Mammoth Bones Moved to Museum
All that remains or the mammoth bones which were discovered on the Thomas Jefferson School of Law downtown construction site on February 4 is a hole in the ground - and some exciting memories.
The skull and remaining tusk of the 500,000 year old Columbian Mammoth 
were loaded on to a flatbed truck and taken to the San Diego Natural History Museum's warehouse for processing and eventual display at the museum in Balboa Park.
It has been an unforgettable two weeks for everyone connected with TJSL and the discovery of the mammoth fossils made news around the world!
As she lifted the mammoth's skull with her forklift, operator Karilyn Dobstaff told herself "careful...don't drop it." But everyone is impressed with her skills operating heavy equipment -- she's an artist with a backhoe --and she feels the experience to work with the huge bones has been "amazing."
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| Karilyn Dobstaff |
On Saturday February 14, paleontologists from the San Diego Natural History Museum finished jacketing the skull and first tusk of the mammoth and moved it off site.
Unfortunately, no additional specimens from the mammoth were found, according to Tom Demere, the Director of Paleoservices at the San Diego Natural History Museum. "As it currently stands, the mammoth fossils recovered from the site include the skull with right and left upper molars, both tusks, the right lower molar and probably the left as well, the atlas vertebra, a partial humerus, several foot bones, and several currently unidentified limb bones.
The next step is to open the field jackets, one at a time, and prepare the specimens (i.e., remove the enclosing sedimentary matrix from around the bones and teeth, apply consolidants to weak and fragile specimens, repair broken specimens, and reinforce vulnerable specimens). In the process we will probably discover additional, smaller specimens buried in the sedimentary matrix.
As the "dust settles" from the field work it is clear that the TJSL mammoth the most complete mammoth ever found in coastal San Diego County. What an exciting discovery this has been!"
Photo by Jackie Loza, Bovis Lend Lease