Woolly Mammoth Remains Discovered Near Snowmass

A construction crew near Snowmass, Colorado recently stumbled upon what is being called one of the state's most significant paleontological finds.

The Aspen Daily News reports that the operator of a bulldozer working on a reservoir project noticed rib bones of what turned out to be an woolly mammoth sticking out of the dirt. The crew later discovered more bones, including a femur and the end of a tusk. The bones are estimated to be about 10,000 years old.

According to the Daily News, the finding is significant in that the remains are actual bones, as opposed to fossilized dinosaur bones.

Woolly Mammoths are thought to have abounded on the Colorado Plateau (modern-day Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico) before their extinction at the end of the last ice age.

In 2002, a crew digging a road for a suburban housing development came across an 18-foot mammoth tusk also estimated to be about 10,000 years old.