Archaeology and Paleontology Programs
Did You Know…that the Colorado Department of Transportation Has Archaeology and Paleontology Programs?
By Tiffani Madle, Process Improvement Intern
August 31, 2018
Most people don’t know that the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) has both Archaeology and Paleontology Programs that are part of the Cultural Resources section of the Environmental Programs Branch. It’s important, however, not to confuse the two fields, as they are very different from each other. While archaeology is the study of cultural artifacts and human remains, paleontology is the study of fossils, which include the remains of plants, animals, and once-living organisms that pre-date humans and have been preserved in rock. The main function of these two programs is to assess and evaluate construction and maintenance sites for archaeological and paleontological resources as part of the environmental regulations required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
CDOT’s Archaeology Program has been around for almost 45 years and is currently led by Senior Staff Archaeologist, Dan Jepson. In a recent interview with Dan, he explained more about his work. “Building and maintaining transportation corridors generally entails a lot of earth moving, ground disturbance, and destruction of things. Archaeology is literally everywhere and the potential to encounter significant archaeological remains is always there, even in disturbed highway rights of way. My team is responsible for every CDOT construction project, maintenance action, and contractors who come into our rights of way to install utilities,” says Dan.
Dan Jepson
Senior Staff Archaeologist
Dan has encountered various artifacts from past human cultures, including basketry, pottery, spearheads, and tools made from bone and stone. In addition, Dan has also dealt with a number of human remains discoveries, most recently in Durango. According to Dan, the project in Durango has “seven archaeological sites in the new highway corridor and is in an area that has a high density of [prehistoric] Native American sites. We’ve completed excavations at one of the seven sites, during which human remains were discovered. That site is within the reservation of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe.” Dan has been working with the tribe to plan a reburial process.
CDOT’s Paleontology Program has been around for over 30 years and is currently overseen by Staff Paleontologist, Nicole Peavey. Nicole talked about her work and shared information about her paleontological finds since working with CDOT. “When [environmental] clearance requests get sent to us, I look at the outline of the project and review geologic maps, look at the topography, and read scientific literature to determine the sensitivity of the area.” Nicole then visits the site to see if there are any fossils that would be impacted by construction.
Nicole Peavey
Staff Paleontologist
While Nicole hasn’t found any identifiable dinosaur bones yet, she has come across some dinosaur tracks, leaves, and other fossils that date back many millions of years ago. For example, during CDOT’s US 6 and 19th Street interchange project, two partial baculite fossils that are approximately 70 million years old, were discovered during construction. Baculites are extinct squid-like marine creatures that lived inside of a long, tapered external shell during a time when Colorado was covered by an ocean. Other fossils found along the Front Range include tropical rainforest plants that appeared shortly after the dinosaurs went extinct. They tend to be fragile, so according to Nicole, “The best way to keep those fossils from cracking and disintegrating is to wrap them in a couple dozen layers of toilet paper and let them dry slowly.”
These programs are making important contributions towards preserving culture, history, and the environment while building and improving the state’s transportation system.
Examples of archaeological artifacts discovered on CDOT projects include historic medicine bottles and prehistoric projectile points, pottery fragments, and bone and stone tools.
Starting upper left and going clockwise: a Partial leaf from the Castle Rock Rainforest, unknown mammal bone from northeastern Colorado, two partial leaves from the Castle Rock Rainforest, partial baculite from the Front Range, a chunk of carbonized wood from the Denver Basin, clamshell probably from the Front Range.