What tusked herbivore lived in Indiana 400,000 to 10,000 years ago, weighed 4 to 6 tons, and is Indiana’s new, official state fossil?

The correct answer is a mastodon (Mammut americanum), but you might have said “mammoth” (Mammuthus primigenius). The two are often confused for each other or conflated as being the same, when in fact they are different large, hairy mammals with a flexible snout.

On July 1, the mastodon became Indiana’s state fossil after legislators and Gov. Eric Holcomb approved the selection in February. Stanley Totten, a professor emeritus of geology at Hanover College, lobbied legislators for the mastodon’s selection and is now pushing for the mastodon to become the national fossil. (See page 54 of this Geological Society of America newsletter.)

At the IGWS, visitors can see examples of both mammoths and mastodons: mammoths depicted in a Robert Judah mural on the wall of the second-floor Patton Room, and a mammoth tusk, mastodon jawbone, and mastodon tooth on display in the first-floor Learning Lab. The IGWS’s lesson plans, posted on this page, include activities comparing these and other Ice Age mammals, as well as files for creating your own mastodon and mammoth teeth with a 3-D printer.

So, how were mammoths and mastodons different?

Mammoth teeth are flatter, like those of modern elephants, because they were grassland dwellers. Mastodon teeth are larger and have more ridges, suitable for eating the twigs and branches of forests. Mammoth tusks were also larger and more curved than mastodon tusks, with mastodon tusks more closely resembling those of modern elephants. Also, mammoths were taller than mastodons (14 feet vs. 10 feet at the shoulder) and had fatty humps on their neck or shoulders, whereas mastodons had a flatter, more rounded forehead.

Want to learn more about the life of a mastodon? Read this fascinating story about “Fred,” a central Indiana-roaming male whose bones are on display at the Indiana State Museum. You can also read about Indiana during the Great Ice Age in this IGWS GeoNotes one-pager on our website.

For the last several years, a research team at the IGWS has been studying whether sedimentary rocks common in the Midwest could be a viable source of rare earth elements, or REE. Maria Mastalerz, Agnieszka Drobniak, Philip Ames, and Patrick McLaughlin, working on a project for the USGS Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI), analyzed Pennsylvanian paleosols (horizons underlying coal seams) in southwestern Indiana for the presence of REE and lithium. Their findings were published last month in the Indiana Journal of Earth Sciences (IJES), Vol. 4.

In short, they found that the paleosols under the Brazil Formation and the Staunton Formation would be the best sources of lithium, and that the paleosols under the Danville Coal and Brazil Formation coals should be studied further for their REE potential, as they are clay-rich, and extracting REE from those types of deposits via acid leaching “is relatively easy.”

Read the study here, and get an overview of the IGWS’s REE-related research here.

In February 1964, Indiana Geological Survey geologists moved into massive, state-of-the-art headquarters at 1001 E. 10th St. in Bloomington. Before, they’d been scattered among several buildings and Quonset huts on the IU campus, as well as separated from the IU Department of Geology.

Besides furniture, light fixtures, and some paint, not much about the building had changed in the following 50-plus years, until 2017 when IU committed more than $30 million to a major renovation. Work in the IGWS wing of the Geology Building was completed last summer.

On June 3, the IGWS welcomed 120 visitors to tour its modernized home and to learn about the research, collections, and service activities being done inside it. As originally envisioned, the Department of Geology (now the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences) occupies about two-thirds of the building; the Survey still occupies seven floors of the east wing facing North Walnut Grove Avenue. The way the Survey uses the space, though, has evolved significantly throughout five of those floors, necessitated by changes in staffing and advancements in research tools. Instead of being organized into distinct research sections, Survey staff work across disciplines almost daily; and instead of instruments needing an entire room to house them—for instance, the 1964 computer room that took up a classroom-sized space on the second floor—they’ve become smaller and more portable, giving way to flex spaces and open-concept labs.

“We had HVAC issues and other things that needed to be done, but we also had to think about what we were going to be doing in our laboratories, and also, can we do anything that’s going to be supporting those people 50 years from now when the next renovation might come?” said IGWS Director Todd Thompson.

“I think 50 years from now, people will be pretty happy with how things ended up.”

The June 3 event was an opportunity to thank IU for the investment made in the Survey’s wing, estimated at $10 million.

It also was an opportunity for contacts from around the state to visit the building and learn about staff members and their work after retirements led to several turnovers in the past few years. Six researchers, Isaac Allred, Ginger Davis, Ryan Kammer, Henry Loope, Maria Mastalerz, and Don Tripp, gave brief talks about detrital zircons acting as “little time capsules” to map deep time; how the Survey is working to identify and protect groundwater resources; how Indiana’s geologic formations could factor into carbon capture and storage; what a 24,000-year-old ice sheet can tell us about current and future climate; why coal waste could yield valuable critical minerals and rare earth elements; and how bedrock geologic mapping has practical uses for farmers, the transportation industry, and others.

Sen. Andy Zay (R-Huntington) presented a Senate proclamation to mark the Survey’s 185th birthday, which was Feb. 6. Zay is an IU alumnus and current master’s degree student, but said he didn’t know much about the Survey until being asked to serve on its study committee in his role as a legislator. “I will say, what a treasure,” he said. “What a diamond in the rough. As a legislator, we’re asked to know a little bit about everything, and I now know I have a resource in water, in geological affairs, in utility affairs with gas and oil and petroleum, that I can turn to.”

He pledged to “make sure my colleagues with the state of Indiana use those resources,” and to continue to “fight for investment in the Survey … for investment in Indiana University, and to continue the momentum.”

See photos from the open house at this link.

Want to see how each floor of the Geology Building was originally designed? Check out this neat 1964 promotional booklet on ResourceSpace.

Looking for a closer-to-home summer road trip? The IGWS has a guide for that.

The paperback Indiana Rocks! A Guide to Geologic Sites in the Hoosier State tells the geologic story of 50 distinct destinations from all regions of Indiana. About a dozen members of the IGWS staff worked to research, photograph, map, and fact-check the descriptions of each place before the book was published in 2018.

“There is a lot to love about Indiana geology,” lead writer Polly Sturgeon said in the book’s preface. “From the mountains of sand along Lake Michigan’s azure waters to the fossiliferous banks of limestone breaking along the Ohio River, Indiana’s wild, scenic landscapes have attracted scientists and artists for nearly 200 years. Textbooks typically cite the spectacular—the Grand Canyon, Giants Causeway, Antelope Canyon—and omit the interesting sites that occur in our own backyards. Nonetheless, great geology does not just happen in faraway places—it is all around us and influences practically every aspect of modern life.”

We asked Sturgeon for a few suggestions of must-see places from the book. Here are her top five:

1. Indiana Dunes. Now a national lakeshore as well as a state park, the dunes stretch along Lake Michigan’s southern shore parallel to State Roads 12 and 20 and Interstate 94, between Portage and Michigan City. They’re the result of dramatic lake level changes between 18,000 and 4,500 years ago, and the sandy dunes have continued to shift and change since then. “Today, wind still sweeps sand from Michigan and Wisconsin onshore, and foredunes continue to form parallel to the shoreline,” the book reads. “In areas where vegetation cover is disturbed, wind blows the sand into steep mountains called blowout dunes. To see these active forces at work, visit the Indiana Dunes Visitor Center on State Road 49. Challenge yourself with climbs up Mount Baldy and Mount Tom, explore tree ‘graveyards’ within blowout dunes where the shifting pile of sand has suffocated parts of the forest, relax on the modern Lake Michigan shoreline, or hike through Cowles Bog for an experience unlike any other in the Hoosier state.”

2. Portland Arch Nature Preserve. This lesser-known attraction northeast of Covington was once a Native American settlement, a resting place for early frontiersmen, and a retreat for Boy Scouts, and is now a National Natural Landmark. Its 100-foot-high sandstone cliffs were carved by torrents of glacial meltwater, while its namesake feature, a 40-foot-high arch, was formed by a trapped stream battering the stone until a large hole was formed. Two trails of approximately a mile each loop around the 436-acre preserve.

3. Shades State Park. The quieter neighbor of the popular Turkey Run State Park, Shades is home to “looming sandstone cliffs (that) cast a perpetual twilight over the virgin hardwood forest, which led to the park’s original nickname, ‘Shades of Death,’” the book reads. Some of its more unusual geologic features are the Silver Cascade, a convex waterfall composed of thin limestone ledges containing abundant fossils, and Devil’s Backbone, a 6-foot-wide, 100-foot-tall siltstone ridge that’s often mistaken for a manmade structure.

4. Whitewater Valley Gorge Park. Set along the East Fork of the Whitewater River, this 100-acre park in the heart of Richmond is known for its waterfalls and for its impressive array of fossils including corals, brachiopods, snails, trilobites, bivalves, and bryozoa. A scenic, 3.5-mile trail leads visitors beside the falls and fossiliferous cliffs, and past historic structures, some of which once drew their manufacturing power from the river. This park allows fossil collection; stop by the welcome center or the Earlham College geology museum to pick up a fossil passport and earn points for a free fossil patch.

5. Indiana Caverns. The seventh-longest cave in the United States is southwest of Corydon, and it’s only been open as a “show cave” since 2012. “A small opening … within Big Bone Mountain was a treacherous doorway for ice age mammals,” the book reads. “Lured by the cool, damp air, hoglike peccaries, short-faced bears, and saber-toothed cats entered the small fissure 50,000 to 12,000 years ago and tumbled down piles of fallen ceiling rock to become trapped inside the cave. Indiana Caverns contains a large concentration of peccary bones, and the extensive trackways, hoof marks, and fully articulated skeletons make this cave system a treasure trove for paleontologists.”

Want to explore more? Indiana Rocks can be purchased from the IGWS bookstore for $18.

• Research geologist Ashley Douds joined the IGWS staff on July 1. She comes from the Austin, Texas area, where she had worked in exploration in the Permian Basin for an oil and gas company. In the late 2000s, she led a team which collected data on the energy potential of the Marcellus Shale and other historical oil- and gas-producing reservoirs in the Appalachian Basin. She also had worked for ExxonMobil after earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in geology from West Virginia University. At the IGWS, Douds will work on a variety of projects including carbon capture and storage, the petroleum data management system, critical minerals, and rare earth elements. She is currently president of the Critical Minerals Committee of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

• Research geologist Ryan Kammer’s last day at the IGWS will be July 12. He’s been hired as the research manager for the Carbon Management Group of the Great Plains Institute, a clean energy policy non-governmental organization based in Minneapolis. He plans to maintain ties with Survey staff in that new role.

• Archivist and Collections Manager Jenna Lanman is marking her five-year anniversary with the IGWS this month. Lanman, a “professional worrier,” is in charge of organizing and preserving documents and objects in the IGWS’s extensive collections, estimated among the top three most valuable collections in the entire IU network. Lanman came to the IGWS with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology with a museum studies focus, and 10 years’ experience in museum exhibit development and collections management. In the past five years, she’s participated in eight moves of various IGWS collections—a process that’s continuing this summer, and which you’ll learn more about in an upcoming newsletter. She also served on the inaugural IU Collections Advisory Committee.

• Lanman attended the Society for Preservation of Natural History Collections conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, June 5-10.

• IGWS Director Todd Thompson attended the 114th annual meeting of the Association of American State Geologists at Lake Tahoe, Nevada, in June. The meeting was hosted by the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology and was attended by more than 60 state geologists and associate members representing the nation’s state surveys, and another 60 people from federal agencies, former state geologists, and guests. This five-day event included federal agency updates, fieldtrips, and breakout sessions focusing on energy, mineral, and water resources; geological data preservation and mapping; hazards; and climate change.

• Dozens of visitors traipsed to the IGWS on Saturday, June 4 for the first annual Limestone Month Festival, engaging with educational booths and activities outside and exploring IGWS collections inside the new Learning Lab. See photos at this link.

• Research geologist Maria Mastalerz and a colleague in Canada published a paper in Atlantic Geoscience, “Note on the discovery of Carboniferous amber associated with the seed fern Linopteris obliqua (Sydney Coalfield, Canada).” “The amber was found physically associated with pinnules of the Linopteris obliqua, making this the first discovery of amber produced by seed ferns,” Mastalerz explained. “Because most ambers come from Cretaceous to Neogene sediments, being mostly products of conifers and angiosperms, this discovery not only expands the inventory of amber to as old as ~300 million years, but also documents that Carboniferous seed ferns were able to utilize biosynthetic mechanisms to produce resinous exudates.”

• IGWS Outreach Coordinator Polly Sturgeon was quoted in a June 24 story in The Herald-Times (Bloomington) about Limestone Month activities in Indiana. She mentioned the IGWS’s IU campus limestone walking tours and the opening of the new Learning Lab, and explained why Indiana limestone is such a sought-after building stone. “There's really no other natural material from such a limited geographic area that’s made such a big impact,” Sturgeon said. “So, it's really special to our community. It's also impacted who we are as a community, our local heritage.”

• Campus limestone walking tours are still happening on select Friday and Saturday mornings through mid-August, and other programs for adults and children also are planned in the Learning Lab on select Monday and Tuesday mornings. See the schedules on our events page.

The Indiana Geological and Water Survey, a longstanding institute of Indiana University, conducts research; surveys the state; collects and preserves geologic specimens and data; and disseminates information to contribute to the mitigation of geologic hazards and the wise stewardship of the energy, mineral, and water resources of Indiana.

• To join the monthly E-Geo News mailing list, please click here.

• To ask a question of IGWS staff or suggest an E-Geo News topic, email scliffo@iu.edu.