Day Trips

Photo by Gerald McLeod

The Waco Mammoth Site lays bare the final remains of an ancient creature that died where it fell. For thousands of years, the bones and curved tusks were hidden under several feet of prairie until the skeleton was painstakingly exposed by scientists to a new generation of Texans.

The Waco site is the largest known concentration of mammoth skeletons that are believed to have died from the same natural event. It is also the only recorded discovery of a nursery herd. Around 68,000 years ago, 19 adults and calves perished in a flood that trapped them in a muddy ravine. Twenty-four mammoths have been uncovered so far, and more are probably hidden under the mounds of dirt in the park.

A distant relative of the smaller woolly mammoth, the Columbian mammoths lived in the Pleistocene period, wandering across North America and as far south as Nicaragua for centuries beginning 2.5 million years ago. Weighing around 10 tons, the largest of the herbivores stood around 14 feet tall.

The Waco site was discovered in 1978 near the confluence of the Bosque and Brazos rivers when two fossil hunters found a large bone protruding from the creek bank. By 1990, scientists from Baylor University's Strecker Museum (now the Mayborn Museum) had uncovered 16 of the mammoths. The site has also produced the bones of an extinct camel and a saber-toothed cat's tooth.

Among the findings were the skeletal remains of what appears to be a bull trying to lift a mammoth calf out of the mud and rising water. A casting of the bones as they were found is on exhibit at the Mayborn Museum.

A collaboration between the city, a private foundation, and Baylor University has done an excellent job of opening the site to the public. The tour starts at a small visitors' center, where a guide leads groups to the stylish building hidden in the woods where the bones were found. Inside the climate-controlled gallery, visitors look down on the parched tusks, vertebrae, rib cage, and skull stuck in the dried mud for eternity.

The Waco Mammoth Site can be found at 6220 Steinbeck Bend Rd. on the north side of the Brazos River, three miles west of I-35. Legislation is pending in Congress to turn the site into a national park. The exhibition is open Tuesdays through Fridays from 11am to 5pm and on Saturdays from 9am to 5pm. The site is closed Sundays and Mondays. Admission is $7 for adults and $5 for children. For more information, call 254/750-7946 or go to www.wacomammoth.org.

The Mayborn Museum is located at 1300 S. University Parks on the north side of the Baylor University campus and is open daily. For information, call 254/710-1173 or go to www.maybornmuseum.com.

972nd in a series. Day Trips, Vol. 2, a book of "Day Trips" 101-200, is available for $8.95, plus $3.05 for shipping, handling, and tax. Mail to: Day Trips, PO Box 33284, South Austin, TX 78704.