Issue date: 2/5/10 Section: News

Media Credit: Jeff Bennett On Nov. 25, 2009, construction workers dug up the partial skeleton of a woolly mammoth. After further analysis, the bones should be lent back to LPC.

It's another ice age, except this time there's no ice and there's no Ray Romano. On Nov. 25, at about 1 p.m., construction workers on the site of the new performing arts center discovered the femur, some vertebrae, a few ribs and the anklebone of a woolly mammoth thought to be more than 10,000 years old. The fossils of the mammoth took four days to remove and are still awaiting their final arrangement 120 northeast of Livermore in Auburn, Calif.
LPC was preparing for the gloomy skies and downpour that the winter brings to the Bay Area when construction workers began to unearth what appeared to be a series of large bones. Ann Kroll of Parsons Brinckerhoff, the managing construction company, said that a campus biologist was called down to identify the bones. After sending pictures to the UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology, Kroll said, the bones were determined to indeed be those of a woolly mammoth.
President of Las Positas DeRionne P. Pollard said that the College is cooperating with State agencies to ensure the proper handling of the bones, per State guidelines.
The company hired to remove the fossils, PaleoResource Consultants, carefully dug up and escorted the specimens to their facilities in Auburn, Calif.
"The skeletal remains will most likely go to the UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology," said David Haasl, senior paleontologist from the PaleoResource Consultants. "Because they have the appropriate resources to catalogue and maintain the specimens."
Students from a select number of geology classes got to observe the bones before their quick departure from campus. The exact location of the discovery is protected due to safety and security purposes.
Haasl said that the reason for this is that fossil sites can be sensitive and a lure for unauthorized collecting.
Paleontological (fossils pertaining to the existence of life during other geologic periods) and archaeological finds play a major role in ensuring the preservation of California's rich history.

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