David Lintz, a veteran employee of the old Strecker Museum at Baylor University, shows Teen Leadership Waco members the Waco Mammoth Site. Lintz initiated the first archaeological dig at the site in 1978.
Posted on 10/26/2005 6:11:43 PM PDT by ValerieUSA
The public will get a chance tomorrow to weigh in on a proposal to add the Waco Mammoth Site to the national park system.
A team of National Park Service officials is kicking off its study of the mammoth park idea with a public hearing at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Baylor University's Mayborn Museum. Officials with Baylor and the city of Waco are trying to rally community support for the project.
“It's important for us to have a good turnout,” said Mayborn director Ellie Caston. “We need to be able to show the team that the community is concerned about the mammoth site and its future and really wants to be able to go there.”
Since the site along the Bosque River was discovered in 1978, the remains of 24 mammoths have been uncovered. The entire herd of mammoths was believed to have been buried in a mudslide more than 65,000 years ago, making it the world's largest known concentration of mammoths to die from a single event.
Baylor and the city of Waco have secured more than 100 acres around the site, but it remains off-limits to the public. U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, supports turning the site into an educational tourist attraction and won support for the national park study three years ago. However, funding for the study has been slow in coming.
Caston said the National Park Service team will consider three factors in studying whether to adopt the site into the national system: significance, suitability and feasibility. The team will make that determination in the coming spring.
She said it's too early to tell how soon the park could be dedicated, how much it would cost, or how much financial support it would need from local participants.
“I hate to speculate,” she said. “If we say it will be in 10 years, then everybody throws up their hands and say that's too long. But it doesn't mean we can't proceed toward making the site successful.”
Regardless of the federal decision, the site could be made accessible to the public on a limited basis, she said.
“Obviously it would be fabulous to have a national park in Waco, but I don't think all our success hinges on that,” she said. “I think something good is going to happen. Everything we do is going to matter.”
City Manager Larry Groth said the city has put off previous “grandiose” proposals for developing the site until the parks service makes a decision. He said the city's priority in the meantime is to protect the site from the elements.
The city of Waco is planning to apply soon for federal funding to build a metal structure to protect the bones, which are now sheltered by a tent. The structure would cost $100,000 to $200,000, funded half by the city and half by federal funds that Edwards has secured.
Groth said the structure could be removed later if the National Park Service takes over the site.
He said the community support for the project is crucial in getting it added to the National Park Service system. “They need to see what kind of interest level there is in the community,” he said.
If the site becomes part of the federal system, Groth said it's likely that the city, Baylor and community groups would partner with the National Park Service in developing and managing it.
“Like everyone else, they're fighting budget problems,” he said. “They're looking for partnerships.”
65 mammoths ping
* ping *
Quite a mudslide. Wonder what caused it?
http://www.centerfirstamericans.com/mt.html?a=132
Waco Site Reveals 21 Mammoths
Died Together 28,000 Years Ago - p. 16
by Don Alan Hall
snip
The mammoths presumably died in flood and bank cave-in as the result of herd instinct as individuals followed the matriarch and attempted to rescue floundering juveniles (Mammoth Trumpet 4:3 "The Waco Mammoth Site"). There is no indication of human interaction with the bones. "Not even a scratch mark," Smith said in a recent telephone interview. Most of the bones remained exactly where the mammoths died. "They're articulated extremely well," Smith added. There are not even any gnaw marks indicating scavenging by predators. "It is absolutely the cleanest site I ever saw." Early in the investigation of the site, Gary Haynes, University of Nevada taphonomist, said the mammoths had been covered very rapidly and a decade of continuing research has revealed no evidence to the contrary.
Among the first discoveries at Waco was an adult female with its 6-foot-long tusks beneath the chest and belly of a baby animal. Presumably she had been trying to save it before both became trapped in water and mud. The other mammoths died in close proximity.
Smith says that animals 17 and 18, initially located in 1992, presented the project's greatest challenge. These were found when investigators were excavating to get a north-south profile of the site. They lay immediately north of where that other female and baby had been removed. The concentration of mammoth bones proved to be those of a large bull, the first uncovered at the site, and a fairly large juvenile. It was another case of an adult evidently attempting to rescue a young mammoth in trouble.
snip
Oops, 24 mammoths from 65,000 years ago, not 65 mammoths.
Here's a link to more info
http://www3.baylor.edu/Museum_Studies/mammoth.htm
The Waco Tribune article says they were buried 65,000 years ago. Your article says it was 28,000 yrs ago, as does the link I just posted above.
http://www.washtimes.com/culture/20040104-105441-2052r.htm
Found this,too..I want to visit the Mayborn Museum..
http://www.countryworldnews.com/Editorial/CTX/2005/ct0421museum.htm
So does the WaPo link I posted..
"The city of Waco and Baylor University want to preserve the resting ground of a herd of prehistoric mammoths thought to have died in a mudslide about 28,000 years ago."
and here ...
http://hutchison.senate.gov/cchistoric.htm
It's always good to cross-reference :)
Good find..I have been googling like crazy..
I remember when I first moved back to Texas and saw this in the news.. how interesting I found it..I recalled my childhood viewing of dinosaur tracks in a limestone bed of a creek or river during summer camp around Glen Rose.
Thank you for posting this article..It was nice to take a break from politics!
I'll see those 24, and raise 28 more. (The 104th tusks were found this season, making at least 52 mammoths.)
http://www.mammothsite.com/
Sinkhole trump(et)s landslide.
The watering hole, active for about 350-700 years, slowly filled with layers of drying silt, sediments, and dying mammoths. The mud, which had aided in trapping the mammoths, now entombed and preserved the mammoth remains.
I've been to that river at Glen Rose, too. It's cool to put your feet right into a dinosaur footprint in rock under the water's surface.
http://paleo.cc/paluxy/dvsp.htm
Dinosaur Valley State Park
Glen Rose, Texas
DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS!
I have been to this site. Its huge.
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