Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, SD

Warning the following may be considered by some to be educational.

Today is expected to be in the 90s so we will be doing something today that is in an air-conditioned building.  The Mammoth Site is an active dig site in Hot Springs, SD.  It is about a 30 mile drive from our RV park.  

Lots of places have found a humorous way to describe "social distancing".  In Florida State parks, the length is measured by length of a alligator.  New Mexico State parks say stay 4 road runners apart.  Here it is the length of a Mammoth tusk.

We both knew of the site and were very interested in going to see it.  There was an introductory film which described how a man owned the land and was using a bulldozer to remove a large mound of dirt.  When bones were discovered, he halted all work and contacted a professor he knew.  The site was verified and then was sold to a non-profit foundation at the land's value.  They built a building over the site to protect it and have maintained the site since.

The site is the largest Mammoth dig on the continent.  They have over 60 mammoth  skeletons but only have dug into a portion of the site.  In the most recent core sample,  they got to 65 feet and had to stop because they struck bone.

Visitors walk on paths around the outside of the entire site and above the length of the site.  When we arrived there were about a dozen people working on the site but soon most left for lunch.  We were able to speak to 3 of the students who remained.  They were very knowledgeable and happy to answer any questions we had.  Two were working on clearing soil from bones and stopped to tell us what the bones were from and the progress being made.

The next area was set up as a museum. There were examples of a home if constructed about the time the mammoth lived. A full size replica of a columbian mammoth standing. (the wooly kind were not common in this area) They have some displays on the mammoth babies that were found frozen in Siberia. I decided not to take pictures of them as you can imagine what they would look like.

We had a lot of fun and decided to head back to the campground for the rest of the day.