IN THE SUMMER of 1971, a young geologist named Mike Voorhies was scouting around onsome grassy farmland in eastern Nebraska, not far from the little town of Orchard, where hehad grown up. Passing through a steep-sided gully, he spotted a curious glint in the brushabove and clambered up to have a look. What he had seen was the perfectly preserved skull ofa young rhinoceros, which had been washed out by recent heavy rains.

A few yards beyond, it turned out, was one of the most extraordinary fossil beds everdiscovered in North America, a dried-up water hole that had served as a mass grave for scoresof animals—rhinoceroses, zebra-like horses, saber-toothed deer, camels, turtles. All had diedfrom some mysterious cataclysm just under twelve million years ago in the time known togeology as the Miocene. In those days Nebraska stood on a vast, hot plain very like theSerengeti of Africa today. The animals had been found buried under volcanic ash up to tenfeet deep. The puzzle of it was that there were not, and never had been, any volcanoes inNebraska.

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