Everyone loves Hot Springs Mammoth Site
Since its discovery in June 1974, the Mammoth Site of Hot Springs has become a main attraction for tourists visiting the Black Hills. The facility is open year-round with guided tours of the largest in situ (bones left as found) mammoth dig site contained and protected by a building.
The site was created 26,000 years ago, when large Columbian and woolly mammoths became trapped in a spring-fed, slippery-sided sinkhole. Today, year-round tours are given of the facility.
From an overhead walkway, visitors can see the bones still in the sediment. In recent years, the site has added a mammoth bone house replica, a pygmy mammoth and a composite full-sized skeleton of a giant short-faced bear, the bones part of which still remain in the sinkhole sediment. Other discoveries include bones of camel, antelope, wolf, coyote, prairie dog, vole, gopher, squirrel, rabbit, llama, frog, toad, clams and snails. In 2003, the discovery of the distal end of the humerus of the American lion and a bat jaw was especially exciting.
Following the summer 2006 excavation, the total number of mammoths discovered at the site is 55, 52 are Columbian and three woolly.
Web site: www.mammothsite.com