The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey: Unearthing the Origins of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans

3. A Gem from the Willwood

3 A Gem from the Willwood In 1880, most of Wyoming Territory lay, at least proverbially, at the ends of the earth. This was particularly true of Wyoming’s northern twothirds , a remote and sparsely populated region that had been deliberately bypassed by the Union Pacific Railroad, whose completion about a decade earlier had brought both economic stimulus and rapid and reliable transportation to Wyoming’s southern tier. The railroad’s decision not to challenge the rugged terrain of northern Wyoming matched that of most early visitors to the area. For decades, white settlers had consistently forsaken the region, which they trudged across in covered wagons in their quest to reach more promising lands in Oregon. Only four years previously, Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull had massacred all U.S. Cavalry troops under the command of General George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, just across the territorial boundary in southern Montana. Jacob Wortman was still a young man in 1880, barely twenty-four years old. He himself was very much a product of America’s westward expansion. Wortman’s parents had traversed the Oregon Trail in the summer of 1852, eventually settling on a farm near Oregon City. Jacob was born four years later. Growing up in the American West, Wortman’s interests were naturally inclined toward the world around him. The ma61 jestic landforms and colorful rock formations of his native Oregon, as well as its abundance of wild plants and animals, intrigued young Wortman . The dramatic scientific developments that took place as he grew up only exacerbated Wortman’s predilection toward all things natural. Chief among these was Darwin’s theory of evolution and its radical influence on how humanity viewed itself in relation to the rest of nature. The political upheavals of the Civil War notwithstanding, Darwin captured the public’s imagination and Jacob Wortman’s fancy. By the time Wortman enrolled in college, he knew he wanted to pursue a scientific career that would somehow advance Darwin’s cause. But Wortman fell into despair whenever he pondered how he might make a living for himself in this field. Fittingly, the same siren song that lured Wortman toward the natural sciences in the first place eventually provided him with exactly the break he needed. Oregon’s rich fossil record caught the attention of Edward Drinker Cope just as Wortman was wrapping up his college studies. Within a few short years, their collaboration would highlight the clues offered by the American West regarding Darwin’s theory and our own deep evolutionary history. Despite his youthful age, Wortman already boasted substantial experience as a field paleontologist by the summer of 1880. His budding career had received a major boost three years earlier, when Charles Sternberg— who collected fossils for Edward Drinker Cope—hired Wortman to help him search for fossil mammals in the John Day beds of eastern Oregon. In due course, Sternberg trusted Wortman enough to leave him in charge of the expedition for extended periods. Wortman rapidly developed the skills of a field paleontologist, and he soon graduated to work directly for Cope himself. Cope’s first instructions directed Wortman to explore the extensive Eocene badlands of the Wind River drainage in central Wyoming, with the goal of securing the first fossil vertebrates from that region. Wortman had already met with phenomenal success. Now he needed to decide whether to gamble on finding an entirely new fossil field to the north, or to play it safe by staying where he was and finding more of the same. Wortman’s base of operations in 1880 was Fort Washakie, an isolated military outpost named in honor of the Shoshone chief who was both a friend to white settlers and a scourge to the Crow. Located near the modern town of Lander, Wyoming, the fort offered reasonable access to the variegated but mostly buff-colored Eocene strata known as the Wind River Formation. Wortman had already collected about forty-five species of fossil vertebrates from the Wind River beds, many of which appeared 62 A GEM FROM THE WILLWOOD to be new to science. After dutifully crating his cache of Wind River fossils for shipment back east to Cope in Philadelphia, Wortman mulled over the leads he had obtained from drifting miners and ranchers he met at the fort. These men told Wortman about...