Snowmastodon Site

Ice Age fossil bed found during reservoir excavation, with finds on display nearby

The Snowmastodon site is no longer a visitable dig — the reservoir has been finished and the bones have moved on to museums — but the story remains one of the more remarkable things to come out of Snowmass Village in recent decades. The Denver Museum of Nature and Science worked the site in a frantic seven-week rescue dig in 2010–11 and recovered a snapshot of life around the high lake some 120,000 years ago.

A small display about the find can usually be seen in the Snowmass Village municipal building and along an interpretive trail in the village. For the actual fossils, the Denver museum is the place to go.

things to do sight
A story
In October 2010 a bulldozer working on the Ziegler Reservoir uncovered the ribs of a young female Columbian mammoth. The dig that followed produced more than 5,000 bones from mastodons, mammoths, ground sloths, camels, and giant bison — one of the most important Ice Age finds in North America. The whole excavation had to be wrapped up in seven weeks before construction resumed.