Mammoth Museum

In 1971 workmen excavating in an open-pit copper mine at Babine Lake discovered the partly articulated skeleton of a Columbian Mammoth. The bones were taken from silty pond deposits overlain by very thick boulder-clay deposited by the last glacier that covered the area. Radiocarbon dates indicate that the animal sank in sticky pond deposits about 34,000 years ago. A replica of some of the Mammoth's Bones can be seen at the Granisle Museum.

The history of the Hudson Bay Company and the mines in this area are also available.

A Mammoth Discovery

In June 1971, mining operations in Granisle faced an unexpected complication: heavy equipment operators stumbled upon a very significant grace.

Initially,, workers thought they'd struck petrified wood. In fact, the thick glacial clay held the 34,000-year-old bones of a Columbia Mammoth - an extinct species of elephant which roamed North America between 9,000 and 100,000 years ago and was one of the largest mammoth species to have ever lived.

During the dig that followed, paleontologists unearthed the most complete mammoth skeleton ever to have been found in B.C.

Scientists and workers who attended the dig say several mammoths' bones were unearthed. However the prohibitive cost of a full-scale excavation led to a decision by the mining operation to rebury all but one mammmoth skeelton.

It is now housed at Canada's National Museum of Natural Sciences. Replicas of the recovered bones, created from casts of the originals, are visible at Granisle's Visitor Info Centre and Museum.