A reconstruction of the skull of the ancient beaver Anchitheriomys buceei. The ancient beaver lived in Texas 15 million years ago and was about 30% larger than North American beavers living today.
(UT Austin / Jackson School of Geosciences / Matthew Brown)
Matthew Brown (left) and Steven May with beaver skulls new and old in the vertebrate paleontology collections at the Jackson School of Geosciences. Brown, the director of the collections, holds a skull from a modern North American Beaver. May, a research associate, holds a skull from Anchitheriomys buceei, a new species of ancient beaver that he discovered in the collections.
(UT Austin / Jackson School of Geosciences)
A graphic comparing the size of Anchitheriomys buceei with an average North American Beaver and an average man in the United States. Outlined in white are fossil bones in the UT collections, including a partial skull and jaw, and portions of the radius and ulna that make up the elbow.
(UT Austin / Jackson School of Geosciences/ National Center for Health Statistics/ USDA Forest Service)
A partial skull fossil from the ancient beaver Anchitheriomys buceei (on right) alongside a skull reconstruction.
(UT Austin / Jackson School of Geosciences / Matthew Brown)
A view of the Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Collections at the Jackson School of Geosciences where fossils from the ancient beaver are held. The rows of cabinets contain just a portion of the state’s vertebrate fossil collections. It holds more than 250,000 catalogued specimens and is estimated to have three times that many collected. It ranks among the seven largest collections of fossil vertebrates in North America.
( UT Austin / Jackson School of Geosciences)
DALLAS - Scientists at the University of Texas in Austin were inspired by the state’s popular gas station when they named an ancient beaver species.
The species is now called Anchitheriomys Buceei or Buceei for short.
The beaver fossil was actually found in 1941 but had never been studied. Research on UT’s fossil collection led to the rediscovery.
The scientists said naming the bones after Buc-ee’s was a no-brainer.
BEAVERS BRING RELIEF TO DROUGHT-STRICKEN CALIFORNIA
Brody Bailey, 3, and Laynee Laws, 4, from Mabank, Texas, enjoy slushes at Buc-ee's in Terrell, Texas, Saturday, July 13, 2019. (Allison V. Smith for The Washington Post / Getty Images)
"Steve was driving back from the field and saw a billboard that said this is beaver country. And that just lit up in his head. It’s been beaver country for 22 million years," said Matthew Brown, the director of the Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Collections at UT’s Jackson School of Earth History.
The extinct beaver species lived along the Gulf Coast.
The animals were about 30% larger than modern-day beavers.