backing development of cultivars and revamping testing of grape and pear varieties and other small fruits, just to provide that diversity, not just in fresh food products, but also diversity of economies.”

Bellorado is already living that future at Farmstead Cider, thanks to bear-safety grants that helped launch a business to haul apples out of backyards and ghost orchards. 

Now, instead of attracting trouble, those apples are a useful and delicious product in a growing business. It’s more joy to the human world, all from abandoned, pioneer apple trees.

Apples Ian Mc Gregor co owner of Farmstead Cider Courtesy Photo 6 27 26

<title>Wyoming’s Ghost Apple Orchard Trees Have Been Rediscovered And Are Producing | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming was once thick with apples. In fact, it was a top apple producer. Now those forgotten apple trees are being rediscovered by small cider houses. "They're everywhere," said one cider house owner. "Lander was called Apple Town before Lander."

Wyoming’s Ghost Apple Orchard Trees Have Been Rediscovered And Are Producing

Wyoming Life

Wyoming state Sen. George B. McClellan, standing 6 feet, 6 inches tall, was known throughout the Cowboy State as “The Bear.” He would regale his audiences both on the 

enate floor and off with stories of how he had earned his nickname.

In one bear story, McClellan tells of training a grizzly to carry him on its back. He once mistook a wild grizzly for his personal mount and didn’t discover his error until, after a terrific wrestling match, he had ridden the wild bear home.

For 30 years, Wyoming’s politicians had a “never-failing source of entertainment”, according to the June 8, 1930, Casper Tribune as “The Bear” shared his bear stories that grew with each telling. Beginning in 1904, McClellan served Big Horn County as first a

 representative and then was elected for the majority of his career as 

In another story, according to authors of the “Ten Sleep, The Area and The People,” McClellan related how he came upon two grizzlies and roped one. While holding the first silvertip, McClellan was then able to shoot the other.

In a story from 1885, McClellan shared that he was with his friend, Billie 

when they killed seven grizzlies in less than an hour at the head of Otter Creek. 

As a result of these bear stories, McClellan was a popular storyteller who found an appreciative audience wherever he went. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Heart As Big As a Washtub"}]

McClellan was described as one of the most colorful men in Wyoming by his friend and neighbor Paul Frison. In a tribute written Oct. 19, 1934, for the Wyoming State Tribune, Frison said McClellan had a powerful physique, dynamic personality, and was dominating yet lovable.

Ten Sleep historians said McClellan was born in Simcoe, Ontario, Canada, Oct. 18, 1862. He was a toddler when his family migrated to Kansas. By his early teens, McClellan headed to Texas to work with an outfit trailing cattle to Wyoming Territory.

He ended up in Lance Creek with the drive, then stayed in the Fort Laramie region until 1881, when the copper excitement at Hartville caught his attention. After a stint with mining, McClellan went to Pass Creek, Montana, and contracted to supply wild meat to Fort Custer for three years. 

He hunted bear, buffalo and elk in the Big Horn Mountains with a Crow Indian companion, according to Frison. By 1886, Bear George was breaking horses for future Wyoming Gov. W. A. Richards (1895–1899) on the Red Bank Ranch and continued to hunt, especially bears.  

[{"type":"text","text":"McClellan earned a reputation as “the ideal type of westerner.”"}]

“Bear George has a heart as big as a wash tub and as sympathetic as a woman’s when anyone’s in trouble,” a columnist wrote in the Wyoming Tribune, 

1, 1908. “He is straightforward and absolutely square, plain and outspoken, yet as firm as a rock when his mind’s made up.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Pet Bear"}]

McClellan shared some of his stories in his own words and said that in the fall of 1885, he adopted two cubs when he first began hunting bear in the Big Horn Mountains. He had killed an old sow and took the cubs to camp.

“When they got to be about a year old I had a set to with one of them, and he came out dead,” McClellan said. “When it was reduced to just one bear, he was a good deal more tractable, and better to get along with.”

By the time the bear was 2 years old, McClellan said he could ride him to hunt bear. One evening when he was riding, the silvertip got uneasy. McClellan slid off and his bear took off after another bear.

“When I got to the top of the hill, here was my bear, foregathered with a couple other big old silvertips out on a big sagebrush flat,” McClellan said. “It was getting late and I wanted to hurry as much as possible and I shot the two bears as soon as I possibly could.”

By the time McClellan skinned the two bears, it was quite late. He said he went to put the hides on his bear to take them to camp, but his pet was absolutely unmanageable. McClellan wrestled his bear into obedience and put the hides on him.

[{"type":"text","text":" However, he had another row when they got into camp."}]

“There was no such thing as doing anything with him, and we just had another set-to and by the time I got him into the mind of going in to camp I was nearly worn out,” McClellan said.

McClellan remembered how he had hit his bear with a Dutch oven lid during a “set-to” and busted off part of his bear’s tooth.  

“I got to thinking about the way the bear had got so blame mean,” McClellan said. “I just went up to him and raised his lip and looked.”

McClellan was startled to see that this bear had a perfect set of teeth. It was then he realized he had shot his pet bear and rode back to camp on a wild bear.  

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wyoming Reputation"}]

Gov. Richards oldest daughter, Alice, shared in a 1948 Annals of Wyoming article that Bear George was self-educated.

“He kept a well-stocked library and always traveled with an extra packhorse loaded with books,” Richards said. “He read all the classic literature and, with his quick mind and wonderful memory, achieved a remarkable vocabulary.”

This education gave McClellan the right words to express himself. Richards said he was famous across the country for his gift of storytelling.

“Being a great bear hunter, many of his stories were bear-hunting tales, which is how the B in his name came to stand for Bear,” Richards said.

Richards also said McClellan’s years as a hunter had made him the best shot in the region. This skill came in handy when Harvey Ray, a former cowboy for her family, had turned to rustling and stole horses from the ranch. McClellan took off after Ray and his gang early in the morning.

“When George got out in the badlands on Harvey’s trail, Harvey saw him coming as fast as he could ride, his gun in hand,” Richards said. “When Harvey saw him, he turned to his gang and said, ‘Here comes the Bear. Let’s get out of here.’ They left the horses and fled.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Modern Ride"}]

After an early career of riding bears, it was only appropriate that McClellan would be first in the Big Horn County to own an automobile. He had an old Stanley Steamer and quickly gained a reputation as a dangerous driver.

 "Mr. Bonnie” recounted, according to the “Ten Sleep” book, how all McClellan’s friends avoided riding with McClellan as much as possible because he was so reckless.  

“The roads at the time were narrow, winding and exceedingly rough, not made for such a vehicle,” Bonnie said. “Half the time it would be jolting out over the

, cutting corners, straightening out the curves.”

Bonnie recalled riding with McClellan to the Red Ranch and being bounced around while trying to hold on for “dear life.”

“We tore over the rocks and ruts at what seemed breakneck speed to our horse and buggy-accustomed rate of travel, though probably not over 25 or 30 miles an hour,” Bonnie said.

George “Bear” McClellan’s colorful life of riding the fastest rides came to an end Oct. 18, 1934.

“His campfires now are cold,” Frison wrote of McClellan. “They no longer radiate that warmth, nor glow, but in the memory of his fellow men he will live. He has carved his niche in the hearts of the people.”

Big Horn County George Mc Clellan inset 6 27 26

<title>Wyoming History: State Sen. George ‘Bear’ McClellan Claimed He Rode Grizzlies | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming state Sen. George B. McClellan, who served in the Legislature from 1904-1934, was a source of "non-stop entertainment" according to media reports. He said the "B" in his middle name stood for bear because he trained grizzlies and rode them like a horse.

Wyoming History: State Sen. George ‘Bear’ McClellan Claimed He Rode Grizzlies

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

New research indicates that Wyoming’s prehistoric hell pigs had different diets based on their size. The bigger they were, the wider the menu.

Brynn Wooten, a Ph.D. candidate at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, published 

 in Archaeotherium, a prehistoric mammal that’s better known as “the North American Hell Pig.”

“They look similar to pigs, but they’re actually more closely related to whales and hippos,” Wooten told Cowboy State Daily. “They were one of the largest things capable of eating meat in their ecosystem.”

Wooten’s study focused on the teeth of hell pigs, including specimens in the collections of the University of Wyoming’s Geological Museum. She studied the microwear on the tooth surfaces of multiple species to get an idea of what they were biting and crunching.

[{"type":"text","text":"Even she was surprised by the results."}]

“I was shocked,” she said. “We found a really interesting phenomenon that is uncommon in modern mammals. In fact, we actually see the exact opposite. It’s surprising and really interesting.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Hell Pig Person"}]

Hell pigs are an extinct group of large mammals that were widespread in North America, Europe and Asia from 36 to 19 million years ago. The first fossils were found near Fort Laramie in 1850. A food cache fossil is on display at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis.

These had enormous heads with thick jaws and powerful teeth. If that wasn’t frightening enough, the largest entelodonts could grow to the size of a horse.

Hell pigs weren't quite that big, but it was one of the largest and most successful mammals in North America during the Eocene and Oligocene periods. Its fossils are common in 

, which stretches across the western U.S.

Wooten became enamored with “hell pigs” when she saw their massive skeletons at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science as a child.  Her latest research is the first chapter of her Ph.D. dissertation on hell pigs.

“When I go to conferences, I’ll tell people when and what I’m presenting, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, you’re the hell-pig person,’ and get really excited.”

That excitement stems from the fact that while hell pits and other like creatures are legendary in paleontology, there’s been little research done on them. Wooten’s focus on the paleoecology of hell pigs is, in many ways, the first of its kind.

“Everything else has been inferred by looking at and measuring bones,” she said. “I'm taking a more quantitative approach, and that’s excited a lot of people because we’ll get to learn a little bit more about a truly lost lineage.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"You’ll Wreck Your Teeth"}]

Modern pigs aren’t picky. They’ll eat anything, making them true omnivores.

Hell pigs aren’t really pigs, but it’s always been assumed that they were similarly omnivorous. The first step in Wooten’s research was to see whether she could support or refute that idea by becoming a prehistoric dentist.

“Dental microwear texture analysis can't tell us what an animal was eating, but it can tell us the texture of what the animal was eating,” she said. “Since the diet of entelodonts has been contested, we thought it’d be interesting to see if we could figure that out.”

Wooten scanned and studied 53 hell pig teeth from 13 co-existing species in the collections of the UW Geological Museum, the Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

The fossilized teeth Wooten used for her study came from South Dakota, Colorado, Nebraska, and Oregon, with a handful from Wyoming.

Teeth wear differently depending on diet. But studying the distinct patterns of microwear on the hell pig teeth, Wooten could determine whether each individual was primarily eating brittle items, like bones, browses, and seeds, or tough items like flesh and grass.

“That's why it's important that we compare the microwear on the fossilized teeth to modern animals,” she said. “We know what modern animals are eating. If we can see similarities in microwear texture, you can infer what the prehistoric animals were eating.”

Wooten had an idea of what she’d see on the teeth. What she exactly saw subverted her scientific expectations.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Who’s Eating What"}]

After examining the dental microwear texture on the teeth of hell pigs and comparing that with that of modern animals, clear patterns emerged. They weren’t the patterns Wooten was expecting.

“I was really expecting to scan these and come out with everything that was eating super hard things,” she said. “When the results came back, I was shocked.”

Several teeth showed the telltale textures of a bony diet, comparable to the teeth of modern hyenas. Others showed little to no evidence of anything hard in their diet, with microwear comparable to that of modern cheetahs.

Wooten decided to explore these differences until she found an explanation.

“As I was exploring these differences, I discovered a body-size difference,” she said. “I ran all the statistics with the body size separated into smaller and larger, and that's when I found that there was this significant difference in diet.”

Wooten’s conclusion was that the smaller hell pigs were eating tougher food while the bigger ones were eating whatever they could. That’s an anomaly in modern ecosystems.

“Larger animals actually eat softer foods because they have the liberty of eating softer foods,” she said. “Smaller animals eat whatever they can get because they're not as advantaged as the larger animals. That’s what we expect to see in nature. The opposite is fairly uncommon.”

Wooten also noted that this size-diet split was tied to species, not age. Smaller species of hell pig had softer diets, while larger species had harder diets.

“The larger-bodied individuals ate like hyenas, but the small-bodied individuals ate like cheetahs,” she said. “Cheetahs are exclusively flesh eaters, so it’s possible the smaller Archaeotherium were exclusive flesh eaters, too.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Gimme, Gimme!"}]

With this intriguing diet disparity determined by body size, it’s only natural to speculate what that could reveal about the biology and behavior of hell pigs.

Wooten doesn’t want to jump to conclusions, but she did say the differences in the diet could have been partially caused by a common behavior scientists see in many modern ecosystems: kleptoparasitism.

That’s a big word for big animals stealing food from small animals. Wyomingites can see it happen all the time in places like Yellowstone National Park.

“Bears will scare wolves, lynxes, or pumas from their kills and eat the remains,” Wooten said. “When you’re scavenging, you eat bone even if you don’t really mean to.”

Wooten referenced a fossil from the White River Formation that suggests the same behavior. It’s believed to be 

, containing several partial skeletons of Poebrotherium, a small prehistoric camel.

“The camels were killed by a bite to the head and neck,” she said. “The meatier portion of their bodies — the butt — was eaten, while front portions, the head and arms, were dragged back to a meat cache.”

This fossil has been cited as evidence of active hunting by hell pig mortoni, which Wooten called “the smallest of the smaller-bodied Archaeotherium species.”

The butt-less Poebrotherium food cache might give more credence to kleptoparasitism among hell pig species. If the camels were killed by a smaller-bodied species, it would align with what Wooten discovered from her dental microwear analysis.

“Maybe the smaller ones would run and actively hunt their food, and the larger ones could have scared them off and consumed their kills,” Wooten said. “It's really hard to have two different kinds of animals that are living at the same place at the same time, because then they're constantly going to be fighting for resources.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Closer Look"}]

Wooten has learned a lot from the dental microwear analysis of hell pig teeth. The next step in her research is more in-depth dentistry.

“The next step is using stable isotope analysis to put more of the puzzle pieces together,” she said. “That’ll give me a better picture of what was going on.”

Stable isotope analysis is an increasingly powerful tool in paleontology. A 2025 study 

determined the diets of Jurassic dinosaurs

, down to the specific salads Brontosaurus ate, using the calcium isotopes preserved in their tooth enamel.

Using stable isotope analysis on hell pig teeth, coupled with the microwear textures, would help Wooten narrow down the dietary preferences of the different-sized species.

It will also shed insight on whether hell pigs were primarily carnivorous or had a more generalist diet of meat and plants.

“Unless we have a time machine, I don't think I'm ever going to know exactly what they were eating day-to-day,” she said. “Stable isotope analysis will help clarify the textures of foods being eaten and potentially lead to a path to infer what actual foods were being eaten.”

Wooten has already done some stable isotope analysis, but she’s not at liberty to share what she’s learned. That’s for the next paper.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It’s embargoed, but it’s very fascinating,” she said."}]

The first fossils of the prehistoric mammal known as the "North American Hell Pig" were found near Fort Laramie, Wyoming in 1850. Scientists say although they look similar to pigs, they are more closely related to whales and hippos.

One More For The Road: Wednesday, November 8, 2023

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