DENVER—Excavation near a Colorado ski town is unearthing an Ice Age ecosystem that one museum curator described Friday as a candy store for paleontologists.
In recent weeks, museum workers have found the remains of three bison, an upper arm bone from a giant ground sloth, a juvenile Columbian mammoth and parts of five mastodons at the site near Snowmass Village in western Colorado.
The discovery of the five mastodons was particularly noteworthy: Prior to the unearthing this week, there had only been three other instances when traces of a mastodon were found in Colorado—in 1875, 1924 and last year. The relative of the elephant went extinct about 13,000 years ago.
“I’m proposing they change the (town’s) name to Snowmasstodon Village,” joked Kirk Johnson, chief curator and vice president for research and collections at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
Museum officials said diggers had also found the remains of a small deer-like animal, plant matter, fossilized snails and insects that were still iridescent.
“You don’t even have to be patient here to find stuff. You just have to stand around and out it comes,” Johnson said.
Crews haven’t found any artifacts that would show if humans walked among the prehistoric animals at elevations as high as 9,000 feet during the Ice Age, Johnson said.
The discovery of the bone Thursday belonging to the giant ground sloth marked the fourth time in Colorado that evidence of the animal has been found. The slow-moving beasts were herbivores as tall as 12 feet with arms as long as 10 feet.
Museum officials became aware of the site about 110 miles southwest of Denver on Oct. 14, when construction crews using a bulldozer to expand an 11-acre reservoir uncovered the tusk, lower jaw and a number of vertebrae belonging to the Columbian mammoth. Workers began a formal dig at the site this week and have struck paleontological gold.
Dr. Ian Miller, the museum’s curator of paleontology and chair of the Earth Science Department, said the unfolding ecosystem was “one of the most exciting discoveries I’ve ever worked on.”
Johnson said 25 workers were digging through dirt, pulling bones and racing to get as much done before cold weather freezes the ground.
The Denver museum is bringing in more experts from around the country to help, including University of Michigan paleontologist Daniel Fisher. He’s the guest curator for a traveling exhibit on mammoths and mastodons that opened at The Field Museum in Chicago.
Johnson said the site is providing scientists with a glimpse of Colorado during the Ice Age, when mountains “would’ve been chocked full of valley glaciers.”
“We’re going to get a really good handle of what this place looked like,” he said.
