BULLDOZER OPERATOR SPOTS MAMMOTH TUSK AT N.D. MINE

20 more Ice Age bones discovered at site of former stream

It was pitch dark in a North Dakota mine and the coal miners were up late, working through an early morning shift on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. But as a bulldozer operator approached a pile of excavated debris, he was attentive enough to see his headlights catch an unusual flash of white among the dirt and rock.

He paused before sending the dozer forward and alerted the rest of his team.

Sitting in the pile of rock — and somehow intact after being excavated and transported across the mine by heavy machinery — was the tusk of a mammoth that had been buried since the Ice Age. Its discovery by workers at Freedom Mine, a surface coal mine near Beulah, N.D., in May shocked state researchers and brought paleontologists and miners together to turn the mine into an archaeological dig site. Their work uncovered more than 20 additional bones, one of the largest discoveries of mammoth remains in the state, the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources announced this month.

“You don’t really expect to see this full curved tusk just laying there in perfect condition after being dumped out of the back of a dump truck,” Clint Boyd, senior paleontologist for the North Dakota Geological Survey, told The Washington Post.

Mammoths roamed North America tens of thousands of years ago, and skeletal discoveries of the mighty Ice Age beasts have excited communities across the United States. But their remains are not distributed evenly. While South Dakota boasts a bustling excavation site and tourist attraction near the city of Hot Springs that has unearthed the remains of more than 60 mammoths, researchers have struggled to find comparable collections of mammoth bones in neighboring North Dakota.

It would have stayed that way if not for the sharp eyes of the crew working the graveyard shift at Freedom Mine that holiday weekend.

Miners are instructed to stay on the lookout for historic artifacts or remains as they dig, said David Straley, the vice president of external affairs for North American Coal, which oversees the mine. But the discovery was still a stroke of luck. Somehow, the tusk had survived its trip through Freedom Mine’s digging operation in the scoop of a massive mining excavator and a dump truck bed without getting damaged.

“The coal miners did exactly what they were supposed to do,” Straley said. “And we’re just extremely proud of them. And just excited about what turned out of this thing.”

Boyd, the paleontologist, was alerted to the find the following week. The tusk — around seven feet long and 120 pounds, Straley estimated — was an impressive find on its own. But it also led Boyd and a team of researchers to further discoveries at the mine. In several visits over the following months, paleontologists discovered signs of a prehistoric stream and more mammoth bones scattered along the stream’s path, Boyd said.

The mammoth remains are now being cleaned and stabilized at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum in Bismarck.

NORTH DAKOTA DEPARTMENT OF MINERAL RESOURCES A 7-foot-long, 120-pound mammoth tusk was discovered by a sharp-eyed bulldozer operator in May at Freedom Mine in Beulah, N.D.