Utah’s canyon country keeps mastodon alive

Utah’s canyon country keeps mastodon alive

Photo Courtesy of Andrew Gulliford
Artist and sculptor Joe Pachak also has done extensive prehistoric rock art documentation in San Juan County, Utah. He discovered the 13,000-year-old mastodon petroglyph a decade ago, but only now is his find generating scientific interest. The discovery remains controversial because sandstone weathers over time and there is doubt that a Pleistocene petroglyph could last into the present.
Photo Courtesy of Andrew Gulliford
During the Pleistocene era, the horse species eohippus vanished. It was not until the Spanish came to the Southwest in 1540 that horses returned to the same ecological niche they had before the last Ice Age. Along the San Juan River, native peoples carved dozens of horses beginning in the late 18th century.
Photo Courtesy of Andrew Gulliford
Note the petroglyph of a human foot; animal figures, or zoomorphs; and a carved cupula for leaving special offerings, probably of corn pollen, along a sandstone cliff face.

Utah’s canyon country keeps mastodon alive

Photo Courtesy of Andrew Gulliford
Artist and sculptor Joe Pachak also has done extensive prehistoric rock art documentation in San Juan County, Utah. He discovered the 13,000-year-old mastodon petroglyph a decade ago, but only now is his find generating scientific interest. The discovery remains controversial because sandstone weathers over time and there is doubt that a Pleistocene petroglyph could last into the present.
Photo Courtesy of Andrew Gulliford
During the Pleistocene era, the horse species eohippus vanished. It was not until the Spanish came to the Southwest in 1540 that horses returned to the same ecological niche they had before the last Ice Age. Along the San Juan River, native peoples carved dozens of horses beginning in the late 18th century.
Photo Courtesy of Andrew Gulliford
Note the petroglyph of a human foot; animal figures, or zoomorphs; and a carved cupula for leaving special offerings, probably of corn pollen, along a sandstone cliff face.