Friday, May. 25, 2001

Mammoth tusk found in Moxee

By The Associated Press

MOXEE - A cataclysmic flood that broke through an ice dam in western Montana 12,000 years ago to carve out the Columbia Plateau may have deposited a mammoth relic in Moxee.

The Ice Age floods were so powerful they carried granite boulders the size of houses from the Rocky Mountains to places as far away Eugene, Ore.

On May 10, Steve Herke was grading a new parking lot in this little town just east of Yakima when he uncovered a mammoth tusk about 4 1/2 feet long.

"We knew it was something special," Herke said Wednesday.

The dirt parking lot is one of 40 such mammoth sites in the state.

The Yakima Valley Museum will excavate the tusk and it will become part of an exhibition on the region's prehistoric past, said Andy Granitto, museum curator.

Fossil experts from Central Washington University, Yakima Valley Community College and the National Park Service believe the tusk came from a Columbian mammoth from the Pleistocene era, which began about 1.8 million years ago and ended about 11,000 years ago.

During the excavation this summer researchers will dig through 16 feet of soil to an ancient riverbed and study the stratified layers of dirt and rocks to learn more about the site.

The tusk was initially deposited about 8 feet above the riverbed.

Researchers will tunnel to the fragile piece and build a case around it before moving it to the museum for study.

Exposure to dry air already has caused the top layers to fracture.

"It's almost dried into a powder," said Dan Close, general manager at Alexandria Moulding.

Last year, pieces of ivory tusk were unearthed at a construction site at Lakeview Elementary School in Kirkland, a Seattle suburb.

That tusk was initially believed to be from a mastodon, in part because mastodon remnants are more common in the Puget Sound area. Lab tests showed the tusk came from a mammoth.

Both mammoths and mastodons lived in North America during the Ice Age, but mammoths appeared first. They preferred open areas and a diet of grasses, while mastodons were leaf-eating, forest-dwelling creatures.

Mammoths are believed to have stood about 14 feet tall at the shoulder and weighed up to 8 tons.