Field Museum brings archeological dig to Bartlett forest preserve

"We found a bone!"

Shouts ring out in Pratt's Wayne Woods. As excited students surround Field Museum paleontologist Richard Kissel, he scrutinizes the small, brown fragment.

"It looks like a tusk," he says to general excitement.

Thursday marked the start of an archeological dig in the forest preserve near Bartlett aimed at uncovering the remains of an 11,500-year-old mastodon.

So far, the ground has yielded several fossils.

"We broke ground at 11:30 a.m. and found one within two hours," Kissel said.

The dig is a collaboration between the Field Museum in Chicago and the DuPage County Forest Preserve. It's the result of two years of organization and overcoming funding challenges.

But when a forest preserve contractor restoring wetlands at Pratt's Wayne Woods uncovered tusks and molars from the mastodon by accident in summer 2005, district officials knew the educational opportunity was too good to miss.

Sweating in the scorching temperatures and covered in mud, 20 high school students and 10 teachers bent over the earth, intent on finding its secrets.

Even though she'd yet to find an actual mastodon remnant, Sydney Castelvecchi's enthusiasm was undaunted.

"This is wonderful for me. I want to be a paleontologist," the 17-year-old Naperville girl said.

The dig site at the preserve near Bartlett will be opened to the public for limited tours next week. The excavation will continue in summer 2008, and District Education Director Dave Guritz explained there's hopes of expanding the program.

"The dream is that this is just the beginning of the discoveries in this area," Guritz said. "We hope to broaden the search and see what else is out there."

The prairie features of grasses and oaks in Pratt's Wayne Woods bear no resemblance to the Illinois landscape back when mastodons roamed the state.

As the last Ice Age ended, a spruce forest covered the preserve as the glaciers began retreating 18,000 years ago, experts say.

By the time the mastodon died, the ice was possibly as far north as Green Bay, surmised Illinois State Museum paleontologist Jeff Saunders.

Similar to elephants, mastodons were massive creatures, standing up to 10 feet tall at the shoulders and weighing as much as 6 tons.

"They were probably kings of the woodlands," Saunders said, adding that mastodons did have predators such as the giant short-faced bear.

As to what killed the mastodon and caused the demise of the species, researchers have yet to pinpoint a reason although climate change, predators and disease are all possible factors.

Uncovering such mysteries and finding clues to other species, including humans, are what's driving Kissel and Field archaeologist and adjunct curator Scott Demel.

"A find like this is relatively rare," Demel said.

In addition to prehistoric flora and fauna remains, scientists are also looking for remnants of a Paleo-Indian civilization.

"There is potential to find human spear points," said Kissel, who also is the Field's science program developer.

Compared to digging up dinosaur bones, "the nice thing about working on Ice Age animals is that usually we're dealing with things are millions of years old and are crushed and broken," Kissel said. "With something that's only 11,000 years old -- the preservation is really good."

Students and teachers underwent extensive training at the Field before arriving at the site. Volunteers were chosen from across Cook, DuPage, Lake and Kane counties.

District Education Outreach Manager Tom Pray knew he had a committed group by the way they hung on his story of how the mastodon bones were uncovered in 2005.

"By the time I pulled out the molars, there was a collective gasp," he said.

The hands-on experience can't be matched, said Naperville teacher Ann Covert, a self-confessed "woolly mammoth enthusiast."

"Everyone's really focused. They're a great group of kids," she said.

Thursday, students and teachers crouched around 2-by-2 meter squares of earth, using trowels to move the earth, removing 10 centimeter sections at a time. Every find is meticulously recorded on graph paper.

Meredith Lanan, 15, of St. Charles was among the lucky volunteers to uncover a tusk early in the process.

"With the first tusk, everyone stopped working; it was very exciting," she said.

Matt Hilgendorf, Elmhurst, 16, was similarly pumped.

"It's pretty exhausting but it's fun digging in the dirt," he explained.

As discoveries emerged, Kissel and Demel were kept busy separating the true fossils from the lookalikes.

"I'd rather them give me 1,000 that aren't real," Demel said, "than miss one that's real"