Thunder Horses

The panel's Lakota name came before the scientists' Greek one. Lakota oral tradition linked the great fossil bones of the plains to wakíŋyaŋ, the thunder beings, and when Othniel Marsh of Yale named a brontothere genus in 1873 he called it Brontotherium, thunder beast, in their honor; Lakota leaders, Young Man Afraid of His Horses among them, had shown jawbones to the circle around him. Marsh's name lost out. Joseph Leidy's Megacerops of 1870 was older and now covers Marsh's animal. One Montana species, with horns forked at the tips, comes from the state's southeast.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Missouri Headwaters State Park — 3.3 mi
  Where the expedition named three rivers, and where the trappers who came back after it learned whose country it was.
• Madison Buffalo Jump State Park — 8.1 mi
  A limestone cliff where people drove bison over the edge for two thousand years, until horses made it unnecessary.

More markers nearby

• Colter's Run — 3.1 mi
• LaHood Park — 18 mi
• Lewis and Clark Expedition — 18 mi