The Tri-Cities area, home to the Lake Lewis Chapter of IAFI, is inching its way into spring and it’s time to say goodbye to winter. And for some of us, it’s time to begin the 2023 dig season at Coyote Canyon, the resting place of a 17,500-year-old Columbian mammoth.
Coyote Canyon is just a few miles southwest of Kennewick in the Horse Heaven Hills. Last month we cleaned up the winter erosion and set up the field equipment so work can begin in earnest in April. Several bones, yet to be identified, were partially exposed last fall and hopes are high for exposing and removing them this summer.
This elephant relative was deposited on the west side of Coyote Canyon during one of the earlier Ice Age floods and is buried by possibly six layers of floods sediment. Numerous erratic rocks have been found among the bones. Just before the pandemic temporarily paused work at the site, a local high school girl was assigned the task of identifying rock types of a cluster of small erratics buried near the animal’s left shoulder blade. She then identified outcrops of the same types of rocks in northern Idaho, at or near the ice dam. Finally, she documented her work with a poster and presented it at the 2019 GSA conference in Portland, Oregon.
With digging comes tourism. As usual, public tour lists have filled for spring and summer-fall tour reservations will open on June first. To sign up for a tour the public can visit our new website, www.mcbones.weebly.com. School and private group tours are also available. At the time of this writing, we have scheduled six public tours, 30 elementary class tours and 13 group tours, including one for vision impaired and one for non-English speakers. All of our presentations emphasize the importance of the Ice Age floods to the mammoth story at Coyote Canyon.