Mammoth National Monument – Waco Texas

Our visit to Waco Texas went beyond the Magnolia Market and the “Fixer Upper” phenomenon and a driving tour of some of the historic sites in the city.  There were 2 other attractions that we wanted to visit…

The first of those attractions was the Waco Mammoth National Monument.  Beginning with the first public access to the site in 2009, the Waco Mammoth Foundation worked to develop it in partnership with the city of Waco and Baylor University.  In 2015, the Foundation successfully sought a National Monument designation, bringing the expertise of the National Park Service into the partnership.

Not only is this a relatively new National Monument, it is a fairly small property by National Park/Monument standards.  The welcome center is simple and straight-forward…staffed by both the National Park Service and volunteers.

This tent is where guided tours of the dig site start.  Although entry to the National Monument is free, visitors can only tour the dig site with a tour guide.  The fee is minimal…$5.00 for adults, $4.00 for seniors, the military, educators and students from the 7^th grade through college.  Younger children pre-K through the 6^th grade are $3.00 each.   

This young lady was manning this display table full of fossils and bones…some real and others copies.  Junior rangers are regularly scheduled at the National Monument for this task… A big group of school children arrived just as we prepared to start our tour and this would be their first stop. 

In addition to the dig site itself, the National Monument offers hiking trails, a picnic area, birdwatching and a kid’s ‘dig box’.   

We were very happy when one of the volunteers offered to take us on a tour out of sequence, ahead of and separate from the school kids!  A paved path leads along to the actual dig site and its displays.

Laurie and I love Live Oak Trees!  Laurie took this photo of the woods leading to the covered dig site.  The park is small, covering only about 100 acres with the dig site and its immediate vicinity occupying just about 5 acres. 

  

It’s about a 300 yard stroll along the path to the covered dig shelter.  The public was invited to visit the dig site in 2009 for the first time after completion of this structure.  The National Park Service was only deeded this 5 acres segment by the City of Waco which retains ownership of the remainder of the property.   

This is part of the ravine in which the mammoth bones were discovered.  This area is just outside of the dig shelter.  The site was discovered in 1978 by 2 local men who were searching for arrowheads and fossils near the Bosque River. They found a large bone and took the bone to the Strecker Museum at Baylor University in Waco for analysis.

Once the bones were identified as those of a Columbian mammoth, the museum staff organized a formal dig at the site. Between 1978 and 1990, sixteen (16) mammoths were discovered!

How the animals at the site died is really unknown but apparently humans weren’t involved.  The theory is that about 68,000 years ago, at least 19 mammoths from a nursery herd were trapped in a steep-sided channel during a flash flood and they drowned and/or were buried in the mud.

This is one of the female mammoths from the first drowning event.  A second drowning event took place at a later date.  That time a still unidentified animal associated with a juvenile saber-toothed cat died and was buried in the muck.  A third event claimed the lives of a bull mammoth, two juvenile mammoths, and an adult female.  15,000 years after the nursery herd was trapped, this last group of animals were also unable to escape the ravine due to its slippery slopes. 

The same flood that caught up the mammoth nursery herd also trapped a camel. “Camelops” is an extinct genus of camel that once roamed western North America.  It disappeared at the end of the Pleistocene period about 10,000 years ago.  This “American” camel was very closely related to the Old World Dromedary and Bactrian camels.

Camelops's extinction appears to have been part of a larger North American “die-off” in which native horses, mastodons and other camelids died out. Possibilities for extinction include global climate change and hunting pressure from the arrival of the Clovis people.  They were prolific hunters. 

This is an overview of the primary viewing area of the dig site although there is another area to the left of this photo.  You can see the school children checking out the mammoth remains.  We were encouraged by the fact that even pre-teens in the group seemed interested in the dig and they asked a lot of questions…

The paintings on the walls of the dig shelter depict the nursery family at the right and a mammoth bull at the back center.  Like elephants, their modern relatives, mammoths were quite large.  The largest known species reached heights of about 13.1 ft. at the shoulder.  However, most species of mammoth were only about as large as a modern Asian elephant. 

Factoid:

·       Mammoths survived on the American mainland until 10,000 years ago.  A small population survived on St. Paul Island Alaska, up until about 5,800 years ago and the small species of mammoths on Wrangel Island Russia appear to have survived until only 3,700 years ago...about when the Middle Kingdom of Egypt was in full flower.

We enjoyed our tour and our guide was very knowledgeable.  Baylor University and the city of Waco are to be commended for their perseverance as regards this historic dig and the eventual creation of the National Monument.  For more information on the Waco Mammoth National Monument, just go to https://www.nps.gov/waco/index.htm.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for our tour of this National Monument!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave