Little Big Find

When they finally found him, it looked like he had simply dropped to his left side with his legs extended and never gotten up--for nearly 13,000 years.

Erosion chipped away at the sand dune that covered the bones, until a couple of geologists spotted them in 1994. Then the world rushed in to Santa Rosa Island for a look at this rare creature, the pygmy mammoth, a miniature male elephant found only on a handful of islands in the world, including the Channel Islands.

At Channel Islands National Park Visitor Center, scientists have re-created the dig site where the nearly complete skeleton was found. You can see what they saw as they began the delicate work of excavating this horse-size animal.

Although the dig site is finished--using replicas of the actual bones--the rest of the exhibit won’t be in place until fall. By then, children will also find a sand pit where they can dig for fossils, and they will be able to tinker with interactive computer displays that delve into the mystery of these dwarf mammoths.

If you’re a fossil fan, simply seeing the dig-site model is impressive. It’s pitched on a sandy slope similar to the steep hillside where geology instructor Tom Rockwell and student Kevin Colson first noticed the white bones protruding from ice plant.

Because the skeleton was found intact and 95% complete, you can see the skeletal outline of the mammoth resting on his side. Based on a study of the teeth--and the fact that the animal was troubled with arthritis in the right hind foot--its age was estimated to be about 50 years old when it died.

Don Morris, a Ventura-based archeologist for the National Park Service, participated in the excavation and wasn’t the only one moved by the discovery.

“Looking at this very unusual, exotic, fantastic animal that lived so many years ago and had been buried for 13,000 years . . . I felt a little apologetic for disturbing it,” he said.

If scientists had done so, erosion would have ruined the site.

The discovery spurred Morris and paleontologist Larry Agenbroad, who studies mammoths at Northern Arizona University and the Mammoth Site in South Dakota, to look for other mammoth fossils on the Channel Islands.

“What we’ve found since then is probably just as significant,” he said.

In the last four years, they’ve collected 150 fossilized mammoth bones, most of them on Santa Rosa Island and a few on San Miguel Island. Most of the finds were pygmy mammoth remains, including a chunk of rock containing a skull with attached tusks that weighed 300 pounds.

“The island keeps on giving,” Morris said.

Even after they’ve scoured a productive spot on the island for fossils, they’ve returned months later to find new ones exposed.

Scientists like Morris are giddy over the finds, but they aren’t the only ones drawn to this island, 30 miles off the Ventura County coast. A couple of years ago, a man was caught with a fossilized pygmy mammoth bone on Santa Rosa Island and prosecuted. Unless you’re authorized to excavate, like Morris, it’s illegal to remove or disturb anything on the Channel Islands.

“We want people to see the island and enjoy it, but we want material properly handled--we don’t want it disturbed,” Morris said. Fossil finds should be reported to park authorities undisturbed.

More visitors will likely be arriving now that the island’s long history of cattle ranching is coming to a close. Inevitably, some will be drawn by the mystery surrounding the pygmy mammoth, the animal with the oxymoron of a name. As more fossils emerge, scientists such as Morris and Agenbroad are coming up with theories on how and why the animals ended up on the Channel Islands. And more intriguing, why they became so much smaller than the mammoths of the mainland.

The earliest mammoths on the islands were full-size, and most likely they arrived from the mainland by swimming.

“Elephants are good swimmers,” Morris said.

At the time, the sea level was lower and the islands were one big island, perhaps as close as four or five miles from the coast.

Why the creatures took to the sea is part of the mystery. In his new booklet, “Pygmy Mammoths of the Channel Islands of California,” Agenbroad speculates that with their keen sense of smell, they could detect tempting vegetation on the island.

Over thousands of years, the large island shrank and the channel separating the mainland expanded.

Over time, the mammoths shrank too. The dwarf mammoths ranged from 4.5 to 7 feet tall, or less than half the height of full-size mammoths. No one knows for sure why.

Morris said one theory is that there were no predators on the island, and possibly, the smaller animals could get by on less food.

Whatever the answers, the mystery intrigued public television station KCET, the Learning Channel and “National Geographic” to do pieces on the pygmy mammoth after the find in 1994.

“I knew when we found it, it was a story with some interest,” Morris said. “But I was surprised at the media and public interest.”

BE THERE

Channel Islands National Park Visitor Center is at the end of Spinnaker Drive at Ventura Harbor. The center is open 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Free. (805) 658-730.