The place: Waco Mammoth Site in Waco, Texas
Who visited: Martha Deeringer of McGregor, Texas, and her grandchildren, Joshua, age 14, Tyler, 13, Noah, 11, Hannah, 11, Charli, 8, and Katie, 8
Why they loved it: Deep in the heart of Texas around 68,000 years ago, a nursery herd of about 20 mammoths perished in what may have been a flash flood in a tributary of the Bosque River. The mammoths remained buried until 1978, when two men spotted a bone sticking out of the ravine. What excavators unearthed there, Martha and her grandkids learned, was a moving snapshot of prehistory on the plains: the female mammoths appeared to have formed a circle around the calves, and one of the females may have even tried to lift a calf to safety with her tusks. This particular detail fascinated the kids and seemed to bring the fossils to life, Martha recalls, while a ribbon tied 14 feet above the ground -- the height of a mammoth bull -- gave everyone a sense of the creatures' awesome scale. The ribbon, a temporary point of reference, has since been replaced with a life-size mural. "It's amazing to think that animals like this once roamed the state," Martha says. "We all left the site with a new sense of the history that rests just beneath our feet."
What it costs: $7 for adults, $5 for kids ages 4 to 12, free for kids age 3 and under
For more information: Call (254) 750-7946 or go to wacomammoth.org.
