A Good Place to Discover

On the third day of our trip, we drove to Waco Mammoth National Monument. It is a dig site where you can see lots of mammoth fossils and even camels. It is one of the newest additions to the national park system.

The previous night was our first night camping in tents. We stayed at Airport Park. It was right next to Waco Lake, so the chilly air blew right toward us. After a frigid night, we packed up our things and headed to the nearby Waco Mammoth National Monument.

When we arrived, we got our tickets and started to walk the trail. We got to the building. I did not know what to expect. We went into the structure and saw a herd of camels and mammoths partly buried beneath the ground. It was exciting to see mammoth fossils and to think that they used to live here.

A fully grown mammoth can reach the height of 13 feet. There were three fully grown mammoths and one baby mammoth inside the shelter. There was also a saber tooth cat’s tooth and several camel fossils. I didn’t know that camels originated in north America.

It was cold outside and warm inside the breath-taking dig shelter. There were lots of tools around and even a few fossils that were unidentified. Hunters in the 1970’s found mammoth bones sticking out of the ground near the Brazos River in north central Texas. They quickly called scientists who excavated the place. In 2015, the site and the surrounding land became a National Monument. There are twenty-four mammoth skeletons and several camels at the Waco site.

Waco Mammoth National Monument was an enjoyable place to visit. I learned a lot about mammoths and camels and saber-toothed tigers that lived during the Ice Age at this fascinating park. It was a good place to discover more about the worlds of geology, archeology, and paleontology.

~Isaac