On this location in 1974, a new housing development was supposed to be built. During the site preparation, a bulldozer was working when the operator saw a stark white object protruding from the fresh dirt that had been scraped by the bulldozer. The dozer operator examined the white object and realized that it was some type of bone and stopped excavation while he notified the property owner that there was something unusual at the Site.
After the initial discovery, a paleontological dig of the site commenced. What they discovered, was absolutely unbelievable, and turned out to be the largest concentration of Mammoth remains in the world. As the exploration continued, it was decided they should build a structure over the site to preserve it, as well as prevent damage from the harsh winter weather conditions.
We bought a selfie stick to use on this trip and we are still trying to learn how to use it. Sometimes, when we review our pictures, after our trip, we find out we haven't quite mastered it yet.
We are going to keep trying though.
The video explained that this site was once a large, steep sided sinkhole, and that, after the sinkhole was formed, a warm water spring filled the hole. This warm water promoted the growth of vegetation around the edges and drew the large animals to the site to feed. As they waded out into the warm water, they would then tumble into the deep pool, and because of the steep, slippery muddy sides, they were unable to climb back out, and eventually drowned, sank to the bottom, and over thousands of years were covered over with sediment and preserved.
You may have noticed a small elephant with a QR code on it in the lower right hand corner of the previous picture.
They have these QR codes scattered around the dig, and by pointing our camera at the code, we were able to play an audio description of what we were seeing. Click on the link below and you will be able to listen to the description of what we are looking at.
The amount of bones that they discovered was amazing.
We wondered how this could have happened and why there were so many bones in this one spot.
As we walked around the sinkhole, we continue to see amazing collections of bones. It must've really been a thrill to participate in the removal of the sediment, revealing the bones one after another.
We then moved to the other end of the dig.
Hear about the following video, click HERE.
We also discovered that Suzie is not older than dirt!
Beside finding the remains of Mammoths, they also found numerous other animals, including bears. We didn't know that there was such a wide variation in the size of bears, but this exhibit helped demonstrate the wide variety.
The display of their skulls removed from the dig reminded us that we don't want to mess with bears.
After we left the mammoth site, we took a different route back to our RV park, again, through Custer State Park. This took us past Wind Cave National Park.
We decided that since we have never been there before, we better take the little side road and see what it was all about. It turns out that you have to be there about 8 o'clock in the morning in order to reserve a position for the underground tours, and they were sold out for the next two days so we continued on our way into and through Custer State Park.
It started to rain lightly, but it was still beautiful.
We came across several more herds of buffalo, and they had lots of babies.
They owned the roads and you just had to wait until they got out of the way.
That was our last day at Custer State Park, but there was still one more day to go. We still had to visit Mount Rushmore.
Hope you enjoyed this and we will try to keep more coming when we have time. It seems like we stay so busy exploring that there's not much time left in the day to prepare these blog chapters, but we will keep them coming when we can.
Tom and Suzie
