Narration: A production of the South Carolina Educational Television Network Jim: Nature Scene is made possible in part by viewer donations to the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

Additional funding is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

♪ This is Badlands National Park in southwestern South Dakota.

It covers 244,300 acres of the White River Badlands which extend for some 100 miles, but it's more than dry canyons and tall spires.

The park is also a remnant of one of the world's greatest grasslands, rich and life this area covers some 60% of the National Park and provides a stark contrast to the barren rock formations.

Hello, I'm Jim Welch with naturalist Rudy Mancke.

Welcome to this edition of Nature Scene, Rudy, I have a feeling that this is going to be an exciting half hour.

Rudy: Well it will be very exciting because we're going to get a chance to see a part of the United States that always intrigued me.

The Great Plains.

Rudy: And we're going to talk about the mixed grass prairie that's so typical of plains.

And then a lot of the animals that you would expect to be here hopefully will arrive today we'll take a close look at them.

A very interesting part of the United States Indians, of course, knew this area before the white man did.

And I'd really very much like it was then we've modified it some but thank goodness for trying to put things back together the way they were to which is interesting.

One of the animals that really dominated probably 60 million or so of them roaming these prairies in Great Plains, in the 1800's are the animals that are behind us.

A buffalo is usually the name for those that we give but bison might be if you're really picky might be a little more correct name.

Tremendously large animals and if you can imagine 60 million or so in the prairie midsection of the United States and all the way east you see, they used to range all the way basically to the East Coast.

And then their numbers have been depleted.

Jim: Bulls and cows both have horns?

Rudy: Yeah, they do horns are found on both sexes generally quite different from antlers.

And then you can also see just take a look at those out there the shaggy hair a lot of it being shed much of that is the winter coat that they will rub off on trees sometimes or roll around you know wallow on the ground, kick up a lot of dust as they're kicking, trying to get rid of some of that hair.

Imagine it's kind of itchy this time of year.

And they're grazers you know head down grazing on the grasses here in the in the prairie.

Jim: Not many predators to bother them.

They made a big comeback.

Rudy: No coyotes I imagine could get some of the younger ones.

But again, the adult is is a major dominant animal and they used to migrate through here really moving through feeding on the plants that still dominate here, the grasses and as you look all around us here, I mean, you can see the grasses with fruit on and blowing in the in the breeze.

And look at that just rolling hills of the Great Plains material that was once part of the Rocky Mountains and the Black Hills to the west eroded away and now got spread over this way.

There's one other look at the plants flowering over here.

Off to the side.

See them look at those beautiful of beautiful yellow flowers on prickly pear and that one is known usually as the plains prickly pear.

That species does best on the Great Plains where we are right now.

All those bison are fantastic.

There's another animal though that I always think of when I think of the Great Plains and that is the prairie dog.

So why don't we head off in this direction and see if we can find a few of those.

Breeze really does feel nice.

Jim: Summer temperatures is such an extreme from winter times.

Rudy: And one of the ways really to keep from having to put up with those really hot temperatures is to dig in the ground.

And that's what the prairie dogs have done here.

This is really a prairie dog town that we're walking in.

<Like a colony.> Yeah.

And you can see that the hole is, you know, fairly large.

So we're talking about a pretty good sized rodent in the squirrel family, great diggers and excavators.

And you also see looking in front of the mound here see the way they keep the vegetation really fairly low around it.

So they'll have a good position to look out and see enemies approaching and as you've noticed, as we are here, I mean, they're not sticking their heads out of the burrows, they're deep down inside.

Jim: They stand up and take a look at us.

Rudy: Stand up and take a look.

Yeah, oh yeah.

Yeah, there's one in the distance down there.

Come up a little bit.

You can see the way they also have alert calls they sound a little bit like dogs yapping so the name prairie dogs see the way the tail jerks up when he's making the sound kind of far away can hardly hear the sound but black tailed prairie dog is the species here and doing doing fairly well and even when he's not up it's obvious that they're digging.

Jim: How many of them how many do they have in a given litter?

Rudy: Three to six or eight or so and really this would be the time of the year to see the young poking their heads out of the burrows good time of the year to be here early summer.

<Chubby little fellas.> Yeah feed on vegetation mainly feed on the vegetation right around them.

That's where they get the water too see that would be a problem here.

They get water from the from the vegetation.

Now this is a town but there are other members in town besides prairie dogs.

Look over there.

Look at the burrowing owl right there.

<Oh yeah.> see the bird standing up good view there and look at the other bird right here in front see coming over this way moving around through the grasses.

Horned Lark is the common name for that one.

Hard to see the horns on it but dark lines around the eyes and a dark patch right on the breast will get a yellow too.

<Smaller than a meadow lark?> Yeah smaller bird and see this is a true Lark.

Now Meadowlark isn't a true Lark.

This one is the true Lark horned lark common name for it.

Now there's another burrowing owl look at it in the distance on the prairie dog hole and kinda see the way, bob up and down and do they live in the hole live in the hole and find meals here that's shelter and then also looking for, for small animals to feed on in association with this prairie dog town.

Fantastic.

Now look, look in the distance moving along.

Another typical prairie animal.

<Antelope?> Well it's not a true antelope, but we call it a pronghorn antelope.

Pronghorn is really a good name for it.

I don't see any horns on those must be immature ones but both sexes have horns moving along look at that white really white rump patch and when they're very excited.

Yeah, there they go bouncing away look at that bouncing see running on the tips of their toes.

<Different from a deer.> Yeah.

And that's really only a North American animal.

And pretty fast.

Those things can move 40 miles an hour or more.

So that's the fastest land animal you know, animals that run in, in North America.

And those are browsers.

Remember the buffalo or the bison are grazing on low grasses.

Those things browse on shrubs and, and other higher plants.

Gosh, that's a beautiful animal.

And so typical again of prairies, there's one other thing that's typical here, most of the vegetation cut down.

Look at the flowers.

There one of the Mallows.

Scarlet Globe Mallow is one name.

Better name for me, though.

Cowboys Delight.

Jim: Because it brightens up the landscape.

Rudy: And of course, most of the vegetation here is low.

But look out here where there's still grasses growing tall, and other wildflowers coming up.

The upright prairie coneflower we're look at it Jim with the yellow Ray flowers hanging down.

And then that cone like cluster of disc flowers.

Interesting, beautiful flower, one of the composites.

And then there's another composite nearby with pale purple ray flowers and that's pale purple cone flower.

Doing very well and again, a typical species here.

Jim: More than half the Badlands of prairie and there's more to see.

Rudy: Okay prairie grasslands really do slope down here.

Really probably following a bison trail here.

Jim: Rudy, the early pioneers must have felt the grasslands would go on forever.

Rudy: Well, they're interesting places, aren't they?

And really a little drop like this, I imagine makes it a little more moist and cooler along in here.

And that's good for quite a few different plants and animals I'm sure.

Whoa, right over here, Jim.

Look right here.

Listen to the rattle just beginning to shake just a tiny bit tongue flickering out backing up from us.

Common name for that is the prairie rattlesnake.

Jim: Is it a lot different from the eastern variety rattlesnake?

Rudy: Yeah, well it didn't get nearly as large look at the blotches on the back to and blotched on the side and the yellow line Jim on the side of the head are typical that back when running along the side of his head, look at the tongue flickering out trying to get a smell of the animal that's bothering him.

I know it must be hot here in the sunlight, but coiling up pretty good way to keep part of your body cool and of course that's the best way to strike.

Jim: He would rather spend his time in a gopher hole I guess.

Rudy: Yeah, they usually get in gopher holes or prairie dog holes and then feed on small prairie dogs or birds if they can get them birds or mammals.

But coiled up as you see not always rattling.

See the rattle isn't always used but it is there.

It's just dried skin really part of the skin that was normally shed that stays on the body of this snake common on the Great Plains.

Jim: That rattle could worn bison away from it.

Rudy: Absolutely.

That's an interesting connection.

That's right because the bison doesn't eat the rattlesnake and the rattlesnake certain couldn't make meal of the bison, but they don't see well and yet they can hear that vibration maybe that protects the snake from being killed and also protects the bison a little bit.

Look at those markings it eases away.

blotches on the back pretty good size head compared to his neck, flickering out that tongue, trying to follow probably a trail of an animal to a hole.

Imagine he's more than willing to get out of the sun pretty soon.

Rattlesnakes always amaze me anyway, North American snakes the greatest diversity of them in the Southwest where the bison roamed and maybe that warning device is the real function of the rattle on the end.

Jim: For us to leave it alone and let it go on its way.

Rudy: Best to be left alone and of course protected like everything else is protected in Badlands National Park.

Jim: Visitors should be careful but I feel very lucky we saw a rattlesnake.

Rudy: You don't really expect to see them out especially this time of day when it's so warm.

That's an amazing animal to watch it move though along the hillside.

Now the world is clearly changing we said it probably would on the backside of the prairie little slope, more moisture and now we've got actually got some trees to look at.

Well, not many but <What kind is it Rudy?> really rocky mountain Juniper is the common name for this.

One of the conifers evergreen look at the fruit on it Jim you can see the fruit pretty clearly, berry like cones.

And on a really hot day.

You can imagine maybe that snake would find some shade here and rabbits might find some shade here, and take a look at what else uses this thing.

Jim: Bison, bison have been here.

Rudy: Some of that winter fur, has been scraped off.

Jim: Easy to understand how it can keep the animal warm.

Rudy: Oh yeah, that's nice, very fine hair that works well in the winter and then they scrape it off this season of the year.

And sometimes it does come off in big hunks like that.

The color is again distinctive of the of the bison.

Interesting and that's a modification of the skin now just like that horny.

Covering on the horn we looked at earlier is a modification of scales really in the skin.

Jim: Here it is mid June with hot summer coming on.

It'll want to get rid of this.

Rudy: Oh yeah, you don't need the insulation.

Certainly when it gets that hot.

I keep struggling with the difference between Buffalo and bison we said this.

The scientific name for that animal is "bison bison" and that's another reason why bison is the more proper name.

And so typical of this area.

There's something else It's so typical of this area look at the flower what looks like the sun shining.

Jim: Much like a sunflower.

Rudy:That is the common sunflower that's scattered all over the place state flower of Kansas but it's all over the Great Plains and the prairies doing very well another one of those composites with ray flowers and disc flowers like we saw earlier and look at that view spread out right in front of us.

Jim: From the smallest flower to view that goes on miles and miles.

Rudy: And you see vegetation trees in the low areas a little bit more than the higher areas and in the Badlands beyond work of water and a good bit of time.

And I think it's time now really to head on down toward some some water and see how the world changes there.

Let's just put that back yeah, let somebody else find it and read the signs like we read the signs here.

♪ The creek is really sliced out a nice section for us here Jim.

Jim: This is about as low as we can get in here.

Rudy: Sage Creek is what's doing the work.

And the exposure of rock is the oldest rock that you see really obviously exposed in the Badlands.

Upper Cretaceous age about 65 to 80 million years or so old.

Pierre shale is the name for it the way it breaks down and collapses, coming down to the creek as the creek works toward it.

And that tells us about an old ocean that was here in the past really an inland sea that went all the way up into what is now Canada.

Now, how would you know that was ocean?

Jim: Good question.

We're standing allegedly on the bed of an old ocean.

But yeah, Where's the proof?

Rudy: We've got to find some fossils.

And often when this material comes down, look right there.

See that sort of rounded thing there.

Grab that and just look as we walk across here at other fossils that probably here's another hunk right here.

<The way this one shines and glistens.> Yeah, here's another piece right here.

And the type of fossils really let us know that this is in fact, or was in fact, ocean.

Jim: This looks like a clam.

Rudy: And you're absolutely right Jim, this is one of the large claims it was living in that Cretaceous age ocean.

Not really so much of the shell itself.

Although you see a little bit of shiny material there that is actual shell.

But the shell was filled in with material that solidified and formed really a cast we call it of the clams body.

See the two little sort of projections almost like noses on the two valves or the clamp.

And then you can also see the line there the connection between the two valves, even left a scar on the on the cast.

That tells us ocean there's also another mollusk that was here.

This is really a strange one.

And a smooth on one side, a little bit of that mother of pearl, leftover shell but you see the spine on it.

Ridge.

This was actually a coiled mollusk that was known as an ammonite very much like a chambered nautilus.

Today, tentacles and everything else.

These are now extinct.

But they were doing very well in that old ocean along with a relative and look at this.

Now look at this and look at the shine on it.

Jim: That mother of pearl again.

This was an uncoiled ammonite called baculites.

And really these things have little chambers you can see on the end there, nice smooth division between the chambers.

And that lets us know that this isn't just nature made but this is actually an animal's body that was filled with this material.

It is amazing to read the clues in the fossils.

Jim: Is that just part of what might have been a bigger animal?

Rudy: Yeah they got you know four or five feet or longer sometimes.

Isn't that amazing?

Leaving their fossils behind.

Jim: Another link with the past.

Rudy looking down the creek there's a lot of animal activity where the road crosses the creek.

Rudy: Yeah, right under that bridge.

Let's head that way in a second.

We're gonna take a look right over here.

Here's one other tree we haven't seen many.

This one always says water in the western United States and on the Great Plains.

One of the cottonwoods look at the leaves blowing in the breeze up there Jim <Some old cottonwoods.> Yeah and always associated with water and of course the creek here we put these down and head on down toward that bridge.

You said animal activity you really meant it Jim look at this.

Jim: Hundreds of birds.

Rudy: Yeah they look almost like bats at first but these are swallows.

Common name for them are cliff swallows but they not only build nests along cliffs, they take advantage of bridges because they need a little bit of shelter.

Just get out of the out of the sunlight into the shade here for a moment.

Oh, yes.

Oh my goodness.

Jim: Nests everywhere you look nest on land.

Rudy: See what the nest is made out of, mud.

Mud nests.

So you need a little bit of sheltered area to build that nest.

And you can see almost looking at it the mouthfuls of mud that those cliff swallows pick up and then fly here and put it in place sort of jug shaped nests.

And look at the little nose on the nest so to speak, pointing down the opening, pointing down and then flattens out of course once you get inside, Look at the birds coming and just going in to look at it perfect fit slipping right in and the nesting material is in there.

And I imagine there are lots of young birds in there.

We don't want to keep them away from the nest too terribly long.

And why would I guess lots of young in there probably?

Jim: You look around and you can see eggshells.

Rudy: Look at the egg shells all over the place.

So that must mean that there are lots of young birds in there that are mouth open needing to be fed.

These are insect feeders so they fly away and head out for a meal.

Looking at one or two of them sticking their heads out.

You can see a little light colored almost triangular shaped marking on the front of the head.

This swallow doesn't have the real long tails like a barn swallow would, but able to hover in position and then scoot right into the nest sometimes even clinging on to the side.

insect eaters, cliff swallows Wow, that is absolutely phenomenal.

Let's head on to another area where we got lots of mud and clay, the Badlands.

♪ Jim: Throughout the Badlands are so many places along the road for tourists and visitors to stop and take some time to appreciate.

Rudy: Yeah, and it's so many breathtaking views of the world.

And I think this is one of them that will give us a feeling for a lot of the material that really we've been walking on but could not see before.

Nature has scooped out a large area here exposing cities, material that was brought in and dumped here Oh 23 to 38 million years ago or so.

Oligocene or Oligocene times.

And boy, there's some interesting fossils in that material.

This is really why we call this the Badlands I suppose.

You can't grow crops on it.

Can't graze cattle on it.

Not much water.

Jim: But the beauty of it.

And off in the distance Rudy it looks almost like Castle fortresses.

Or some might say over here, it looks like cities, old cities that have skyscrapers left in there.

Rudy: Well you can see layers and those layers out there are like pages in a book.

And when you know how to read the book, it'll tell you a great deal about early mammal life in North America.

The White River Badlands is a common name for this view way in the distance would be the White River, we can't really see that from here.

But it and its tributaries have helped erode away this material.

Rain falling, heating and cooling that kind of thing.

Jim: And the rate of erosion is going to differ depending on the soil it's falling on.

Rudy: I think it'd be interesting to see if we can find some remains of those early mammals and compare them to the mammals that we've been looking at already on this modern day prairie.

We see if we can just get down at an area that's not quite so steep, and see what we can find a little bit lower.

♪ Jim: Rudy this area of the Badlands itself is what I think of so many times when I think of the Badlands and I think millions of tourists come to see to some degree.

Rudy: You can see why the Sioux Indians named it first the Badlands is not a lot of water, pretty rough place to cross.

Jim: Dry and crumbly.

Rudy: Yeah it's now a lot of clay material to one of the nice things.

Look at this.

Just eroding right out here, turtle shell, Jim: We can see that it's bone of some type, Rudy, but how do you know it's turtle?

Rudy: Well, let me get down a little bit closer to it and use my hands to point out how I know Jim because look at the back here, you've got bone that goes all the way around both sides, I'll just outline it a little bit going on around to the front.

And then the top of this shell used to come all the way across in a dome, that connection is broken away, as you see filled with other bits of material.

But that was really a pretty good sized turtle.

Now fossilized.

Jim: The Badlands are said to be one of the richest places in the world for fossilized materials, Rudy: Especially for this you know age that we've been talking about.

Might be good to take a look at that view over here just to talk a little bit more now about how this material got here, and how it trapped bodies of lots of different animals.

Jim: Beautiful, and it's breathtaking.

Rudy: A lot of That Beauty really is in the different colors out there, Jim, which reflect different minerals that had been deposited.

Really all of this stuff, as we said earlier came from the West, probably from the Rockies of the Black Hills, eroding it bringing it in and depositing it really on a fairly flat plane, it was very lush.

A lot of plant fossils elsewhere tell us that there was a lot of water here.

And a great diversity of animals living in a rather lush forest.

And some of that material to now is volcanic from the west and southwest of here.

So it's a mixture of material.

Jim: It's some ash materials, you know, we think about how volcanoes and earthquakes can shape the world.

But what's happened here is even greater than that.

Rudy: That's right.

And you see the gullies you can see the trail where the runoff from the water has really gullied this place.

And as it cuts down through these different layers now it exposes fossils that give us clues to the to the past in this area that prove to us that the climate was quite different back in the past not nearly as dry as it is today.

As we walked up here, I noticed that thing down at the bottom look at this thing.

It's a fossil, I believe absolutely fantastic.

And really it's a skull of one of those animals.

Jim: Can you tell what kind of animal it was?

Rudy: The common mammal at that point in time was called an oreodont, Jim lots of skeletal material has been found here.

And I imagined that's what this is.

And there's actual bone here.

I mean, that's actually basically unchanged, bone on the top, and then the cavities in the skull you see had been filled in with lots of other materials.

So we have a cast of the skull as well as the skull itself.

And let me show you one thing if I can just ease it around so you can see it.

If we turn it sideways here, you can actually see See where the eye used to be.

Here's the zygomatic arch it's called a bone right here and see that space right in there was once filled with the eye of this plant eating animal.

Jim: Grazing much like sheep would graze.

Rudy: In large numbers they seem to live together and look, oh my goodness look at the teeth there with the enamel basically unchanged through these millions of years.

Teeth that are very useful in grinding plant material.

Isn't that phenomenal?

The way nature produces these fossils and the Badlands are noted for the abundance of fossils of this animal, the oreodont.

Jim: Rudy what other kinds of animals were here and what happened to them?

Rudy: All right, there were early camels that were doing well here, some horses, rhinoceroses were here.

There was a dog like animal predator that was here along with a saber toothed cat, many of them migrated away.

Others that stayed around died because of climate changes.

Finally, the lush environment changed were very dry one and it caused the death of these oreodonts and others.

Jim: What a great place to visit here at Badlands National Park in southwestern South Dakota.

We hope you enjoyed this edition of Nature Scene join us again next time.

Rudy: We put this down and why don't we head out in this direction Jim.

♪ Jim: Nature Scene is made possible in part by viewer donations to the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

Additional funding is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Narration: To purchase a copy of this program called 1-800-553-7752.

Visit our online store at www.scetvstore.org Or write to the address on your screen.