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| Mammoth skull and tusks, with extra tusks |
26,000 years ago giant mammoths bent to get a drink at a
warm water pool or perhaps to eat the grass that grew around the warm water in
a cold landscape, and fell into the water.
The pool had very steep sides and they couldn’t climb out. The animals eventually died and fell to the
bottom of the pool and became covered with silt. Fast forward to 1974, when a heavy equipment
operator was leveling a hill for a proposed subdivision. He unearthed a tusk, and stopped
working. He took the tusk to his son who
had studied geology and archeology in college.
The son contacted his former professor who fortunately happened to be a
mammoth expert.
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| Look at those tusks! |
Paleontologists determined the outside dimensions of the
pool because it was a different color
rock. They then built a building around
the dig so that visitors can see the bones as they are being unearthed all year
long. They leave as many of the bones in
place as they can so that you can see what it looks like as scientists are
working. When they need to dig down
another level, they stabilize and remove the bones.
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| Part of the dig, gives you an idea of the scale of the site |
Most of the animals are Columbian Mammoths, a larger cousin
of the Wooly Mammoth. There are a few
Wooly’s there, as well as Short Faced Bears and other smaller animals. You can also see footprints where later Mammoths walked over the mud as
the pool silted in.
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| It is all inside a building |
The site is fascinating.
The tour takes you along the perimeter of the pool. You meet “Napoleon Bone-Apart” a mostly
intact skeleton, “Beauty” an intact skull with tusks that somehow landed face
up, and “Murry Antoinette” a headless skeleton.
All of the Mammoth skeletons are from male animals. Modern Day elephants travel in matriarchal
packs, kicking out the young males when they reach maturity. Scientists think Mammoths may also have
lived that way, which might be an explanation for why there are only male
animals found in the dig. The female
Mammoths traveled in groups with their young, and might not have ventured to a
dangerous looking hot spring.
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| Paleontology tools |
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| More tools |
Scientists did a core sample of the dig, and believe that
there may be 40 more feet below the current level of the dig.
Wow!
Meanwhile, they are meticulously brushing away the soil, filtering it
for remains of small animals and occasionally finding a piece of a bigger
animal underneath.
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| Mammoth pelvis |
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| Almost complete skeleton |
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| Mammoth molars, size of a tennis shoe, and jaw |
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