2 North Texas Boys Stumble Upon 'Fossil Gold Mine'
SHERMAN (AP) - Two sixth-grade boys playing in a North Texas creek found what one paleontologist calls a "fossil gold mine."
Andrew Carroll says he and his friend and Pottsboro Middle School classmate Thomas Smith were exploring along the creek southeast of Sherman when they found a bone that they took to be a dinosaur bone.
Enter Ed Swiatovy of the Dallas Paleontological Society, who confirmed that the bone was the pelvis of a Columbian mammoth, one of the two largest species of mammoth.
Swiatovy tells the Herald Democrat of Sherman and Denison that bones excavated have been sent to the Museum of Nature & Science in Dallas for carbon dating. However, he said the mammoths are thought to have died out near the Red River from 10,000 to 13,000 years ago.
(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
