Granisle eager for the return of the mammoths
			by Jim Easterday

It was late afternoon, it had not rained in days. The tundra was dry and the grasses made a crackling sound when stepped on. The weather was unusual. Normally, the tundra was wet from the melt waters of ice fields and glaciers that covered nearby hills and valleys. A herd of mammoths trooped to the edge of a pond to drink. The pond was about 100 feet square.

A drawing of a mammoth on open grassland

The adult mammoths were about 11 feet tall at the shoulder, a foot taller than our present-day elephants. They resembled elephants except for the long hair that covered their bodies and the curved tusks which were each 8 feet long. The water in the pond was too low to drink so that the mammoths crowded into the shallow end and walked down a slope toward the water at the deep end. The silt bottom was only inches deep at the shallow end but was 20 feet deep at the deep end. The mammoths could feel themselves siding down into the deep silt. They panicked.

Paula Forbes (at left) and Alta Lenard of the Granisle Museum staff hold the casts of mammoth bones Vertebrae on left, leg bone from hip to knee on right

A few escaped but the lead adults were trapped. As they fought to escape, they slid deeper into the silt until they finally disappeared. Centuries went by. Glaciers expanded again and pushed 80 feet of rocks and gravel over the grave of the mammoths. The bones were sealed and protected from erosion and glacial ice. (This episode is fictional, of course, but is based on scientific evidence found at the site near Granisle.)