Mastodon Dig

In July 2022, Mike Towell, a facilities worker at Principia, was digging soil on campus to fill in some of the ravines and bolster the roads on campus, when he discovered a tusk on the surface.  After an expert from the Illinois State Museum identified it as a mammoth or mastodon tusk and archaeologists from the University of Illinois did Ground Penetrating Radar scans of the area, it appeared that there was something more underneath the ground.  

So, we decided to excavate the tusk as part of an archaeology class.  As of the first week in December 2024, we removed the tusk, some bones, and the skull.