UI Explorers Seminar: “The Incredible Snowmastodon Site”
Event Details
17 North Clinton Street
Iowa City, IA / 52242
Contact Name: Sarah Horgen
Email: sarah-horgen@uiowa.edu
Phone: 319-335-0606
Website: www.uiowa.edu/mnh
Event Description
Richard Baker, Professor Emeritus, UI Department of Geoscience
“The Incredible Snowmastodon site, Colorado: Its setting, age, and plant and animal fossils”
The Snowmastodon site, near Snowmass Village, Colorado, was discovered in 2010 when construction workers building a reservoir dam to supply water to Snowmass Village uncovered fossil bones that turned out to belong to a young female mammoth. Official fossil excavations, organized by the Denver Museum of Nature and Science under the nickname “Snowmastodon Project,” began in November of 2010. Over the next year, the project unearthed nearly 5,000 bones from 26 different Ice Age animals, including mammoths, mastodons, bison, camels, a Pleistocene horse, and the first ground sloth ever found in Colorado. Dr. Richard Baker of the University of Iowa has been assisting with analysis of the plant record from the site and will present his tentative findings, as well as discuss how the site was formed and review the animal assemblage present at the site.
University of Iowa Museum of Natural History
17 N Clinton St
Iowa City, IA
319-335-0480
