How a long-extinct species of giant sloth was christened by a Founding Father and, centuries later, became our state fossil.
This story was originally published in the February 2017 issue of Wonderful West Virginia.
Updated in December 2021 by Wonderful West Virginia Magazine staff.
The last Megalonyx jeffersonii crawled its way through the Appalachian Mountains about 11,000 years ago. It would have been an intimidating sight—10 feet long and 2,200 pounds with three enormous claws on each of its forelimbs—but it presented little threat to the ancient peoples who hunted the beast. Megalonyx probably just used those claws to strip leaves from plants. Plus, it was slow.
“They’re so big, so lumbering, and there was so little competition in that environment for megavertebrates that there was no need for them to be agile,” says Don Lessem, a revered paleontology writer who has authored 50 science books and served as a scientific supervisor on films like Jurassic Park. “Kind of like the large dinosaurs—when you’re the dominant, big form, there’s not a lot going on. I imagine them as slow-moving guys, and not the brightest things going.”
Several millennia ago, one particular Megalonyx jeffersonii perished on a patch of modern-day West Virginia that would eventually become a cave. It wouldn’t move from that spot until the late 1700s, when Revolutionary War commander Colonel John Stuart removed the strange collection of bones and sent it to then-Vice President Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, something of an armchair paleontologist, was probably delighted to receive an ulna, a radius, a fragment of a femur, and three enormous claws attached to foot bones.
Stuart’s gift came from a limestone cave in Greenbrier County. Maybe. The exact cave is in question. The bones were once thought to have come from Organ Cave, and that is still claimed by its owners. Yet researchers like Smithsonian paleontologist Frederick Grady now think the bones came from Haynes Cave in Monroe County. “Two fragments of a Megalonyx scapula were found in Haynes Cave and tend to support this suggestion,” Grady wrote in a 1995 paper.
Jefferson wrote that the bones were found by saltpeter workers in a cave owned by a man named Frederic Crower. Grady says that was a misspelling; Jefferson meant Frederic Gromer, who owned Haynes Cave, but never Organ Cave.
A year after receiving the remains, Jefferson took the bones and a paper to an American Philosophical Society meeting in Philadelphia. He named his creature Megalonyx, which means “giant claw,” and he was sure it was some kind of lion. These were the early days of paleontology, when wild guesswork was commonplace in the scientific community.
Jefferson even suspected family members of the Megalonyx still walked the Earth. Biographers say the third president held a “completeness of nature” worldview, in which animals never became extinct. When explorers Lewis and Clark headed out west in the early 1800s, Jefferson told them to keep an eye out for his beloved Megalonyx.
Even though Jefferson was wrong, E. Ray Garton, geologist and curator of the Museum of Geology and Natural History at the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey in Morgantown, admires him for his interest. “Jefferson had a great love of natural history,” Garton says. And because of his efforts, Jefferson kicked off a newfound interest in creatures like Megalonyx. Or as Garton and thousands in the scientific community put it, “Jefferson was the father of vertebrate paleontology in the U.S.”
Garton has told the story of Jefferson’s giant claw for decades, whether to student groups visiting his museum, on his website Prehistoric West Virginia, or at the various exhibits he’s assembled. But one day in 2007, when Garton was exhibiting at the State Capitol rotunda in Charleston, Delegate Mike Burdiss of Wyoming County walked by the exhibit and struck up a conversation with the geologist. “I happened to mention the story of Megalonyx jeffersonii to him and he got really excited,” Garton remembers. He suggested to Burdiss that this ground sloth should be West Virginia’s state fossil. “He asked if I could provide a plan to submit on the floor. I already had it written. It took two sessions, and a year later, it happened.”
Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 28 passed on March 8, 2008. The bill also designated an official state reptile, the timber rattler, but the section on the state fossil reads as follows:
“Whereas, The designation of a state fossil would aid in the promotion of interest in geology, paleontology and history; and Whereas, The bones afford an opportunity for special studies in American, state and natural history for the students of the state; and Whereas, Thirty-nine of the 50 states have an official state fossil; therefore, be it resolved by the Legislature of West Virginia that the Legislature hereby designates … the fossil Megalonyx jeffersonii as West Virginia’s state fossil.”
The legislation was written by Garton, his wife, Mary Ellen, Beckley resident Hassan Amjad, and Morgantown’s Robert Pyle and Dave Phillips. They’re all part of the state’s small but tight-knit paleontological community that includes academics from West Virginia University and Marshall University as well as “a great group of amateur paleontologists who share new discoveries with us via calling, emailing, or texting,” Garton says.
“There are dozens, if not hundreds, of interesting found fossils that people have in their homes, and we don’t know what they are.”
E. Ray Garton, geologist and curator of the Museum of Geology and Natural History
Many of those paleontologists spent the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s looking for fossils in caves around the state. White-nose syndrome—the disease that has claimed the lives of millions of bats—has largely put an end to that activity since many caves are now off-limits to spelunkers, even though Garton believes there’s so much more to find down below. Because the temperature and humidity do not change and there’s little danger of interference by scavengers and other outside factors, animals’ remains are very well-preserved in these limestone tombs.
“The cave environment represents a very stable environment,” he says.
But he says there also might be important finds hiding in the homes of some residents of the state, as fossils are known to be passed down through generations as keepsakes. “There are dozens, if not hundreds, of interesting found fossils that people have in their homes, and we don’t know what they are,” Garton says. “I shudder to think of the amazing fossils out there and what they can teach us. I just hope that people know they can bring those to us, so we can learn more.”
For now, Garton is encouraged to know that SCR 28 may help to spread that message. “I just thought it was an educational opportunity for West Virginia, a chance for us to learn about our natural history,” Garton says, laughing. “It was just an idea I had a decade ago.” garton@prehistoricplanet.com.