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For about 15 years, volunteers have been finding ice age treasures at the Coyote Canyon Mammoth Dig Site in southeastern Washington State, like mammoth bones and fragments of other animals. Scientists study some of this, but the site is also a tool for public education, as Northwest Public Broadcasting's Courtney Flatt reports.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: Whoa.
COURTNEY FLATT, BYLINE: On a recent morning, a group of third graders are standing in a barn that's been converted into an education space. Close by, there's a big pit dug into a hillside. And they're learning about what's in it from Gary Klein Connect, the site's education director.
GARY KLEINKNECHT: Have you seen the movie "Ice Age"?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #2: I like that.
KLEINKNECHT: OK. So you guys know about woolly mammoths, right?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: Yeah.
KLEINKNECHT: Well, I got a better mammoth than that.
FLATT: The Columbian mammoth was bigger than an elephant and didn't have hair. This one, Kleinknecht tells the students, lived over 17,000 years ago. It was likely brought here by what are known as the ice age floods. Long ago, an ice dam formed close to the border of what's now Idaho and Montana.
KLEINKNECHT: That dam failed. All this water rushed out.
FLATT: And when the floodwaters receded, a lot of debris gathered at this low point in the topography. Most of the things at this excavation site were once living creatures that were preserved in the mud and sediment. Fast forward to the late '90s, when this area was a rock quarry. Workers dug up some unexpected large bones. Bex Barton helped identify them. He's a retired paleoecologist who worked for years at the Burke Museum in Seattle. He studied lots of mammoths, including this one.
BAX BARTON: Starting in about 1920s, there have been 50 mammoth finds in our county alone.
FLATT: He's dug at this site and has brought students here, but he says most of the time, volunteers dig up, clean and catalog every piece. A lot of that is now stored at Barton's personal lab.
BARTON: We curate the specimens here, and then we look for interested colleagues.
FLATT: If a researcher wants to study, say, ancient ants, they reach out to Barton, and he can make samples or pictures available. Barton says, what's unique about this site is how slowly they've been able to explore it.
BARTON: Usually, the contractor says, can you get that out of my trench? If you can't do it overnight, can you do it in a week?
FLATT: That's not the case here. The landowner has allowed diggers to take all the time they need as long as they allow the public tours. Barton says most scientists don't have the time to dig over such a long period, so the volunteers are essential and help keep costs down. The extra time means they can study more of what's above and below the mammoth - for example, the climate it was in.
NEIL MARA: Stand around this tub.
FLATT: Back at the dig site, the kids are learning the technique scientists use for finding tiny bone fragments. Right next to the pit, volunteer Neil Mara dumps buckets full of dirt onto a super fine mesh screen. For the kids, this dirt comes from a spot that's not important to the dig. It's been seeded with owl pellets, so they're sure to find something. Mara sprays water on top of the dirt.
MARA: OK, listen up. We're going spray water on this dirt, and we're going to turn it into mud. And then we're going to reach into the mud with our hands. We're going to stir it all up.
FLATT: Then they squish the mud through the mesh. What's left behind are bugs, rocks and tiny bones.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #3: I found a bone.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #4: I found something.
FLATT: Tours for the public go through October when the site shuts down for the season. But Barton says, when it comes to the excavation, this glacially paced process could take another 5 or 10 years. For NPR News, I'm Courtney Flatt in Kennewick, Washington.
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