Do you love fossils? Are you excited to be at the same place where now-extinct mammals once came to drink where there is now only a wash? Then you will be beside yourself to visit the brand-spanking-new Ice Age Fossils State Park in North Las Vegas, NV. This 315-acre park opens January 20, so you could be among the first to enter, as reported by Thrillist.
The new state park includes a part of a wash that, during the Pleistocene age, hosted mammoths, lions, dire wolves, sloths and even...camels. A wash is a dry riverbed that seasonally fills with water or after heavy rainfall. But starting about 2.5 million years ago and ending around 12,000 years ago, this was a lush marshland called Tule Springs.
Here, the last century’s “Big Dig” of 1962-63 was the “largest and largest inter-disciplinary scientific expedition of its kind up to that point,” according to the park’s website. During that extraordinary four-month dig, archeologists, geologists, biologists and researchers such as pollen specialists came together to explore the rich offerings of the land. They aimed to learn whether humans and the animals known as “megafauna” lived simultaneously. They could not prove that (but we now know it to be true from other U.S. sites).
Scientists dug 2 miles of trenches 12 feet wide and 30 feet deep. When you visit the park, you’ll be able to look at the trench walls and see the various layers of sediment, such as gravel and mud that help trace the eras. When the dig ended, the site was left alone for about 40 years until researchers regained interest in the early 2000s, unearthing 10,000 fossils, such as a 7.5-foot-long mammoth tusk and a dire wolf knuckle. That bears repeating: a dire wolf knuckle!
The creation of the state park permanently preserves this land for the future information it will yield. That’s important because underneath the glittering resorts and casinos of the Las Vegas Strip—just 20 minutes away—there is also an abundance of fossils that we can no longer access.
To get ramped up for your visit, watch the fantastic and inspiring 9-minute video on the park’s website here. Your $3 visit will include access to a visitor center, programs, a 0.3 megafauna trail with metal sculptures of the Ice Age animals, a 1.5-mile Las Vegas Wash loop trail that takes you through the wash and the historic Trench K, and a 1.2-mile loop trail that takes you through the east end of the park and also connects with Trench K. You can see fossils on this “Big Dig Trail.”