Dozer Driver Makes Fossil Discovery of the Century

Wikipedia / Sergiodlarosa

An artist's reconstruction of columbi sergiodlarosa -- a Columbian Mammoth.

An accidental discovery by a bulldozer driver has led to what may be the find of the century: an ice-age burial ground that could rival the famed La Brear tar pits.

After two weeks of excavating ancient fossils at the Ziegler Reservoir near Snowmass Village, Colorado, scientists from the Denver Museum of Natural Science returned home Wednesday with their unearthed treasures in tow -- a wide array of fossils, insects and plant life that they say give a stunningly realistic view of what life was like when ancient, giant beasts lumbered across the Earth.

Since the team’s arrival in mid-October, scientists have extracted nearly 600 bones from about 20 different animals from the Pleistocene era, a period of time during the Ice Age. The remains of up to six different species have been exhumed, including five American mastodons, three Ice Age bison, a Jefferson’s ground sloth, a mule deer, a tiger salamander, and two Columbian mammoths.

"One of the many things that is so great is the potential of the site," Ian Miller, curator of paleontology for the Denver Museum and a leading scientist for the dig, told FoxNews.com. "This could be just as important as sites like the La Brea Tar Pits and be in the top five sites in North America."

Thanks to those and other finds, the Snowmass Village Fossil Excavation has been deemed a "smashing success" by all those involved, which included up to 70 museum volunteers and staff. Paleontologists in Denver have already started planning for when they can go back.

And it's all due to a construction project by the Snowmass Water and Sanitation department.

The sleepy ski village was created in 1965 when the Ziegler family built the Reservoir that carries its name. The Aspen Daily News described it as a sparkling little lake that partially filled a shallow bowl of earth, surrounded by low hills covered in scrub oak and aspen trees.

An ancient glacial lake once sat in the same location -- a lake that filled in with clay, peat and silt as the glaciers retreated from Colorado. When the sanitation department moved to dig out the reservoir on Oct. 14, the ancient mammals that lived there nearly 13,000 years earlier made a fresh appearance, preserved by the combination of mud and peat.

The idea to dig at Snowmass was sparked after a bulldozer driver stumbled upon what he believed to be the remains of a mammoth in the small town’s reservoir. The driver contacted the Denver Museum of Natural

Science about his discovery, and the museum immediately sent up a team to investigate, uncovering a hidden trove of prehistoric remnants unlike any other.

The site rivals many others in terms of its diversity, as it is the only known place in Colorado -- and one of few in North America -- that contains both mammoth and mastodon fossils in the same location. And just finding an American mastodon is pretty unusual in itself.

"There are only three known records of mastodons in Colorado, and we have found at least five specimens," Miller said. "So throughout the course of 120 years of paleontology, we jumped from three mastodons to eight in a single two-week period."

And the significance of the Snowmass Excavation doesn’t stop there. Snowmass has also produced an array of insect and plant life, as well as wood that has been chewed by beavers, essentially producing what Miller calls a "window into an Ice Age ecosystem."

The uniqueness of the Snowmass site stems from its location. The Ziegler Reservoir stands at the top of a ridge at an elevation that is higher than most excavation sites. The reservoir was soon revealed to be a glacial lake that had filled over, allowing the fossils inside to survive erosion for more than 40,000 years.

"We’ve got a lot of records at low elevation where sediment accumulates and where fossils are better preserved," Miller told FoxNews.com. "But you really don’t get things like lakes preserved at high elevations for long periods of time," said Miller. "So this site is really going to help us answer questions about how high elevation floras and faunas reacted to Pleistocene climate change."

Now that the team has returned to the museum with their findings, they are working to safely preserve the fossils before they revisit the site in May. And the team at the Denver Museum of Natural Science couldn’t be more eager to return.

"It’s been a dream come true," Miller said. "For a paleontologist, you can’t hope for anything more. It’s so exciting to be on site, finding new stuff every day, especially things we never expected to find in Colorado. It was just so incredible."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/20/snowmass-inside-greatest-discovery-century/#ixzz15we9aZXi