Paleontologist digs site on Nebraska 71

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SCOTTSBLUFF - Bruce Bailey, a paleontologist who helps recover items near highway projects, says Nebraska 71 is a gold mine for fossils.

Bailey, who works for the state, has made many trips to the Wildcat Hills dig site south of Gering. He has found countless fossils, including those of an ancient beaver and an animal called a bear-dog.

He wants the items displayed in the Wildcat Hills Nature Center and, someday, perhaps offer travelers the chance to do a little digging of their own.

Donations are being sought to create an interactive mural in the visitors center that would use reproduced fossils.

A trail also could be built from the center to the dig, and a safe area more removed from the highway could be developed for people to do their own exploring and excavating, Bailey said. "But that's way down the road," he said.

In the late 1960s, when the highway was built, some fossils were found protruding from the ground after deep road cuts were made in the soil, Bailey said.

Before a more recent reconstruction project was completed, Bailey said, he screened a lot of material and found the fossils of 20 different animals, most of which were no larger than a mouse.

In 2000, Bailey removed about 200 fossils from the area, and a few hundred more were removed from a nearby ditch.

The area once was a channel for two large rivers, which helps explain why so many fossils have been found, Bailey said.

Most recently, Bailey uncovered a large tree stump with two extending branches that date back 24 million years.

The stump may have been placed there by beaverlike creatures that ranged through the area, Bailey said.