Spring 2003:

Mammoth Lab
Before the Spring 2003 term began, a temporary lab for the mammoth project was built in the Interpretive Center – the old part of Watson adjacent to the new Science Center. This large room is ideal for the mammoth lab because plans were already underway to convert the space into a science museum. With large windows along the side, people can watch our progress as we bring the mammoth bones inside in their plaster jackets (“biscuits”) and begin to remove the jackets and clean and harden the bones.

Excavation
The first thing we did this spring at the excavation site was to remove all the insulation that we had buried the mammoth in for the winter. We used a shop vacuum to remove the styrofoam peanuts that covered the bones. The whole process only took us two hours, much less time than if we had buried the bones in dirt. The bones appeared to have been protected from freezing and thawing, our main goal.

Next the students widened the pit by one meter to the west and to the north to further expose several large bones that had been partially exposed in the fall. During the term we fully exposed the right scapula (shoulder blade), the left femur (upper leg bone), and the left humerus (upper arm or foreleg bone). We successfully pedestalled, plaster jacketed, and removed to the lab our first large bones – the right scapula and the right humerus. We also discovered and only partially exposed the left scapula and possibly the right femur.

Early in the quarter, the class went on a 3-day field trip to Elephant Hall in the University of Nebraska’s State Museum where we saw many skeletons of mammoths and their ancestors on display. Then we went on to The Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, South Dakota, where they have found 52 mammoths in a 26,000 year-old sinkhole.