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Update from the mastodon dig near Snowmass Village
Thursday, July 30th 2026

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Update from the mastodon dig near Snowmass Village

Denver Museum of Nature & Science chief curator Kirk Johnson holds a sloth tooth, discovered in a bone bed exposed Wednesday afternoon near Snowmass Village. Crews are racing to clear the bed, anticipating that work excavating at Ziegler Reservoir for the season will be complete in the next few days. On Thursday, the museum received results of the first radiocarbon tests of samples of wood found near an American mastodon skull in the lowest layer of the dig. The tests suggest that the lowest layers of the site are more than 43,500 years old.
Denver Museum of Nature & Science chief curator Kirk Johnson holds a sloth tooth, discovered in a bone bed exposed Wednesday afternoon near Snowmass Village. Crews are racing to clear the bed, anticipating that work excavating at Ziegler Reservoir for the season will be complete in the next few days. On Thursday, the museum received results of the first radiocarbon tests of samples of wood found near an American mastodon skull in the lowest layer of the dig. The tests suggest that the lowest layers of the site are more than 43,500 years old.
By | The Aspen Times
PUBLISHED: | UPDATED:
Getting your player ready...

SNOWMASS VILLAGE — Though no remains of woolly mammoths have been found here — only Columbian mammoths — the Town Council will take up a resolution Monday proclaiming jam band Widespread Panic’s “Big Woolly Mammoth” as the mountain town’s official song.

Councilman Reed Lewis, an admitted Widespread Panic fan, proposed the musical acknowledgment of the prehistoric- animal remains that have been unearthed at Ziegler Reservoir. Monday is his final council meeting because he did not seek re-election Nov. 2, and voting on the song as one of his last official acts struck Lewis as a fun, lighthearted thing to do.

Plus, Widespread Panic has played Jazz Aspen Snowmass twice, and there apparently are no popular songs about Columbian mammoths. Janet Urquhart, Aspen Times

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