Digging Snowmastodon : Discovering an Ice Age World in the Colorado Rockies

by Johnson, Kirk; Miller , Ian

• ISBN13: 9781936905065
• ISBN10: 193690506X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-03-22
• Publisher: People's Press

Summary

On October 14, 2010, a heavy equipment operator working at the base of the Snowmass Mountain ski area in Colorado drove his machine through the skeleton of a young female mammoth, a find that initiated the Snowmastodon dig. Told by the two lead scientists on the dig, this is the story of the next eleven months and the resulting excavation that would yield more than 5,000 bones of more than 40 kinds of animals and would change forever our understanding of alpine life in the ice ages.

Author Biography

Kirk Johnson is the Chief Curator and Vice President for Research and Collections at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. He earned a Ph. D. in geology and paleobotany at Yale University in 1989 and has been at DMNS since 1991. His research focuses on fossil plants, the extinction of the dinosaurs, and methods for dating rocks and fossils. His research has taken him to all continents and he is presently working on projects in Patagonia, Utah, and Colorado. Dr. Johnson is the leader of the Snowmastodon Project.   Ian Miller is Curator of Paleontology and Chair of the Earth Sciences at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. He earned a Ph. D. in geology and paleobotany at Yale University in 2007, and has been at DMNS since 2007. His research focuses on fossil plants and their applications for understanding ancient elevation, climate, and the position of continents. He is presently working on projects in the Colorado Rockies and the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in Utah. Dr. Miller is the co-leader of the Snowmastodon Project.