Around 38 million years ago, three small snakes slithered into a burrow seeking shelter from an apocalypse blanketing their world in volcanic ash. They never escaped, becoming entombed in the spot where they sought sanctuary in what would far into their future become Wyoming.

The misfortune of the small snakes has become a boon for paleontologists. New research published by a team from the University of Alberta has gained critical insight into the elusive history of prehistoric snakes.

“We’ve never had a good fossil record of these snakes,” said Michael Caldwell, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. “Here, we’ve got three really lovely specimens in one burrow, which gives us the information we need to investigate the origins and evolutionary history of an enigmatic group of living, burrowing snakes.”

White River Wyoming

The White River Formation is a layer of rock deposited during the Paleogene Period. Caldwell described it as a time of weird mammals and widespread volcanic activity in North America.

“The rocks of the White River Formation are 38 million years old, give or take a week or two,” he said. “It’s white because the sediments are heavily dominated by volcanic ash mixed with sand and fine-grained silt. Volcanic ash events were continual and caused several disasters.”

The fossils from the White River Formation are legendary. Large and small mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles are immaculately preserved in the ash-dominated rock.

“We find early dogs and cats, and saber-toothed relatives of cats that aren’t the same saber-tooths of the mammoth and mastodon,” Caldwell said. “Early bunny rabbits, all kinds of lizards, turtles, big-bodied mammals, early chameleons. The White River stuff is just amazing.”

There are legendary exposures of the White River Formation in Wyoming, particularly around Douglas. That’s where the University of Wyoming was excavating in 1976, when researchers found the three small snakes that are leaving a big impact.

Breithaupt’s Hibernating Snake

The fossilized snakes were collected with several other White River fossils during UW’s 1976 field project in Douglas. Aside from a 1997 paper written by paleontologist Brent Breithaupt, the UW Geological Museum’s collection manager at the time, the snakes haven’t garnered much attention until recently.

“I was talking with Brent, and he offered me the opportunity to work on the material in the early 2000s,” Caldwell said. “It took me a while to find a grad student to put on the project, and then it took us a while to get the paper written once she had graduated.”

That grad student, Jasmine Croghan, is the lead author of the paper describing the Wyoming White River snakes. The new species was called Hibernophis breithaupti, honoring Breithaupt and his original hypotheses about the unique discovery.

“Brent’s paper interpreted them as a hibernating assemblage of snakes,” Caldwell said. “That’s why we named them Hibernophis, the hibernating snake.”

A Den Of Beautiful Snakes

When describing a new species of prehistoric animal, the Holy Grail for paleontologists is a complete specimen.

Croghan, Caldwell and the other scientists studying the White River snakes had four of them, all nearly perfect skeletons to study, all collected near Douglas.

Snakes from the White River Formation aren’t well-known in the fossil record. Paleontologists have acquired most of their knowledge on their biology and evolutionary history from isolated fragments or individual bones.

“There are millions of isolated snake vertebrae in museum collections around the world, but very few articulated snakes,” he said. “As terrifying and robust as a snake might appear, they’re not held together very tightly. When they die, their bits and pieces wash about and they become disarticulated very easily.”

Caldwell said the three snakes found in the burrow, and a fourth specimen found nearby, are the most complete specimens of their kind ever found in the White River Formation.

“This particular trio of snakes are beautifully preserved,” he said. “We have almost everything in the anatomy of these little snakes, from the tips of their noses to the tips of their tails. They’re only missing the very tip of the tail, but everything else is there.”

Caldwell explained that “without going into the gory details about snake bony anatomy,” that Hibernophis is a kind of rubber boa, a smaller member of the boid family of snakes, which includes anacondas and boa constrictors.

While boids were and are widespread throughout the Americas, their evolutionary history remained an enigma until the discovery of Hibernophis. Wyoming’s White River snakes have provided critical insight into their evolutionary story.

Boid Behavior

While the anatomy and evolutionary significance of Hibernophis is exciting, the discovery revealed equally exciting information on the behavior of the 38-million-year-old snake. Caldwell said the preservation of three snakes in one burrow is significant.

“We have something that we never find in the fossil record,” he said. “Here we have three of these little rubber boas all curled up together in this ancient mammal burrow. One of them is substantially larger than the other two, so you can put on your natural history hat and start imagining what this could be.”

Whatever it was that drove the snakes into the burrow, which had been dug by a burrowing mammal, the snakes didn’t mind sharing the same space.

“We don’t know why they were there, but they were comfortable being together wherever they were,” he said. “Which means there is social behavior of snakes preserved in the fossil record.”

There’s a modern precedent for this behavior in snakes. Thousands of garter snakes in cold climates have been found living together in holes, entering a prolonged stupor while surviving from their collective body heat in what’s called a hibernaculum.

The three Hibernophis specimens may have perished in their hibernaculum, but more research would be needed to prove this. Regardless, Caldwell said the discovery is a rare and exciting instance of prehistoric behavior preserved in the fossil record.

“Most people think of reptiles as dim-witted, cold-blooded, not very social and with no maternal care,” he said. “The usual non-mammal analogies. Could this be a parent and a couple of young ones? Or is it possible that we’ve got a fright response and they’ve all ended up in a burrow together in the midst of a volcanic ash event? Or were they preparing for a cold weather season? We don’t know.”

Rediscovering Discoveries

The four specimens of Hibernophis breithaupti are in the collections of the UW Geological Museum. Caldwell and the other scientists briefly took the fossils to the University of Alberta for research and then to Austin, Texas, for a micro-CT scan.

“That’s how we found the third specimen,” he said. “It was inside the block and wasn’t clearly visible on the surface since it’s slightly below the other two.”

A major scientific discovery usually raises more questions than it answers. Thanks to the discovery of Hibernophis, Caldwell anticipates a flurry of scientific inquiries will be pursued.

“Every good answer just rattles a whole series of questions even harder,” he said. “Are there more specimens of Hibernophis? What would that have to say about the hypotheses that we’ve put forward in this recent publication? How does new material and new information change what we think we know about the interrelationships of these animals with all other birds and snakes, both fossil and living?

“You end up with more questions to ask from every answer that you put forward.”

For Caldwell, another major takeaway from the study of Hibernophis was its “rediscovery” in the collections of the UW Geological Museum. He believes more future paleontological discoveries will come from already-excavated fossils sitting on the dusty shelves of museums.

“There are hundreds, if not thousands, of specimens hiding away in museum collections that have never been examined,” he said. “The next places to go are out into the field and down into museum collections. Several places have good White River Formation collections. We need to see if there’s anything in those collections that’s been missed.”

Yesterday And Today

While these Hibernophis died in an ash-filled burrow 38 million years ago, their boid descendants survived into the present day. Rubber boas are everywhere in Wyoming, although they can be hard to find.

“These boas alive today are part of that same radiation as are these fossil ones,” he said. “They’re small-bodied night feeders that are rather secretive and spend a lot of time hiding in the sand, so very few people see them. They’re common in the pet trade if you’re into a rubber boa that stays buried in the sand in your terrarium all day, which I’m not.”

The anatomy and behavior of Wyoming’s modern-day boids might shed more insight into the world of their prehistoric ancestors preserved in the White River Formation. Hibernophis has established itself as another jewel in the ornate crown of Wyoming paleontological discoveries.

“With Hibernophis, we fill in a science gap and get some insights on prehistoric snake behavior,” Caldwell said. “It’s a great story and three really lovely specimens.”

Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.

YUMA, Ariz. — If there’s one lesson that was pounded into the heads of three Wyoming legislators and a state Senate candidate during their trip to the southern border Thursday and Friday, it’s that the situation here has become untenable and seismic for Americans living on the border and the rest of the United States.

All of the legislators said they plan to support legislation that would give money specifically for law enforcement efforts at the border in Arizona. During the last legislative session, $750,000 was earmarked to help Texas with its immigration efforts.

Although this kind of money is a drop in the pond compared to the $19.9 billion U.S. Customs and Border Protection budget, Yuma County Supervisor Jonathan Lines said sometimes just raising awareness about the growing immigration crisis is important.

“I want to make sure I’m doing everything I can making sure the story is being told,” Lines said. “The federal government is not doing its job, the cartels are in control.”

With immigration one of the biggest issues of the 2024 campaign season, more state-level officials like the Wyoming contingent are visiting border towns to see the crisis for themselves.

At the border near Yuma a little after 1:30 a.m. Friday, they witnessed Border Patrol agents detain a group of illegal immigrants who had walked into the United States through a gap in the border wall.

The phrase “every state is a border state” can be hard to conceptualize for people who live far away from the southern border and don’t see what the people of Yuma, Arizona, deal with every day.

Senate District 6 candidate Kim Withers said this is exactly why she made the trip. When going door-to-door for her campaign this summer, she said the issue of illegal immigration came up with surprising frequency with Wyoming voters.

“Of course, the drugs and criminal activity is going to eventually be seeping up to Wyoming,” she said. “I think it’s a real issue I can get behind.”

Withers said she also wants to make sure local law enforcement is fully funded for the increasing pressures they will likely face. She mentioned how the small town of Guernsey, Wyoming, recently lost one of its two police officers because of lack of funding.

“Getting back to the root causes,” said state Rep. Jon Conrad, R-Mountain View. “Showing our support would be demonstrable. This isn’t a Yuma issue, this impacts all of us.”

Escalating Crisis

The southern border has been a problem area for decades, including under former President Donald Trump’s watch, but illegal crossing increased significantly after President Joe Biden took office. After Biden took office, he halted work on Trump’s border wall and has faced increasing political pressure as the immigration crisis continues to grow.

During Biden’s administration so far, there have been more than 8 million encounters with migrants, as well as 1.7 million “getaways,” or illegal immigrants who slip past the Border Patrol and are living in the U.S. without any contact with immigration officials, according to a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

Noted in the report is a statement from Tom Homan, former director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who said Biden is the only president ever to “unsecure the border on purpose” and that his “open border polices have created the greatest national security crisis since 9/11.”

Sometimes the impacts of these crossings come in ways that the rest of the world may not consider, Lines said.

“The woman and children are really why I do this,” Lines said.

In addition to the rampant funneling of fentanyl through the border and into America’s communities that’s caused an increase in overdose deaths, there’s also the trafficking of people — specifically children — that’s nearly just as prevalent.

The Mexican crime and drug cartels are becoming more active, bold and dangerous.

‘Total Disregard For People’s Lives’

Lines said he was told by Arizona Republican congressman Andy Biggs that there are around 85,000 missing children in the Office of Refugee Resettlement database.

While touring the Wyoming delegation around the border wall built under the direction of Trump, Lines showed them where the rape of a 10-year-old boy had happened.

“These people are absolute animals, they have total disregard for people’s lives,” he said.

Although many people point to the genuine desire many immigrants have to start new and productive lives in America, he believes that not a single person crosses the border these days without the blessing of the cartels, thereby making themselves indentured servants.

“They have no idea what people are actually doing and submitting themselves to to get here,” he said.

Besides horrible acts like these, Lines said the cartels have also assisted with letting state-sponsored terrorists into the United States from places like Iran.

“Are we going to face another 9/11 because of this?” he questioned.

A former sheriff’s deputy, Rep. Tony Niemec, R-Green River, said he worries about what some of his former co-workers will face in the near future.

Also scattered around the base of the wall were various articles of clothing. Lines explained that these were from people who had discarded them after swimming across the Colorado River to get to America.

At one juncture, the borders of Arizona, California and Mexico convene at the Colorado River. Lines said this convergence point leads to many issues as California authorities have a policy to not assist Border Patrol agents with apprehending people who illegally cross the border.

How It Works

When people are detained at the border, they are documented, but almost always are sent on into the United States as long as they claim asylum from their home country, Lines said. These asylum hearings can take years to take place, to which only about 5% immigrants show up for, he said.

Still, Lines said most of these people are coming to the U.S. with relatively positive intentions and have no problem being detained as they are actively also seeking food and medical assistance.

Withers said she has no issues with immigrants who pursue the legal routes to achieving citizenship.

“If they come in the right way and want to do good work, that’s a good way to do it,” she said. “I’m concerned people are not doing it the right way.”

Facilitating this medical assistance has led to difficult decisions for local health care workers, Lines said, as they have often had to prioritize serving immigrants who recently crossed the border over permanent residents. Despite the community receiving around 200,000 snowbird vacationers per year, he said 85% of the patients at the hospital make an income below the poverty line.

Those who do get through undocumented are doing so strategically and specifically so their presence won’t be known by authorities, Lines said.

“The Border Patrol’s biggest concern is people who don’t want to be detained,” he said. “The people who want to go don’t necessarily want to do that. They want to do us harm.”

Oppositional Forces

Lines sees the Mexican cartels as the root source of most of the border problems.

Combating their efforts is a little like playing whack-a-mole, he said. When a change is made, their only goal is to work around it.

“They’ll just deploy resources somewhere else,” he said.

He also feels frustration with the Biden administration, which he believes doesn’t have a legitimate interest in improving border security.

He said there are countless examples large and small that prove his point. One of the small signs, he said, were cameras installed under Trump at the border that were never turned on by the Biden administration.

Niemec saw the difference in policies between the two administrations showing up in the form of completely different infrastructure and management choices as one of the most eye-opening parts of the trip.

“They call this portion the Trump wall, and it was such an improvement on some of the other legacy portions of this wall,” he said. “Then on this portion, there’s no wall. It looks real secure until you get to the end of it.”

When former Arizona Gov. Greg Ducey started stacking up shipping containers at the border in 2022 in response to Biden’s refusal to continue building Trump’s wall, Lines believes it reduced illegal crossings.

When Biden came to a compromise over restarting construction on the wall due to immigrants drowning in the Colorado River and local tractors being stolen near an opening in the wall, Biden built his own section of metal wall.

Lines said this still wasn’t sufficient to prevent people from trying to get across. There were other locations where Biden installed chicken-wire fences.

Many people argue that walls don’t work as an effective deterrent for people illegally crossing into America. A 2022 study from the conservative-leaning Cato Institute found that Trump’s wall did not reduce crossings after major portions of it were built.

The former chairman of the Arizona Republican Party, Lines helped start the Border Security Alliance (BSA) to help pass policy around the nation that he believes will secure the border, but he believes revamping America’s overall immigration system is the ultimate solution. BSA plans to ramp up their efforts for the upcoming election season.

“This is my home, this is my country here,” Lines said of his motivations.

The state legislators and Withers shot ads for their respective reelection campaigns with BSA while at the wall.

Agricultural Shut Downs

Lines also explained how bacterial contamination to local farm fields such as E. coli can lead to drastic consequences for their local economy and the country as the Yuma area produces 93% of the nation’s leafy green vegetables. Some of these lettuce fields come right up to the border wall.

To prevent risks like these, Yuma County has paid to install porta potties around the outside of the border in expectation of the many people who illegally cross.

“It prevents people from walking in the fields,” Lines explained.

Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.

GUERNSEY — Emergency officials in Goshen and Platte counties have lifted evacuation orders on tiny communities north of Guernsey, Wyoming, threatened by a pesky wildfire that’s proved difficult to contain in an area the size of more than 33,000 football fields.

The evacuation order is the second emergency officials have lifted since Tuesday when two separate fires in the region merged to form an inferno that’s burned a 26,000-acre area and now appears stuck in steep and treacherous terrain in the Haystack Range.

This is a good thing as long as hundreds of firefighting personnel can keep it tamed in the tinderbox that locals say is a godforsaken mountainous region.

On Saturday, Tony Krotz, the Platte County emergency management coordinator, told 200 people at the Guernsey-Sunrise High School that evacuation orders for the northern Guernsey communities had been lifted at about 4 p.m.

Those communities, which have about 150 people living there, include Hartville, located about 5 miles north of Guernsey, and the canyon communities of Sunrise (1 mile east of Hartville) as well as residents who dot Pleasant Valley and Waylen Canyon roads.

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon told the audience at the hastily pulled together meeting that he would fight for more resources on the frontline of Wyoming’s wildfires.

Emergency officials said that higher priority states like California, Oregon and the U.S. West generally are taking these resources from Wyoming, listed at the bottom of the priority list because of its rural nature and sparse population of a half million people.

“This summer has really been tough,” said Gordon in the high school’s gymnasium that felt nearly as hot as the outside temperature of 100 degrees. “We are doing the best job we can to allocate resources, but virtually all of these resources are already allocated.”

Gordon said he would fight for more firefighting resources, like planes to map the fires or drop water and slurry.

Emergency officials said at the meeting that it may be another week before they can get a special plane with infrared mapping capabilities to fly over the Haystacks and give a better assessment of the fire’s size and how much of the prairie-scape has burned.

“My main thing for being here today is to tell you that we are 100% behind you,” Gordon said. “We are fighting hard to get the assets we need but they are stretched.”

Where Is The Fire?

Tracking the fire has been difficult because of the rocky and steep terrain of the “hills,” as locals have dubbed the Haystacks.

The fire has swirled in an area ranging from U.S. Highway 26, linking Guernsey and Fort Laramie about 12 miles to the east, to the eastern fringe hamlets north of Guernsey that were under orders of evacuation on Friday and Saturday, and to the north to the Haystacks.

“The firefighters on the scene have advised me that they feel comfortable and safe to allow the residents of these communities to return once again,” said Krotz, who received a call from Platte County Fire Warden Aaron Clark shortly before the meeting to support the decision.

Thunderous applause from the audience erupted on that announcement.

“We’ve always said that if a fire gets in that area, we’re scared,” Krotz observed.

“We know what that train looks like and you know how dry it has been. We saw the winds change in more directions that one night,” he said of the Tuesday-Wednesday battle with the fire over a do-or-die, five-hour window from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m.

“We’re not out of the woods yet, but we got a break here for now,” he said.

As of Saturday, the fire is 30% contained, though some emergency officials say that area could be larger. Without a flyover by the plane with the infrared equipment, it’s difficult to come up with a better assessment.

The latest evacuation order came late Friday afternoon when a violent thunderstorm brought high winds to the area and caused firefighters to lose some of their hold over ditches and mounds of dirt dozed up that were built as a containment wall to keep the fire from spreading on the western front.

When the wildfire began threatening the Waylen Canyon Road area Friday, emergency officials didn’t think twice to evacuate everyone.

Going Home

About 20 people from the Hartville area communities were evacuated to Camp Guernsey Joint Training Center just off U.S. Highway 26 to stay at one of their barracks on the military base.

The American Red Cross from Cheyenne set up a volunteer center to help coordinate the arrival of evacuees.

The latest flareup of the wildfire first reared up with flames several hundred feet high Tuesday and Wednesday.

That’s when the Pleasant Valley Fire combined with the Haystack Fire, creating the large burn area visible to the north of U.S. 26 along the arterial highway from Guernsey to Fort Laramie.

The historic community of Fort Laramie also was threatened by the fire at one point, but a canal 2 miles on the western fringe of town held the advance.

Along with thousands of acres of grass and forests, the fire also burned the family homestead of congresswoman Harriet Hageman, who grew up in the area.

Tyson Finnicum, a spokesman with the Wyoming Type 3 Team, said that a lightning strike in the Haymarket Range a week ago caused the Goshen County fire. The Pleasant Valley Fire, which is the official name of the combined fire, began Tuesday and is under investigation.

Finnicum’s Type 3 team was formed Thursday.

His team is an emergency classification level used by fire tracking agency National Interagency Fire Center and is made up of a small group of local, state and federal officials needed to help in the management of combating a wildfire.

They have set up an incident camp in Fort Laramie for firefighters to sleep and catch a breath.

Last Stand

Travis Pardue, the incident commander overseeing management of efforts to combat the fire, told Cowboy State Daily that about 120 firefighters have formed a “control line” on the northern flank of the fire near McGann Pass. That’s where they’ve been most of the day Saturday, he said.

The line has about 3 miles of water hoses strung together in the area that are helping to extinguish the fire, he said.

“We could be seeing smoke for weeks,” Pardue said.

The burn area in the Haystack range is between the McGinnis Pass and McCann Pass in Goshen County at about 5,000 feet in elevation. The range passes are located east of Whalen Canyon Road in the county and are located about 6 miles apart. The southern end of the fire is about 8 miles to the northeast of Guernsey, the area where the Pleasant Valley fire first started.

The biggest concern emerging from Saturday’s meeting seems to be future worries over the health and safety of cattle and horses.

Rancher Tom Lee and his wife Anne Lee live about 5 miles west of Fort Laramie south of U.S. Highway 26, which is an area that largely escaped the burn area to the north.

The couple visited a hill near Road 3 and Tank Farm Road where they were able to see the march of the Pleasant Valley Fire to the northern edge of U.S. Highway 26.

It’s where several oil tank farms owned by Enbridge, Tallgrass Energy, Sunoco and others are located.

“You could see the big flames from there and lots of smoke,” Tom Lee said. “We saw the two fires come together and the orange glow.”

“I thought we were in California,” Anne joked.

The Lees, who run a ranching operation of about 100 head of cattle, are worried about larger ranches that may struggle with finding pastures to feed their animals.

Some of the stacked bales of hay were burned in fields located to the north of U.S. Highway 26.

“They also need their fences repaired,” Tom Lee said. “We are just small guys. The bigger guys have problems.”

In his comments to 200 people Saturday, Gordon mentioned the possibility of helping with rebuilding fences with federal emergency money.

Cattle Surrounded By Fire

The Kasperbauer ranching family has about 220 head of cattle grazing near the Haystacks when the fire nearly locked them in.

Father Vince Kasperbauer and his son, Vince, were able to push the cattle out of the middle of the fire with a John Deere Gator utility vehicle, which kind of resembles a fancy golf cart with big gripping tires, and a frontend loader.

Side-by-side, the father and son pushed the cattle to the Cottonwood Draw into a tunnel under U.S. Highway 26, about halfway between Guernsey and Fort Laramie.

The fire torched roughly 7,600 of their family’s 8,500 acres, Vince Kasperbauer told Cowboy State Daily.

Next week, the family plans to haul the cattle to a ranch north of Wheatland to graze and eat hay there. Their plan is to move the cattle when rain is forecast in order to reduce the stress of the cattle, which already are feeling it.

“They were supposed to stay in the Haystack hills for the summer,” Kasperbauer said. But we’ve got to get them moved. “The 90-degree heat is stressing them.”

Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.