KENNEWICK, Wash. — Now’s your chance to get up close to a piece of history being unearthed in Central Washington.
Tickets are on sale for summer and early fall tours of the Coyote Canyon Mammoth Site in the Tri-Cities.
The Mid-Columbia Basin Old Natural Education Sciences (MCBONES) Research Center Foundation is working to unearth a Columbian Mammoth from the ice age.
The tour costs $10 per person. That money will go towards helping the MCBONES Research Center continue its efforts.
If you’re interested, you can register for a tour date by clicking here and then clicking on the ‘SEE SCHEDULED PUBLIC TOURS’ in the white box in the top right-hand corner of your screen.
In addition to time at the dig site, the tour includes a visit to the MCBONES Research Center, or “dig house.” There, you’ll watch a presentation about the history of the site and see displays of the bones that have been unearthed thus far.
About the mammoth & its discovery
The mammoth was initially discovered in 1999 just south of Kennewick.
According to Gary Kleinknecht with the MCBONES Research Center Foundation, the property owner at the time often sold dirt to people in the area. While he was digging on one of his hills, he came across some bones.
Once the property owner learned the bones belonged to a mammoth, they halted excavation and avoided the area.
In 2007, the land went up for sale, and the archeology department at Central Washington State University (CWU) was contacted to investigate the discovery.
The land was purchased by a local farming family who wished to see the site preserved, according to MCBONES Research Center.
Formal excavation of the site began in September 2010.
Kleinknecht says researchers believe the mammoth drowned during a flood, and that it’s buried under about six or seven levels of flood sediment.
The MCBONES Research Center estimates the mammoth stood between 10 and 11 feet tall and lived around 17,000 years ago.
Researchers used radiocarbon analysis to pinpoint the age of the bones.
By 2016, the research center estimated they’d collected about 97 mammoth bones or fragments.
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