Both the UT and the LA Times have fascinating stories on big fossil finds.
The UT’s story by Ronald W. Powell is about a mammoth skull found at a downtown construction site, and on the Times’ front page is a piece about the bones of a 43-foot prehistoric Titanoboa snake found in northern Columbia. The snake weighed 2,500 pounds, and, say researchers, could have swallowed a large cow whole.
The mammoth skull, tusk and foot bones were found at the construction site of the new Thomas Jefferson School of Law campus in the East Village. Paleontologists estimate the bones to be about 500,000 years old, according to Powell’s story.
Powell points to the appropriateness of the fossils being found at the site of a complex named after Jefferson, given that our third president was a pre-history buff. Powell writes that Jefferson once had the bones of a mastodon shipped to the White House so he could examine them.
I loved Laura Embry’s picture of the construction workers sitting around the mammoth skull, and I think it warrants a caption contest. You can e-mail your captions to me at david.washburn@voiceofsandiego.org.