Wooly Mammoth Tusk Found in Colorado 10,000-Year-Old Wooly Mammoth Tusk Found by Construction Crew in Colorado The Associated Press PARKER, Colo. July 16 — A crew digging a road for a suburban housing development unearthed an 18-foot-long wooly mammoth tusk that is at least 10,000 years old. The tusk, broken into two pieces, was discovered Monday near a creek bed about 20 miles south of Denver. "I had a moment of Indiana Jones going on there," construction foreman Dave Smith said. "It was amazing." Officials from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science believe the tusk belonged to a fully grown male Columbian mammoth 7-ton Pleistocene Era animals that roamed the Colorado Plateau and disappeared about 10,000 years ago. Their closest modern relative is the elephant. "This is an important find. It's a data point, a key part of science that contributes to history," said Russ Graham, chief curator at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The tusk was covered in preservatives, burlap and plaster and was to be taken to the museum for dating, which could take a year or more. Surrounding sediment will help date the fossil, which Graham said could be as much as 50,000 years old. "It was found near a creek that was once on a hill. It took thousands of years for the creek to cut the earth down, and the fossil could be from that period," he said. Graham hopes researchers can determine how long the mammoth lived in Colorado. Paleontologists will monitor the 90-acre housing construction site Tuesday as construction crews continue work. Another wooly mammoth tusk was found in nearby Littleton about eight years ago, Graham said.
I got your wooly mammoth tusk right here.... No, seriously, that's pretty neat. Didn't know that mammoths lived in Colorado.
