Mammoth discovery near Snowmass Village is of…
Mammoth discovery near Snowmass Village is of rare unfossilized bones
PUBLISHED Tuesday, Oct., 19, 2010- Archeologists looking for additional mammoth bones work in a sectioned-off area surrounded by construction of a reservoir project just outside Snowmass Village, where the bones of the prehistoric creature were discovered last Thursday. Photo by Heather Rousseau/Aspen Daily News
bones of ancient beast displayed. Alura Potamkin, right, of Aspen and Jessie Bright of Basalt ogle part of a mammoth skeleton Wednesday at the Snowmass Water and Sanitation District building. The 10-year-old girls, who are students at Aspen Country Day School, attended a district board meeting, which considered an offer by the Denver Museum of Nature & Science to pay for excavating and preserving the skeleton in exchange for ownership. The bones of the ice-age creature, possibly 30,000 years old, were dug up by a bulldozer from a peat bog last week outside Snowmass Village. "This is the most complete high-elevation mammoth we have ever found in Colorado," said Ian Miller, a paleontologist with the museum. story, 1B
Dr. Robert Mutaw, an archeologist, holds a spinal disc belonging to a mammoth that was discovered just outside of Snowmass Village last week. Archeologists, behind, use shovels to scrape loose dirt on the surface in search of further remains from the prehistoric mammal.
By Jason Blevins | jblevins@denverpost.com | The Denver Post
PUBLISHED: October 20, 2010 at 4:05 p.m. | UPDATED: May 5, 2016 at 8:15 a.m.
SNOWMASS VILLAGE — In a valley pocked with the decaying bones of dormant building projects, the recent unearthing of a well-preserved and intact mammoth skeleton has triggered a celebration.
"It's nice to be talking about something exciting for a change," said Jack Hatfield, commissioner for Pitkin County, where the recession's pinch has idled dozens of construction projects.
The potentially 30,000-year-old bones of an Ice Age mammoth were pried from a peat bog last week as crews worked to deepen a water-storage reservoir on the outskirts of Snowmass Village.
"It's definitely a treasure trove," said Ian Miller, a paleontologist with the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, as he first visited Ziegler Reservoir on Wednesday.
Beneath the lifts of Snowmass ski area, bulldozers churn around a gated quadrant where orange flags mark vertebrae bones the size of salad plates peeking from the muck. Last Thursday, a dozer operator stilled his machine as brown, symmetrically stacked bones began to pile on his blade.
"We all stood around this pile of bones just mesmerized with what we were seeing," said Kit Hamby, manager of the Snowmass Water and Sanitation District, which began expanding the 15-acre reservoir a month ago.
Six days later, nearly 20 percent of the juvenile mammoth's bones had been recovered. There's a femur, tibia, several ribs and vertebrae, a scapula and jawbones with intact molars the size of footballs. Scientists armed with ground-penetrating radar are planning a meticulous excavation to search for more. Early tests indicate the skull may be nearby.
While mammoth bones are not uncommon finds in Colorado, this site is significant because the bones are not fossilized; they've been preserved in an oxygen-deprived layer of peat sandwiched between several feet of silt and clay. (Scientists hope they can extract soft tissue or even DNA from inside the perfectly protected bones.) And it's a nearly complete skeleton, a real rarity.
"As far as we can tell, this is the most complete high-elevation mammoth we have ever found in Colorado," said Miller, noting that the weather and rocky conditions of mountainous terrain are rarely hospitable to preserving remains.
"It's also one of the highest-elevation mammoths ever found," said Bob Mutaw, an archaeologist with the URS Corp. engineering firm who specializes in delicate resource excavations.
Carbon-dating tests, measurements of bones and closer study of the teeth will reveal whether this animal is a rare woolly mammoth or a more common and smaller Columbian mammoth, both extinct species that roamed North America for more than 1.5 million years before disappearing 10,000 to 15,000 years ago.
The water-district board is mulling an offer by the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, which would bear the cost of excavating and preserving the skeleton in exchange for ownership of the bones. The museum would put the bones on display and offer Snowmass Village a cast replica. With the unseasonably warm fall waning, there is a push to quickly explore the work site before the remains endure freezing weather.
"I feel there is a sense of urgency to make a decision soon," said water-district board chairman Doug Throm. Work on the reservoir expansion is ahead of schedule, so a delay for the remains' extraction would not hinder the project, Throm said.
On Wednesday, district officials offered a public viewing of the collected bones.
Julia Bensen's fifth-grade history class at the Aspen Country Day School just two days ago completed research projects on "mega-beasts of the Ice Age." Students penned reports on long-gone animals such as mastodons, saber-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths.
"But all the pictures we saw and the videos, they were all computer generated," said one of Bensen's students. "These are the real bones. It's good to see them for real."
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com
Jason Blevins | Mountain and Tourism Reporter — The Denver Post
Reporter Jason Blevins left The Post in 2018. He covered tourism, mountain business, skiing and outdoor adventure sports for both the business and sports sections.
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