Virtual Vacation
On the way west to Yellowstone in September 2010 we stayed in the South Dakota Black Hills for a few days. One of the most interesting places we visited was The Mammoth Site at Hot Springs, SD.
For centuries the fossilized bones of many mammoths were buried here but no one knew, until 1974 when they were discovered accidentally during excavating and leveling of a small hill for a housing development, when the bulldozer exposed the Mammoth Site.
The worker hit something large with the bulldozer blade. After realizing that he had struck something unusual, the worker stopped to see what he had hit. What he saw was a tusk, about seven feet long, sliced in half length wise, along with other bones.
This is a reconstruction of a Columbian mammoth, they were big.
The landowner contacted three universities and colleges in South Dakota and one university in Nebraska, none of them were interested in finding out what had been discovered. They should have been interested! Then the landowner’s son contacted a former college professor who taught archaeology and told him what they thought had been found. Several people spent 10 days excavating and were very excited.’ an unprecedented number of specimens were uncovered’.
More than 26,000 years ago, large Columbian and woolly mammoths were trapped and died in a spring-fed pond/sinkhole near what is now the southwest edge of Hot Springs, South Dakota. This is the dig site, now enclosed with a walkway that lets you get close enough to make out the details of the body parts.
Columbian mammoths were much larger than their northern woolly mammoth cousins. They were about 12-14 feet tall at the shoulders. There are 3 Columbian mammoth skulls in this photo, though I'm not sure if I can tell which parts are which.
These are mammoth molars, they had six sets of molars, that wore down over time and were then replaced by the next set, when the 6th set wore out the mammoth was about 60 years old and after that could no longer eat.
This is a mammoth spine, I think
Look at the size of these tusks
This must have been a juvenile, his tusks are much smaller, and yes him, apparently the mammoths found here were all male.
When we were there the mammoth count was 61, 58 Columbian mammoths and 3 woolly mammoths. Most of the bones have been left in situ, just as they were found, and excavation takes place around them. Fossils of many other animals have also been found including camel, llama, giant short-faced bear, wolf, coyote and prairie dog.
This is a reconstruction of the type of shelter that could have been made from mammoth bones
The Mammoth Site is now an indoor working paleontological dig site that is in a climate controlled building.
If you want to see more details in these pics, they are here https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:BrowsePhotos&l=32268647&p=1&t=&w=0&o=uploadeddn
