Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"Dog knew exactly what she was doing...."}]

Smile 6 20 24

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

<title>Daily Smile: Thursday, June 20, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Dog knew exactly what she was doing....

Daily Smile: Thursday, June 20, 2024

Bill Sniffin

Opinion

CSD Columnists

Today is Sunday, Aug. 16. With Election Day just 48 hours away, it is time to put on my prognosticator’s hat and try to figure out who will win Tuesday’s political races.

All the political excitement is in the Wyoming Republican primary. We are a one-party state, so everything happens in the primary.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Predictions And Favorites"}]

Cowboy State Daily columnists have some interesting points of view.

 Eric Barlow for governor and Kevin Christensen for U.S. House.

 Eric Barlow for governor and Steve Friess for U.S. House.

 Brent Bien for governor and Chuck Gray for U.S. House.

 Megan Degenfelder for governor and Chuck Gray for U.S. House.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Here is how I see these races:"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"U.S. House"}]

A gambling man would probably pick Secretary of State Chuck Gray of Casper to win the race for U.S. House.

Nobody else in this race has his network of followers, and he has been consistent. Considered a lightning rod, Gray has always been in the news. Gray seems to enjoy “just being Chuck.”

For example, how many state officials in history have been invited outside during a heated discussion by a sitting governor who is known to be somewhat mild-mannered? Probably not many.

Longtime political writer Joan Barron calls Gray an “obnoxious grandstander.”

After thoroughly analyzing this campaign, based on my 56 years of watching politics in Wyoming, I came to the conclusion recently that Steve Friess of Jackson might pull off a last-minute upset over Gray.

A lot of Friess’ boosters claim that not since Wyoming sent first-termers Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney to Congress have we had the chance to send someone who can make a big difference like Steve Friess can.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"That argument may very well be true."}]

But there are seven other Republicans in the race, and unless large numbers of their supporters bail out and move over to Friess, this race should go to Chuck.

Those candidates are Jillian Balow of Cheyenne, Bob Biteman of Ranchester, Reid Rasner, Kevin Christensen, and Keith Goodenough of Casper, David Giralt of Mills and Richard Dodson of Sundance.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It will be close."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Governor"}]

Like Gray, State Sen. Eric Barlow of Gillette has been the leader in his race from Day One. He has put together a tremendous team statewide and has boatloads of support.

As a former Speaker of the House, he was obviously well-liked, based on the number of legislators helping him. Has he heard of the “Speaker’s Curse?”

For some reason, Wyoming voters have not elected a House speaker or Senate president as governor in 50 years.

Megan Degenfelder of Cheyenne is young, at age 37, but has an amazing machine working for her. She has President Donald Trump working hard for her. She can honestly say that she will have the president’s ear if elected.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Folks, this is huge."}]

Her team has spent more than a million dollars attacking Barlow’s record. Based on all the TV ads and fliers, you would almost wonder why he is not in jail.

Barlow has not fired back much, which is commendable, but probably a bad tactic in these crazy political days.

The sleeper is retired Marine Col. Brent Bien of Cody. He has worked very hard and has a huge personal following. He lost the primary to Gov. Mark Gordon four years ago, receiving 48,572 votes.

If those same people vote for him, he just might win.

Despite a huge late surge by Degenfelder, I have a hunch Barlow will hold on and emerge victorious.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"U.S. Senate"}]

You would think this race would be a big deal. There are only 100 men and women in the U.S. Senate.

Current U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman has done an excellent job and has President Donald Trump’s endorsement.

Her biggest rival is 37-year-old Sam Mead of the well-connected Mead family from Jackson. His uncle Matt was governor, and his grandmother Mary Mead ran for governor.

He has worked hard and generated quite a bit of support.

Harriet will win and will do a great job as our next U.S. senator.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Other Races"}]

Longtime Casper State Rep. Steve Harshman should cruise to an easy win in the contest for state superintendent of public instruction. He is a longtime teacher and coach and has been a consistent leader in the state Legislature.

This is a case of one candidate having much better name recognition than the others, Chad Auer of Cheyenne and Tom Kelly of Sheridan.

The secretary of state’s race has been somewhat underwhelming. It is hard to find issues for the candidates to fight about.

Robert Short of Douglas appears to be the front-runner, although Rachel Williams of Cody has the Freedom Caucus folks working hard for her.

CJ Young of Cheyenne and Qwenton Oviatt of Hudson will finish out of the running.

State Treasurer Curt Meier of La Grange should have no trouble defeating challenger Scott Smith of Lingle.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Turnout"}]

Originally, I thought this election would have a small turnout.

Now I have changed my mind totally. We could easily have 130,000 to 150,000 total Republican votes.

The record was four years ago when 172,000 voted. Other recent years have seen turnout as low as 117,000.

The bigger turnout will favor Degenfelder and Friess, in my opinion.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Conclusion"}]

These are just my predictions as a columnist. What do you think?

We want to hear what you have to say. Cowboy State Daily will be running an election quiz, and you can see if you can top our staff. It will be in the Monday morning newsletter.

Managing Editor Greg Johnson won our last quiz two years ago, and Jen Kocher, one of our writers from Gillette, won it four years ago. Six years ago, Tom Lacock of Cheyenne won it.

That quiz will be in Cowboy State Daily Monday.

Sniffin headshot 7 2 25

<title>Bill Sniffin: Barlow, Friess, Hageman, Harshman, Short, Meier, Headed For Wins? | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Columnist Bill Sniffin writes: “Who is going to win? This primary election has so many variables. These are the folks I think will win on Tuesday.”

Bill Sniffin: Barlow, Friess, Hageman, Harshman, Short, Meier, Headed For Wins?

Daily Darwin

[{"type":"text","text":"All puzzles will now come with a warning label…."}]

Darwin 8 16 26

<title>Daily Darwin: Sunday, August 16, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

All puzzles will now come with a warning label….

Daily Darwin: Sunday, August 16, 2026

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

Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

A slew of fantastic fossils from Earth’s earliest primates have been discovered in southwestern Wyoming, offering new insights into the evolution of humanity’s tiny, sap-sucking great-uncles and aunts.

A new study published in the Journal of Human Evolution reports on the tiny fossils of three prehistoric primates excavated at Smiley Draw, a sandstone site in the Wasatch Formation of the Eocene Period.

Among paleontologists, Wyoming is well known as one of the best places in the world to find 

. These discoveries add to that reputation while also showing how much remains to be found.

“We've made the picture of the early Eocene more complicated than what we once thought,” said Chris Beard, a Foundation Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. “There will be much more to learn about these fossils, especially from southern Wyoming. There's a reason we're working down there.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Fascinating And Frustrating"}]

Wyoming has been a hub of primitive primate paleontology since the 1880s. The first fossils of lemur-like primates, dating to around 55 million years ago, were discovered in the Bighorn Basin around that time.

“A whole lot of work happened in the late 20th Century in the Bighorn Basin, especially with respect to this animal called Tetonius,” Beard said.

Tetonius, named after the Tetons, is a “vaguely tarsier-like creature,” as Beard described it. It was around the size of a modern-day mouse lemur, less than a foot long and under 2.5 ounces, but its closest living relatives are modern tarsiers.

Tarsiers are tiny, tree-dwelling animals known as “dry-nosed” primates. Endangered populations of these tiny primates still exist in the rainforests of Southeast Asia.

In their study, Beard and his colleagues described a new species of Tetonius, T. varleyorum, from Smiley Draw, an Eocene site in the Great Divide Basin in Sweetwater County.

“In Wyoming, you typically find Eocene-aged fossils in mudstone that erodes very easily,” Beard said. “This particular site is very unusual, if not unique, as it’s a layer of sandstone chock full of fossils. It’s rare to find Eocene fossils in sandstone, so Smiley Draw is exactly the opposite of what we normally expect.”

According to Beard, the discovery of a new species of Tetonius, based on its age and anatomy, is highly significant.

“It’s obviously a different species because it’s younger than the Tetonius and its younger descendant, Pseudotetonius, from the Bighorn Basin,” he said. “The fossils we found in Sweetwater County occur after that whole lineage has gone extinct in the Bighorn Basin.”

The study also describes fossils of two rarely found anaptomorphines, another group of prehistoric primates. Arapahovius gazini and Anemorhysis savage have never been found in the Great Divide Basin, and only a handful of other specimens have been found.

What’s significant is that the fossils of these three primates were found at the same site, which means they coexisted at the same time and place. That just raises further questions about life in the early Eocene.

“We’re finding animals that lived together at Smiley Draw that never ever cohabitated in the Bighorn Basin,” Beard said. “Tetonius, Arapahovius, and Anemorhysis don’t coexist there, but we find them together here.”

That’s why Beard said it’s “frustrating,” from a paleontological perspective, to compare Smiley Draw with the well-researched discoveries in the Bighorn Basin.

“We have an idea that animals evolve, they go extinct, and other animals replace them,” he said. “What we're finding at Smiley Draw is the animals that we think are going extinct at a certain time in the Bighorn Basin probably aren't going extinct elsewhere.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Gradual And Parallel"}]

Tetonius, Arapahovius, and Anemorhysis are all omomyids, a family of early tarsier-like primates known from several Eocene sites worldwide.

Beard said Wyoming’s omomyids are excellent examples of gradual evolution, which is what Charles Darwin proposed in his landmark 1859 book “On the Origin of Species.”

“There was a huge debate in paleontology about how evolution proceeded,” he said. “Did it occur gradually, the way that Charles Darwin predicted, or did it conform more to a punctuated equilibrium model, which was made famous by Stephen Jay Gould and his collaborators?”

The fossils of Tetonius and Pseudotetonius from the Bighorn Basin are a textbook example of gradual evolution. While they are distinctly different animals, Beard said the fossil record shows “no break in the single lineage chain from primitive to advanced.”

The key observation is the significant changes in the lower jaws of these primates, which Beard and his colleagues observed in fossils from the Bighorn Basin and the Great Basin Divide.

“These animals start out with fairly long lower jaws and lots of teeth in between their back teeth, the molars, and their front teeth, the incisors,” he said. “Through time, their lower jaws get compacted from front to back. They lose some teeth and develop a rodent-like incisor that sticks out of the front of their jaw, getting bigger and stouter over time.”

The purpose of this overly large incisor remains a mystery. Beard said that if you asked three different paleontologists, you’d get three different answers.

“In my opinion, they're using that big front incisor to gouge the bark of trees,” he said. “A lot of modern animals do this to stimulate sap or gum or resin to come out of the tree.”

Tree sap contains a lot of sugar. For a tiny primate with a high metabolism, that sap would be a valuable source of energy and nutrition.

Is this change in jaw and dental anatomy driven by a change in diet, or were the omomyids perfecting the tools needed for millennia of the same diet? That’s another debated question, but Beard said the latter is the most likely answer.  

These questions are significant to the new discoveries from Smiley Draw because they show the same thing happening – the shortening of the jaw, loss of teeth, and larger incisor – in Tetonius, but not exactly the same as in the Tetonius from the Bighorn Basin.

“The T. varleyorum from Smiley Draw has shorter haws and fewer teeth, so it’s similar but not exactly the same as what we see in the Bighorn Basin,” Beard said. “These are two different lineages evolving in parallel to achieve the same result.”

Parallel evolution is a well-documented phenomenon in nature. The legendary finches Darwin collected in the Galápagos Islands are an excellent example, as the different but related birds had beaks shaped to suit their diets on their isolated islands.

It’s more evidence that something strange was going on in Sweetwater County 55 million years ago.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hyperthermal Events"}]

Beard and his colleagues are studying all the mammal fossils recovered from Smiley Draw to see if they have the same story as the recently described omomyids. If they do, it would be further proof that different things were happening in different parts of Wyoming.

“It’s an interesting phenomenon,” he said. “We find animals living side-by-side at Smiley Draw that were already extinct or never lived side-by-side in the Bighorn Basin. They were only going extinct locally in the Bighorn Basin.”

Climate change might explain this discrepancy. The Eocene was a roller coaster of climate, which usually leads to extinction or adaptation for flora and fauna.

“We've got lots of iterations of what we call hyperthermal events in the Eocene, where the world warms up very rapidly and cools down again,” Beard said. “When the world warmed up, animals that were more tropically adapted spread northward, from Sweetwater County to Park County. When it cooled down, and they were no longer happy, the animals went back down. It's a very dynamic thing, and we're picking up a lot of these oscillations by looking at Smiley Draw.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Our Great Uncles"}]

This new study on prehistoric primates raised more questions than it answered. That’s not a bad thing, as it gives Beard and his colleagues more reasons to return to Smiley Draw.

Beard said his team was at the site collecting fossils in June. Some of those specimens are already being studied using a micro-CT scanner in North Carolina.

“I can tell you that we found additional fossils of early primates and primate-like creatures that are totally new just two months ago,” he said. “We’ll have a lot more to reveal from Smiley Draw.”

They’re not the only ones looking at overlooked spots in southern Wyoming. Paleontologists with the Duke Lemur Center Museum of Natural History at Duke University have been finding 

phenomenal Eocene fossils in Bridger Basin

, including the best specimens of the earliest known primate-like mammal in the fossil record, Plesiadapis.

“The Bridger Basin is the Madagascar of the Eocene,” curator Matthew Borths told Cowboy State Daily in December 2024. “We transition from a few primates on the landscape to a lot of diversity, hopping around in the rainforests of Wyoming.”

Borths’s dream was to find an omomyid in the Bridger Basin, as they’re humanity’s closest Eocene ancestor. There’s no shortage of omomyids in Smiley Draw, which is less than 200 miles northeast. 

Beard said Wyoming is “better than any other single place in the world, including Europe, Asia, and Africa” for paleontologists studying the origins and evolution of the earliest primates. That’s just from what’s been discovered, let alone what’s still out there, waiting to be found.

“Wyoming is incredibly fundamental to understanding the deep origins of humans,” he said. “None of these animals are the direct ancestors of humans. They're probably great-uncles and great-aunts, but that doesn't make them any less important. In fact, in my opinion, it probably makes them more important.”

That’ll keep Beard and his colleagues busy for decades. There’s a lot more to find, study, and understand – if that’s an excuse to get dirty in Wyoming, all the better.

“I love Wyoming, personally and scientifically,” Beard said. “We wish that we had a perfect fossil record, but we don’t. 

"What we have are snippets and glimpses; we try to piece together what it means. Wyoming has been overlooked for a while, to be honest, and we’re very fortunate to have such an amazing fossil record there.”

Smiley inset 8 15 26

<title>"Something Strange Going On": 55 Million-Year-Old Primate Fossils Found In SW Wyoming | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A slew of fossils from Earth's earliest primates have been discovered in southwestern Wyoming. Scientists say the tiny primate fossils, around the size of a mouse lemur, is evidence something strange was going on in Sweetwater County 55 million years ago.

"Something Strange Going On": 55 Million-Year-Old Primate Fossils Found In SW Wyoming

Kerry Drake

Wyoming Life

CHEYENNE — Arden White was a man with a plan. He knew the target of his would-be affection would be headed to her college class.

“I just waited until I saw she was coming around the corner,” he said. “I asked if she’d go out with me. Oddly enough, she said yes.”

“He ambushed me!” recalled his wife, Betty, on the occasion of their 75th wedding anniversary a week ago. 

The party was arranged at their Cheyenne home by their three children, Gary, Sharon and Ann.

They dated for about a year at Colorado Agricultural and Mechanical College, now Colorado State University, in Fort Collins. 

Then Arden made an announcement to his girl and his family. The conflict between the United States and Korea was heating up, and he’d decided to follow some of his friends and join the Navy.

Arden was stationed at Treasure Island, California, a man-made island in the San Francisco Bay. The Navy put him to work as a keypunch operator, using an early data entry system that had people punch holes into cards, encoding information for computers.

It was a specialized clerical job, and virtually assured him that he wouldn’t be reassigned to a battleship. He spent the duration of the war at Treasure Island.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Popping The Question"}]

While home on leave, Arden popped the question: “I think I’m going to be there for a long time, so why don’t we get married?”

“I said, ‘Sure,’” Betty recalled. 

That didn’t sound like the parents who raised her, said Ann, the baby of the family, who was born in 1966. She was preceded by Gary in 1953 and Sharon in 1956.

“I remember them being pretty strict and having everything planned out, and they never wavered,” said Ann. “So for them to be so willy-nilly and spontaneous doesn’t fit with the memories I have of them.”

Guess they must have been in love, as they clearly still are. Their children are happy they put together the party, inviting family and friends to share their special day. Betty had copies of several family histories she’d put together for guests to take home.

Betty and Arden were married in 1951, in her family’s church in Eaton, Colorado. They were both 20, but Arden’s mother had to go to the courthouse and officially give her permission for the marriage to take place. Girls only had to be 19.

“Discrimination!” Betty said, laughing.

Then they moved to Berkeley, California, and he returned to his stint in the Navy. Moving halfway across the country wasn’t something people in her family normally did, but Betty said, “I was kind of the maverick in the family. Everyone else stayed close to home.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Back To School"}]

Arden was supposed to serve for four years, but he had other ideas about his future. 

“I asked for an early release,” he said. “I wanted to finish my bachelors degree back in Colorado, and so did Betty.”

One day his chief walked by and tersely said, “Well, you got it.”

“I said, ‘What did I get?’ and he said, ‘Your early release.’ He was not pleased,” Arden remembered.

But the Whites sure were. Betty earned her bachelor's degree in home economics. Arden graduated too and took some correspondence classes by mail. The G.I. Bill had helped him pay for his education, and he had decided to pursue a master’s degree so he could teach at the high school level. 

The couple and their son Gary moved to Kansas, where Arden got a job teaching at a high school. That’s where Sharon was born. Then the family moved to Greeley, Colorado, where he received his master’s degree in education at Northern Colorado.

“I found out I was doing rather well academically, so I had the idea, ‘Let’s see if they’ll let me apply for a doctorate.’ And they let me do it.”

Arden needed a job and found one teaching at Northern State College in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He liked everything but the cold winters and hot summers. He hated the climate, and so did his family.

Betty was a bit more diplomatic. She didn’t scrunch up her nose at the thought of their two years there. 

“Aberdeen was a lovely place to live,” she said. “But the climate was terrible.”

Then the college’s main building was destroyed by a fire. 

“That was the end of that,” Arden said. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"He began looking for another job."}]

One day Arden was at a golf course when a friend told him there was a vacancy at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. 

“Well, that suited me — the location did," he said. “They asked me to come for an interview.”

He had one of his sisters-in-law give him a ride from Aberdeen to Cheyenne, then caught a bus for the trip over the hill to Laramie. After the interview he flew back to South Dakota just in time to make it to a class he was teaching.

At 9 a.m. Monday his phone rang. “They said, ‘Would you take the job for this (amount)?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I’ll take that,’” Arden said. So the family packed up again, but they wouldn’t leave for a long time — 30 years.

While he was at the College of Education, Betty was a stay-at-home mom when their children were young. As they grew older, she took a job working in the UW athletic department ticket office. 

Arden was promoted to the head of the counselor education program. It’s a job he said he enjoyed, especially when he could combine it with his love of fly fishing in the Snowy Range.

“He could go out in the afternoon, catch some trout and be home by dinnertime,” Betty said. 

Arden and his boss referred to their fishing trips as their “department head meeting.”

Betty learned to fish, but said she wasn’t good at it “because I needed help getting the fish off the hook. But I really enjoyed the Snowies.”

By the time Ann came into the picture, her family had a routine of hiking, camping and fishing and she did not get to vote on her participation.

“They took me on one camping trip when I was 3 or 4, and I was such a pain in the ass, I remember someone ended up carrying me because I refused to walk anymore,” Ann said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“That was me,” Gary reminded her."}]

“Their idea of camping was you park your car and you hiked with all of your stuff — the tent, the sleeping bags,” Ann continued while her siblings chuckled. “They ate the little powdered food, caught and ate the fish, and I’m not any of that. They still went, but they just shipped me off to my grandparents in Ault for a week.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wonderful Parents"}]

Despite not sharing her parents’ love of the outdoors, though, she said they were wonderful. 

“Dad always made sure we went to church every Sunday and spent the day together,” Ann said. “They never fought. They never argued. And they never swore. Well, Dad did sometimes when he was golfing.”

Despite their parents’ passion for college, Gary said they didn’t insist that they get degrees. 

“But Dad was always focused on us all having a job,” Gary said. 

He discovered that he loved working in agriculture, and went to work at UW’s greenhouse and planted flowerbeds on campus.

After visiting some friends at CSU, Gary approached his father and asked if he could go to school there.

“He told me as long as I could graduate in four years, he’d help me out,” he recalled. “It took getting some credits in the summer, but I did it.”

Sharon left Laramie when she was 19. She saw someone she liked in a band and told her friends, “I’m going to marry that guy.” 

Sharon went to Cheyenne and it took a week, but she found him. They’ve been married for 49 years.

After Arden retired from UW, he and Betty stayed in Laramie for a few years before moving to Cheyenne. Gary lives in Powell, and Ann moved to Illinois.

The Whites have enjoyed traveling together, with their best memories being Washington, D.C., and New York City. Asked what she saw at the former, Betty said, “Everything. The Smithsonian. The Washington Monument. The White House.”

On two trips to the Big Apple, the couple saw eight plays. The first one was “Cats.”

“There was one I had no idea what was happening,” Betty said. “It was a man on a ship and he was talking loudly and he spit all over himself. That’s what happens when you sit in the front row.

“We don’t like to talk about that,” she added with a wry smile.

Why do they think they’ve been together for so long?

They stared at each other for a minute or so. 

“She’s very accommodating," Arden said. “She was always willing to move wherever we needed to be.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“He’s very patient,” Betty said."}]

Arden and Betty White of Cheyenne celebrated their 75th anniversary this past week with family and friends. In recalling their first date, Betty said Arden ambushed her. Arden said he was surprised she agreed to go out. "Oddly enough, she said yes.”

Daily Smile: Thursday, June 20, 2024

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