Friday, July 29, 2016

This post is late because of no  WiFi in the park.  Friday we went to the Mammoth diggings that is located in Hot Springs, SD about 20 miles from our RV Park in Custer.  This is very interesting and I almost decided not to go but we are glad that we did.  The Mammoth site was discovered in 1974 when a contractor was leveling a field to build a subdivision in the town of Hot Springs.  They were lucky that the contractor when notified of the discovery knew that it was important and called the University and got Scientist tot he area.  Otherwise the whole site would have been lost.

It appears that their was a sink hole developed in the area about 90 billion years ago and the Mammoths numbers were large in the area.  There were the hairy kind (Shoot look it up I do not know what they were called) and the regular kind which were bigger that the hairy kind.  Any way they herd is controlled by the females and the young males if misbehaving are run out of the herd.  These young males gathered around this sink hole which had filled up with water.  The young males would fall inside the sink hole and because the banks were muddy they could not get out and died there.  So did the rabbits, wolves, mountain lions and other larger animals.

The site is now protected by a large building with roof and everything!!  They are still digging and they think that they have only reached the first level and there is much more underneath the recent finds.

Yes this is a mammoth not and elephant.  They tell use that an elephant can walk under the chin of the mammoth because the mammoth is so much bigger