20O; Tapir Veroensis,
Walker County, Late Pleistocene
By Thomas Thurman
23/Jan/2025
In 1955 Mr. Gerald Kemper found a partial tapir mandible in Anderson Spring Cave of Walker County, Georgia. This was the first NW Georgia tapir to find publication.
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Stephen W. Gray and Howard R. Cramer (Emory University) reviewed, researched, and reported the fossil in a meeting of the Geological Society of America, Southeastern Section, in April of 1961. That meeting was held in Knoxville, Tennessee. That same year the find was published in a bulletin of the Georgia Academy of Sciences. As of 1961 the original fossil was held in the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and a cast was held at Emory University in Atlanta.
I want to thank the Paleontology Association of Georgia for posting the paper on their Resource page for free download.
https://paleoassocga.wixsite.com/home/resources
https://paleoassocga.wixsite.com/home/resources
Today, tapir fossils are well known from Georgia, Tellus Museum in Cartersville has tapir mandibles on display from Ladds Cave in Bartow County, a site well known for Pleistocene fossils.
Walker County also produced the 315 million year old giant griffin fly, Carpentertypus durhami, found in the Walden Sandstone and reported in 1939. (See section 5B: Carpentertypus durhami) That insect had about a 14” wingspan in life, that’d get your attention if it landed on you.
Our Walker County tapir is significantly younger, it would be tens of thousands of years in age, though the researchers assigned no age to it beyond Pleistocene, but it would be Late Pleistocene. Gray and Cramer identified the fossil as Tapir veroensis. At the time of their report, Gray and Cramer were only aware of tapir fossils from coastal Georgia; Savannah and Brunswick, as well as several from Florida.
Tapir veroensis emerged about 300,000 years ago and met extinction 11,000 years ago. The Walker County animal is probably less than 20,000 years old. The species was described in 1918 by Florida State Geologist F. H. Sellard from a skull collected in 1915 from Vero Beach Florida. The species is well known in Florida with numerous specimens from north, central and south-central Florida. Wikipedia suggests that they were cold adapted animals, and they have been reported from Illinois and New York State. But the bulk of reports, as seen from the below map, have come from Florida. It should be remembered that Florida also has a very active paleontology culture so more finds may simply be a product of more people looking. That said, it’s hard to imagine a cold adapted animal being so prevalent in Florida. It would seem likely to this author that Tapir veroensis was just flexible in its climate tolerances like many North American species.
Modern tapirs are restricted to Central and South America. Most are primarily nocturnal. One species occurs in Asia. Some species are hunted for their meat and thick hides. They are probably larger than you think, many are six feet long and three to four feet at the shoulders, weighing 300 to 600 pounds. They have a short prehensile snout similar to an elephant’s proboscis, and highly develop sense of smell. They have four hoofed toes on each front foot and three hoofed toes on each hind foot.
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There are several extinct species widely distributed in North American, tapirs moved into South America during the Great American Biotic Interchange after the Isthmus of Panama rose. Tapirs did well in Central and South America, but they only found only extinction in Norh America.
The partial left mandible recovered is 168mm (6.6”) long and comes from an adult. An x-ray of the fossil shows no unerupted teeth, there was wear on the last two molars but not extensive, so the animal was an adult but not an aged beast. The fossil showed no signs of teeth marks from either large predators or small scavengers.
Gray and Cramer report that identification to the level of species was made by Dr. Bryan Patterson of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harward.
How the fossil got into the cave is unknown. It could have been dragged in by a predator, fallen in while passing, or died outside the cave and had to carcass or bones swept into it by flowing water. If the last case is true, the researchers make a point of observing that there was very little wear on the fossil so it wasn’t transported far if carried by flowing water.
The researchers also report that the conditions of the fossil’s discovery “are nebulous”. “The specimen was found ‘strewn on the floor of the cave’.” No other vertebrate remains are reported in association with the cave and Gray & Cramer state in 1961 that “The cave is now used as a source of water for the owner’s farm and is closed to further exploration.” That was in 1961, the cave is apparently no longer closed and below are some modern images from the cave. Online search and Google Earth show results when searched. This author is aware of no other fossils recovered from the cave in modern exploration...
Caves are dangerous places, please contact experts for further information about exploring any cave.
The National Speleological Society; Georgia
https://caves.org/state/georgia/
A pdf file of the paper can be downloaded below.
Science is a journey, not a destination!
Caves are dangerous places, please contact experts for further information about exploring any cave.
The National Speleological Society; Georgia
https://caves.org/state/georgia/
A pdf file of the paper can be downloaded below.
Science is a journey, not a destination!
| gray_cramer_tapir.pdf |
Reference
- Gray, Stephen W. and Cramer, Howard R.; A Tapir Mandible from a Northwest Georgia Cave, Bulletin of the Georgia Academy of Science, 19 (4) pp.83-90, 1961
