Ancient fish named for Kansans

BY ROY WENZL and BECCY TANNER

The Wichita Eagle

In Science magazine this week, paleontologists are announcing the discovery of a new genus of ancient giant fish, uncovered in the chalk deposits of Kansas, Britain and elsewhere. And with that discovery comes the story of the relentless Kansas family that solved a fish science mystery.

The scientists named the new genus after the Bonner family of Leoti, who found the breakthrough specimen. The family for decades has hunted fossils in the bone-rich Niobrara chalk to salve the grief over their mother's death.

Bonnerichthys the scientists are calling it: 20 to 25 feet long, eyes 6 inches wide, a mouth that could have swallowed the eight Bonner children in one or two gulps.

The giant fish ate microscopic plankton, and that's a big deal to fish historians; they didn't know fish like that lived in the dinosaur age.

The Bonners have changed fish history. They did not know this on the day in 1971 that they hauled a giant fish head out of the chalk canyons along Twin Butte Creek.

* * *

Logan County in western Kansas is "Dust Bowl dry," as Orville Bonner says. The buttes where the Bonners hunted fossils are all chalk, yellow and tan, covered with yucca and shortgrass, gorgeous in the low light of the western Kansas sun. It's oven-door hot in summer, with soil so light-colored that it sunburns fossil hunters from the ground up.

Marion, the father, ran his movie house at night, and by day hunted bones and teeth on land that looked like the deserts of movie-house westerns: dusty canyons and gullies with local topographical names including Hell Creek, Horse Thief Canyon, Rattlesnake Gulch. The chief residents, besides cattle, are rattlesnakes, hognose snakes and lesser earless lizards.

One day in 1971, Marion Bonner took his sons to Logan County along Twin Butte Creek. Dana said they drove out in "Spiker," a prehistoric-looking 1949 Chevy Suburban. They were rural Kansans scratching out a living: Dana, a high schooler, had spent part of the summer with a wheat harvest crew.

Chuck, a 21-year-old art major at Fort Hays State University, was the one who found the fish; he climbed to the top of a butte the Bonners called "The Big Place," a butte 40 feet tall from summit to valley floor.

In one of the chalk spires, Chuck saw something big and brown sticking out.

"Dark fossil bone," he said. "I did a little digging. I assumed it was a fin."

For four days, Marion Bonner dug out jumbled bones, applying plaster to hold them in place for study.

They had to let the bone pile down to Spiker on ropes.

* * *

Scientists love the Bonners, Marion and all his children: Orville, Clare-Jane, Letty, Steve, Chris, Chuck, Dana, and Melanie.

They hunted fossils for therapy, Dana said. His mother Margaret died of a heart attack in 1967.

"It's a very deep anchor for me on a spiritual level to go hunting fossils," Dana said.

Over the seven decades that Marion climbed and combed the chalk buttes and over the four decades his children accompanied him, the Bonners helped science immeasurably. When they found unusual-looking bones, they gave them to scientists and let them take published credit for the discoveries.

Their discoveries lay now in museums in Kansas, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere. Scientists named discoveries after them: A few invertebrates.

Pecten bonneri, a small-fin fish. Pteranodon bonneri, a flying reptile. Niobrarateuthis bonneri, an ancient squid, found by Melanie.

* * *

Marion Bonner had no idea what to make of the pile of bones.

He told Orville to take them to the scientists.

Orville by that time was the preparator at the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas. He took the bones to KU paleontologist Larry Martin. Martin was impressed; he saw bone structures he'd never seen before, eye sockets 6 inches across.

A "barn-burner" of a fossil find, he said.

"An amazing big fish. I didn't know what it was. But I knew it was a big deal."

* * *

In the age of dinosaurs, North America was divided in two by the Western Interior Sea, and the Great Plains was a skeleton-covered sea bottom, the water above it home to sharks, squid, manta rays, giant clams, giant reptile mosasaurs and plesiosaurs, and plankton, a microscopic animal still thriving today.

It was plankton that fossilized into oil and gas; it is plankton that feeds the biggest animals on the planet, planktivores, including baleen whales, basking sharks and manta rays. It is a paradox in biology that the world's biggest animal eats the world's smallest food item.

Until this week, fish paleontologists were always puzzled about why they never found any planktivores in the fossil record.

* * *

For decades at KU, Larry Martin showed the bones to fish scientists whenever he could talk them into peeking into the box in Dyche Hall. But none could decipher what the fish head was telling them.

There were no real body bones; mostly skull and huge front fins. No teeth.

Martin, by now an expert on dinosaurs, small ancient mammals, saber-toothed cats, ancient birds and many other creatures, was beginning to suspect that the Bonner fish, like today's baleen whale, was a "filter feeder." If so, this was a huge find.

Eventually he let a commercial company take the fish head to Colorado and prepare it.

In Colorado, a fish scientist completing his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, Matt Friedman, saw the fish head — and became the first scientist to grasp the significance.

He called Martin and got permission to study it.

Over the course of time, Friedman went to work in England for the University of Oxford's Department of Earth Sciences. What he saw were long, toothless jaws supporting a gaping mouth, long bones that braced the gill arches needed to filter huge quantities of plankton-filled water.

By that time, Friedman had connected dots; he'd found other specimens of other species of this genus, in Britain and Japan, mis-identified; the scientists had not seen what they were.

As Friedman closed in on identifying the new genus, paleontologist Mike Everhart of Derby, an expert on the Western Interior Sea, was digging up a specimen in Gove County, more complete than the Bonner fish.

Suddenly scientists could paint a more complete picture of the ancient seas, now including these giants.

They were a successful genus; they thrived 172 million years ago, and died 65 million years ago along with the dinosaurs.

* * *

Finding a new species, which the Bonners did several times over many years, is a big deal. Opening the door to discovering an entire new genus is even bigger. A genus is a grouping of related animals; wolves and dogs, for example, are members of the genus Canis. Donkeys, horses and zebras: Equus. The Bonners added a new genus to the list of nature's creations.

Marion Bonner died in 1992, age 81. He had spent seven decades contributing considerably to science.

Friedman named the fish genus Bonnerichthys after the family; the species they found in Logan County is Bonnerichthys gladius.

Marion's children still hunt bones and teeth, and still ride Spiker.

Bonnerichthys.

"It's pretty interesting," Orville Bonner said.

"We never had an entire genus named after us before."

Reach Roy Wenzl at 316-268-6219 or rwenzl@wichitaeagle.com.

Ungrateful Spoiled Brats

Jay Leno puts it into perspective and makes us think about our pathetic negativity.

That's right, Jay Leno!!

Jay Leno wrote this; it's the Jay Leno we don't often see....

"The other day I was reading Newsweek magazine and came across some poll
data I found rather hard to believe. It must be true, given the source, right?

The Newsweek poll alleges that 67 percent of Americans are unhappy with
the direction the country is headed, and 69 percent of the country is
unhappy with the performance of the President. In essence, 2/3's of the
citizenry just ain't happy and want a change.

So being the knuckle dragger I am, I started thinking, ''What are we so
unhappy about?''

Is it that we have electricity and running water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?

Is our unhappiness the result of having air conditioning in the summer and
heating in the winter?

Could it be that 95.4 percent of these unhappy folks have a job?

Maybe it is the ability to walk into a grocery store at any time, and see
more food in moments than Darfur has seen in the last year?

Maybe it is the ability to drive from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic
Ocean without having to present identification papers as we move through
each state?

Or possibly the hundreds of clean and safe motels we would find along the
way that can provide temporary shelter?

I guess having thousands of restaurants with varying cuisine from around
the world is just not good enough.

Or could it be that when we wreck our car, emergency workers show up and
Provide services to help all, and even send a helicopter to take you to the hospital.

Perhaps you are one of the 70 percent of Americans who own a home. You may
be upset with knowing that in the unfortunate case of a fire, a group of
trained firefighters will appear in moments and use top notch equipment to
extinguish the flames thus saving you, your family and your belongings.

Or if, while at home watching one of your many flat screen TVs, a burglar
or prowler intrudes , an officer equipped with a gun and a bullet-proof
vest will come to defend you and your family against attack or loss.

This all in the backdrop of a neighborhood free of bombs or militias
raping and pillaging the residents. Neighborhoods where 90 percent of
teenagers own cell phones and computers.

How about the complete religious, social and political freedoms we enjoy
that are the envy of everyone in the world?

Maybe that is what has 67 percent of you folks unhappy.

Fact is, we are the largest group of ungrateful, spoiled brats the world
has ever seen. No wonder the world loves the U.S. , yet has a great
disdain for its citizens. They see us for what we are. The most blessed
people in the world who do nothing but complain about what we don't have ,
and what we hate about the country instead of thanking the good Lord we
live here.

I know, I know. What about the President who took us into war and has no
plan to get us out? The President who has a measly 31 percent approval
rating? Is this the same President who guided the nation in the dark days
after 9/11? The President that cut taxes to bring an economy out of
recession? Could this be the same guy who has been called every name in
the book for succeeding in keeping all the spoiled ungrateful brats safe
from terrorist attacks?

The Commander-In Chief of an all-volunteer army that is out there
defending you and me? Did you hear how bad the Presi dent is on the news or
talk show? Did this news affect you so much, make you so unhappy you
couldn't take a look around for yourself and see all the good things and be glad?

Think about it...are you upset at the President because he actually caused
you personal pain OR is it because the "Media" told you he was failing to
kiss your sorry ungrateful behind every day.

Make no mistake about it. The troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have
volunteered to serve, and in many cases may have died for your freedom.
There is currently no draft in this country. They didn't have to go.

They are able to refuse to go and end up with either a ''general'' discharge
an ''other than honorable'' discharge or, worst case scenario, a '
dishonorable'' discharge after a few days in the brig.

So why then the flat-out discontentment in the minds of 69 percent of
Americans? Say what you want, but I blame it on the media. If it bleeds,
it leads; and they specialize in bad news. Everybody will watch a car
crash with blood and guts. How many will watch kids selling lemonade at
the corner? The media knows this and media outlets are for-profit
corporations. They offer what sells , and when criticized, try to defend
their actions by justifying" them in one way or another. Just ask why
they tried to allow a murderer like O.J. Simpson to write a book about
"how he didn't kill his wife, but if he did he would have done it this
way"... Insane!

Stop buying the negativism you are fed everyday by the media. Shut off the
TV, burn Newsweek, and use the New York Times for the bottom of your bird
cage. Then start being grateful for all we have as a country. There is
exponentially more good than bad.

We are among the most blessed people on Earth, and should thank God
several times a day, or at least be thankful and appreciative.

"With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding,
severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and
with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, "Are we sure this is a
good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?"

Jay Leno
2007