Researchers identify Ice Age mammal found in Carlsbad Caverns

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KRQE Albuquerque
Researchers identify Ice Age mammal found in Carlsbad Caverns
Fallon Fischer
Wed, December 10, 2025 at 3:30 PM EST
2 min read



Researchers identify Ice Age mammal found in Carlsbad Caverns


CARLSBAD, N.M. (KRQE) – A team of researchers has identified an Ice Age relative of the muskox from fossils uncovered in Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

The new species, named Speleotherium logani, was identified in a paper by New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science paleontology curator Gary Morgan, along with Richard White, Jim Mead, and Sandy Swift of the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, South Dakota.

“New Mexico is known as a hotbed for dinosaur fossils, but discoveries like this remind us that our state’s fossil record extends long after the Cretaceous extinction,” said NMMNHS Executive Director Dr. Anthony Fiorillo in a news release. “This discovery offers new clues about what mammals were living in New Mexico during the last Ice Age.”

Speleotherium logani was named for researcher Lloyd Logan, the paleontologist who led the exploration uncovering the fossils in 1976 and 1977. These fossils, which include a perfect skull and much of the animal’s skeleton, were discovered in the Muskox Cave in Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

The fossils were stored in the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History for more than four decades.



Fossils from the Ice Age muskox relative Speleotherium logani found in Muskox Cave, Carlsbad Caverns National Park. (A) dorsal, (B) ventral, (C) right lateral, (D) left lateral, (E) posterior, and (F) reconstructed view. Drawn by Lloyd E. Logan (Usage: Courtesy of NMMNHS | Credit: Lloyd Logan)


The research team began to study the fossils in 2023 and realized that they belonged to a new species, a previously unknown relative of the muskox. Analyzing bones from the Muskox Cave collection allowed the researchers to identify bones of this new species from four other fossil sites, including U-Bar Cave in the Bootheel region of southwestern New Mexico, two caves in Mexico, and one cave in Belize.

“The discovery of Speleotherium in Muskox Cave and U-Bar Cave attests to the extraordinarily rich fossil record of Ice Age mammals in New Mexico,” Morgan said in the news release.

Speleotherium lived during the Late Pleistocene Period, which ended less than 12,000 years ago. The species is closely related to the modern muskox, found north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/researchers-identify-ice-age-mammal-203033084.html