In Waco, Texas, lie the remains of 24 Columbian mammoths and other Pleistocene animals, the largest known concentration of mammoths killed by what seems to have been a recurring disaster, probably flash floods. They did not die at once. About 68,000 years ago at least 19 mammoths from a nursery herd were caught in a steep-sided channel and drowned or were buried by mud, and a camel died with them. Later, an unidentified animal died alongside a juvenile sabre-toothed cat. About 15,000 years after the herd, a bull mammoth, two young mammoths and an adult female died the same way, unable to climb the slippery slopes as the water rose. There is no evidence that humans were involved. The dates come from optically stimulated luminescence dating of the sediment around the bones. A local foundation, the city of Waco and Baylor University developed the site together, and it became a National Monument in 2015.
24 Columbian mammoths lost to floods · Pleistocene, about 68,000 years ago
This ground is protected. Photograph it, record it, leave it where it lies. On US federal land the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act 2009 makes collecting vertebrate fossils an offence, and penalties are real.
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