Latest news with #SRSU
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Jacob Spurlock is the Lobo of the Year
Apr. 15—Jacob Spurlock, a senior Communication Studies major from Dallas, was named the 2024-25 Lobo of the Year for Sul Ross State University at the Honors Convocation on April 14. Spurlock will graduate from SRSU at the commencement ceremony on Friday, May 9, at 5:30 p.m. at the Pete P. Gallego Center. Spurlock was the Texas State University System Student Scholar Award recipient in 2024 and served as the president of the Student Government Association for the 2023-24 academic year. He has served as the president of the Xi Epsilon chapter of Lambda Pi Eta, the National Communication Association Honor Society, since 2022, and as the president of Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honor Society, since 2024. Spurlock is the recipient of multiple scholarship awards, including the McNair Scholar Program, the Paul and Teeby Forchheimer Communication Scholarship, the Henry Bertrand Jr., Memorial Scholarship, the Dr. D.J. Sibley Jr. Scholarship and the Charles B. David Scholarship. He has been named to the Dean's List following each of his semesters at Sul Ross and was a participant in the Student Research Symposium in 2023. Spurlock was the Outstanding Communication Student of the Year in 2022 and 2023. According to one of those who nominated him, he "is a man of integrity and strong moral beliefs. He is also a committed learner. When he starts talking about what he has learned about communication and personal interactions among individuals, he lights up. As he moves on to graduate school, Jake will represent Sul Ross State University well ... He truly has a servant's heart." Another wrote, "In his role as the president of the Student Government Association, I saw Jake embody what servant leadership is all about. He used his position to help others and to improve the campus and community for all. His public speaking and general communications skills greatly assisted him in these endeavors. I have also observed him graciously and professionally manage difficult situations, always seeking understanding and the common good." SRSU faculty and staff nominate students for Lobo of the Year each year in the spring. Nominees must be graduating in May or have done so in the fall or summer of the previous year, have an overall 3.0 GPA, display qualities of good citizenship and leadership, be active in student and/or community activities and may not have been a previous recipient of the award.
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Sul Ross geology students collect vertebra from Alamosaurus in BBNP
Apr. 10—Students from the Sul Ross State University Geology program visited Big Bend National Park in March on a research mission and to retrieve dinosaur bones belonging to Alamosaurus. Led by Dr. Jesse Kelsch, an assistant professor, and Dr. Thomas Shiller, an associate professor, participants included students in Stratigraphic Analysis and Structural Geology courses. The goals of the trip included conducting structural and stratigraphic analyses of Cretaceous — Eocene rocks and to retrieve a large vertebra belonging to Alamosaurus, a long-necked dinosaur that lived in North America during the Cretaceous Period. Alamosaurus is the largest known land-dwelling animal to have lived in North America. Fossils from the giant sauropod are known in the Big Bend but are usually fragmentary and poorly preserved. The specimen collected by SRSU belongs to one of the most complete skeletons in the area, originally collected and described by researchers from the University of Texas in the 1970s. Associated vertebrae were previously collected from the same quarry by Dr. Shiller and his students and are currently being studied in the SRSU paleontology lab. For more information about the Geology program, visit
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Texas hunter's ‘old stump' find was actually a rare mammoth tusk
A local visitor to the O2 Ranch believed he came across something special while hunting on the property in West Texas. But ranch manager Will Juett took some convincing. After researchers from Sul Ross State University (SRSU) descended on the historic property, Juett realized the discovery was indeed something special: It was an extremely rare mammoth tusk. 'I was skeptical when a deer hunter showed me a picture of what he thought was a fossil,' Juett said in a university announcement. 'I figured it was likely just an old stump.' The investigation began soon after Juett contacted Bryon Schroeder, a longtime acquaintance and director of SRSU's Center for Big Bend Studies (CBBS). Along with CBBS archeologist Erika Blecha and a few other colleagues, Schroeder's team traveled to O2 Ranch to examine the object found sticking out the ground in a creekbed's drainage area. 'We realized pretty quickly there was not more to the skeleton, just an isolated tusk that had been separated from the rest of the remains,' Schroeder explained. Researchers worked over two days to create a protective cast around the tusk for transport. After covering the fossil in plaster-soaked burlap strips, Schroeder's group then constructed a frame around the ranch discovery before hauling it to SRSU for further analysis. Although multiple mammoth and mastodon species existed across modern North America until roughly 12,000 years ago, few of the elephant relatives ever migrated into West Texas. According to Schroeder, only a single mammoth tusk excavated from the Trans-Pecos region has ever been carbon-dated—and that happened over 60 years ago. Even then, the process at the time was far less accurate than dating methods used today that can narrow down an age range to within 500 years. Schroeder believes a more precise estimate for the O2 Ranch tusk should be completed within the next few months. It's too early to determine the exact mammoth species just yet. But as Gizmodo noted, the tusk possibly belonged to a Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi), one of the only species documented in Texas. The Columbian mammoth was a distant cousin of the more recognizable woolly mammoth, but could still grow to around 13 feet tall while weighing around 10 tons. The reasons behind their eventual extinction remain debatable, but they likely died out due to a combination of factors including climate change and human hunting. It's a bit poetic, then, that hunting is what led humans back to one of these megafauna in 2025.
