page_title: Paleontology in Louisiana
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Paleontology in Louisiana / History
caption_attribution_description: English: mastodon rendering
context_page_description: Paleontology in Louisiana refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of Louisiana. Outcrops of fossil-bearing sediments and sedimentary rocks within Louisiana are quite rare. In part, this is because Louisiana’s semi-humid climate results in the rapid weathering and erosion of any exposures and the growth of thick vegetation that conceal any fossil-bearing strata. In addition, Holocene alluvial sediments left behind by rivers like the Mississippi, Red, and Ouachita, as well as marsh deposits, cover about 55% of Louisiana and deeply bury local fossiliferous strata.
  Nevertheless, paleontologists and geologists have succeeded in reconstructing much of the state's prehistory. Around the beginning of the Cambrian, Louisiana was part of a landmass called Rodinia. This supercontinent began to break up into the northern Laurentia and southern Gondwana. This division split off local rock which would become part of the southern supercontinent. The Iapetus Ocean filled the region between these landmasses, submerging Louisiana.
context_section_description: Native peoples of Louisiana interpreted local mastodon fossils as the remains of monsters. They referred to the creatures as the grandfather of the buffalo. This subject was discussed in a 1748 letter from a French military officer named Fabri to Georges Cuvier. In 1804, such large fossil bones were discovered on land belonging to the Opelousa people. In 1816, the state's famous fossil site at Montgomery Landing was discussed in writing. It was not until 2004 that any dinosaur fossils were reported from Louisiana. The first such find was a single tooth reworked out of Cretaceous rocks and preserved in a Miocene-aged fossil deposit near Fort Polk. The dinosaur it came from probably lived, died, and was initially buried to the north in Arkansas. Later, it was eroded from Cretaceous sediments enclosing it and an ancestral Sabine River transported it southward to where it was found. The bones of Pleistocene megafauna, including mastodons, sometimes are found during the excavation of loess for fill or the construction of roads or buildings.
caption: Mastodon.
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