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A History of the Waco Mammoth Site - In Pursuit of a National Monument (Paperback)
Loot Price: R598
Discovery Miles 5 980
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A History of the Waco Mammoth Site - In Pursuit of a National Monument (Paperback)
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Loot Price R598
Discovery Miles 5 980
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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In paleontology there are certain encounters considered
breakthroughs. Occasionally a unique event is discovered that
permanently impacts our interpretation of an entire species. The
Waco Mammoth Site represents one such landmark moment. At the edge
of the city, mammoth skeletons were unearthed from twelve feet of
overburden, a find that has since been called one of the most
important ancient proboscidean sites in the world. The discovery
was made in 1978 by Paul Barron and Eddie Bufkin with subsequent
excavations by David Lintz, who along with volunteers from Baylor
University's Strecker Museum conducted the initial investigations.
George Naryshkin, in his senior thesis for Baylor University's
Department of Geology, identified the five partial skeletons as
Mammuthus columbi. Work was halted at the site from 1981 until
Calvin Smith became the director of the Strecker Museum in 1983 and
reopened the excavations in 1984. By the end of that year there
were a total of sixteen specimens exposed in a cluster resembling a
herd dying from a singular event. A news conference held by
Baylor's Department of Public Relations received an enormous amount
of interest that resulted in international coverage. Many
colleagues contacted the museum wanting to see the site. Among them
was Dr. Gary Haynes, who had done extensive research on both
extinct and modern elephants through the National Geographic
Society and the Smithsonian Institution. When he visited the site,
he confirmed that it contained a nursery herd that succumbed to a
single event, making it the largest such accumulation known to the
scientific community. During the next few years, the site was
expanded and new discoveries unearthed: a forty-five-year-old
female trying to extricate a juvenile out of the mud flow, as well
as the herd bull with a juvenile on top of his tusks, a first in
prehistoric mammoth behavior. In 2015, after thirty-seven years of
preservation and perseverance—and a whole lot of work and support
from numerous individuals, especially volunteer Mr. Ralph Vinson,
as well as many other organizations and entities—and at the
proposal of the National Park Service, the site was federally
recognized as the Waco Mammoth National Monument.
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