And the winner is …. Snowy.
More than 15,000 people voted in the Denver Museum of Nature & Science’s “Name the Mammoth” contest over the last month, and “Snowy” was the winning name for the first mammoth found at a fossil site near Snowmass Village.
The bones of a young female Columbian mammoth was found Oct. 14 by crews expanding a a reservoir. Ultimately experts called in uncovered as many as 10 American mastodons, three other Columbian mammoths, two Ice Age deer, four Ice Age bison, a Jefferson’s ground sloth, a tiger salamander, insects, snails, and large quantities of plant matter.
“Scientists consider the find to be one of the most significant in Colorado history,” the museum said in a news release announcing the winning name.
“Snowy,” named for Snowmass Village, beat out four other naming options:
Jessie — named for bulldozer operator Jesse Steele, who uncovered the first bones
Ella — named for the three-year-old daughter of construction superintendant, Kent Olson, who took the bones home to try to identify them and realized they’d discovered something big
Ziggy — named for the Ziegler family, who owned the land where the reservoir was built
Samammoth — named for museum educator Samantha Sands, who presented mammoth programs to 8,500 schoolchildren in five days in the Roaring Fork Valley
