Tellus in Search of Past Paleontologists

The needs your help to locate Shorter University students who took park in the Ladds Quarry digs that unearthed many Pleistocene Era fossils in the 1960s and '70s.

“We know a lot of the science,” museum director Jose Santamaria said. “What we don't have are the stories of the people who participated in these digs.”

The Ladds Quarry site was used for acquiring limestone, but the large amount of Pleistocene fossils found there quickly turned the quarry into a hotbed of paleontology. The first fossils were unearthed in 1885.

Emma Lewis Lipps began her excavation of the Ladds Quarry site in 1963, accompanied by many student volunteers from Shorter University (then Shorter College). After Lipps' excavations were complete in 1968, Al Holman from Michigan State University began a dig that lasted until the 1980s.

The combined digs discovered thousands of Pleistocene fossils, which were sent to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History for further study.

The variety of specimens unearthed in the quarry led scientists to conclude that the climate of this area was milder than it is today, with high temperatures rarely exceeding 85 degrees and lows rarely dipping below 40 degrees.

Among the fossils displayed at the museum are the jaw of a jaguar, the radius of a sloth, a bat skull and other bones, and the jaw, humerus and tooth of a peccary.

Santamaria has wanted to have these fossils returned to Tellus for more than 15 years. Because Tellus is a Smithsonian affiliate, it was possible for the fossils to be sent to Tellus, eight miles from the excavation site, on a permanent loan.

Now that the fossils are back home, the museum is looking for the human side of this incredible story.

“In the process of getting the original fossils, I thought it would be neat to get information on what these digs were like,” Santamaria said.

Anyone with information about the Ladds Quarry digs of the 1960s to 1980s is asked to contact Tellus at 770-606-5700 or info@tellusmuseum.org.