National Jurist - March 2009 - (Page 6) NEWS Mammoth bones found at Thomas Jefferson construction site oly mammoth! Construction crews found the tusk, skull and other bones of a 500,000-year-old mammoth while excavating the construction site of the new downtown Thomas Jefferson School of Law campus in early February. “It is the first mammoth skull ever found in San Diego County,” said Tom Demere, the curator of the Department of Paleontology at the San Diego Natural History Museum, who was very excited about the discovery. The 8-foot tusk of the mammoth was largely intact and was unearthed during excavation at a depth of about 20 feet below street level. The paleontologist on scene to observe the excavation immediately stopped the digging and experts from the museum were called in to begin the careful unearthing process, which led to the discovery of the skull. The skull also appears largely intact and some of its teeth are visible. Parts of one of its legs are also visible. Demere said the bones are in “very good condition.” “This is an extraordinary event for San Diego County,” said Rudy Hasl, dean of Thomas Jefferson School of Law. “It’s an extraordinary piece of history revealed right before your eyes.” Dean Hasl noted that the law school’s namesake, Thomas Jefferson, was very fascinated with mammoths and mastodons, “which makes it particularly appropriate that the remains were found on the site of a school which will carry his name forever.” Tom Demere said the Columbian Mammoth (mammuthus columbi) was the largest North American land mammal of its time and it lived about 500,000 years ago during the ice age. It is related to the modern elephant, though larger and the The skull and remaining tusk of the 500,000 year old Columbian Mammoth were loaded onto a flatbed truck and taken to the San Diego Natural History Museum’s warehouse for processing and eventual display at the museum in Balboa Park. one found today is an adult, according to Demere, who added that it’s too soon to tell whether it was male or female. “It’s a piece of the puzzle in understanding the geological history of San Diego,” Demere says. The Natural History Museum has a contract with the Centre City Development Corporation to manage any fossils recovered on the construction site. The process of carefully digging out all of the remains will take several days, and the mammoth will eventually go on 6 THE NATIONAL JURIST March 2009 display at the museum. It isn’t known yet how much of mammoth’s skeleton will eventually be found on the construction site. The find put excavation of the law school’s new 8-story building on hold for a couple of weeks, but it is still scheduled to open in the 2010-2011 academic year. “We expected to find fossils at this site,” Demere said. “But we didn’t think we’d find a mammoth. We’re hoping to find more fossils.”
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