Blogs from Snowmass, Colorado, United States, North America

The Snowmastodon site, also known as the Snowmass Village fossil site or the Ziegler Reservoir fossil site, is a fossil excavation near Snowmass Village, Colorado. It was discovered on October 14, 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 on November 2, 2010. They ended, as agreed, on July 1, 2011, so that construction work could resume. During this short period, the project unearthed 4,826 bones from 26 different Ice Age vertebrates, including mammoths, mastodons, bisons, camels, a Pleistocene horse, and the first ground sloth ever found in Colorado. The site, once the shores of a small glacial lake, ... read more