May 27, 2008 4:48 pm US/Mountain
Douglas County Ranch Holds Ancient Secrets
LITTLETON, Colo. (CBS4) ―
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Lamb Springs Ranch in Douglas County
CBS4
Tucked away on a ranch in Douglas County is Lamb Spring, an unassuming spot which offers a massive glimpse into Colorado's prehistoric days.
Rancher Charles Lamb hired a backhoe in 1960 to dig deeper into the spring to get water for his cattle. Instead he made an exciting discovery.
"When they began to pull bones, very large bones, they realized immediately that these were not contemporary cattle, or horses for that matter," explained Bob Terwilleger with the Douglas County Historic Preservation Board.
What they were were the bones of the Columbia mammoth, giant beasts who fed at the spring, "who needed to consume, given their size, some 600 pounds of grass daily and some 40 gallons of water," said Terwilleger. "Animals which stood 12 to 14 feet high at the shoulder, sloping back, short tail and tusks some 16 feet in length."
The discovery of mammoth brought archaeologists flocking to the area in digs which lasted decades. In 2003, Dr. James Dixon of the University of New Mexico supervised the removal of a complete mammoth skull and tusks.
"This contains archeological material dating between 8,500 and 9,000 years ago, possibly 11,000 years ago and then even earlier to 13,00 years ago," Dixon said.
The spring contains layer upon layer of animal bones spanning a period of 7,000 years. It's a span of time which includes the extinction of the Columbian mammoth.
Among the piles of bones was a rock which is clearly out of place.
"It's huge. When you look at the geology out there, the largest rocks you find out there, you know tiny in comparison, very small," said Dr. Dennis Stanford with the Smithsonian Institution. "So what's this big rock, where did it come from?"
"It" came from the Platte River, west of Lamb Spring.
"Down there were boulders of the right size, so it was pretty clear that somebody walked down to the nearest outcrop along the Platte River, which is not that far actually, and then brought back uphill one of these boulders and then broke bones with it," said Stanford.
Markings on the rock suggest that "somebody" used the rock to split open bones to extract marrow, a rich source of protein. That makes it clear to archaeologists that humans visited Lamb Spring along with the huge mammoths.
"The evidence found here at Lamb Spring points to the very real possibility that is one of the earliest locations of human activity on the North American continent," Terwilleger said.
"This site, Lamb Spring, is one of the few remaining sites left, certainly, in Colorado and certainly in the Rocky Mountain region," said Terwilleger. "They've been paved over, they've been built over and it's been suggested that more than 90 percent of those sites have been lost forever, which is why Lamb Spring is so very, very important to all of us relative to the human story."
And discoveries continue to be made at Lamb Spring. Small fragments continue to rise to the surface, offering more tantalizing clues to the ancient past, making it easy to stand on the 35 acres of undeveloped land in Douglas County and imagine the great beasts roaming this area in ancient times.
"It's not a great stretch even today to stand here and look at this landscape," said Terwilleger, "to think of this maybe in those times as almost a kind of Garden of Eden."
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