calculate when the sediment was last exposed to the sun. The soil near the mammoths' remains was examined using OSL to determine how long the minerals were buried. As the soil was buried at the same time as the mammoths, determining when the soil was last exposed to the sun would correlate to the time when the mammoths perished. Discovery The site was discovered in 1978 by late teens Paul Barron and Eddie Bufkin, who were searching for arrowheads and fossils on a farm near the Bosque River. They found a large bone and, thinking it was a cow bone, decided to take the bone to the owner of the farm. After pulling it completely out of the ground, they discovered that the bone was 3 feet long, much too big to be a cow bone. They then took it to the Strecker Museum at Baylor University for analysis. Once the bone was identified as Columbian mammoth, the museum staff organized a formal dig at the site lasting from 1978 to 1990. In 1979, Sr. George F. Naryshkin (then an undergraduate at Baylor) began work on his -year excavation and study of the site. He asked for and received permission from the owners of the property to excavate the area. George named the site "The Waco Mammoth Site" and uncovered 5 mammoths at the time and in 1980 completed his senior thesis on the site titled "The Significance of the Waco Mammoth site to Central Texas Pleistocene History". He aged the site to about 40,000 years before present based on terrace dating. Following his graduation, 16 mammoths were discovered. These first remains were protected with plaster jackets and stored at the Strecker Museum (now the Mayborn Museum Complex). The other remains were excavated between 1990 and 1997. These remains include a large male (bull), a female, two juveniles and a Western Camel (Camelops hesternus) and are in situ at the site. Though the first bones at the site were discovered in 1978, the site remained closed to the public until the end of 2009. That year, a shelter was completed to protect the bones and allow the site to be viewed by the general public. The site, now run by the City of Waco, Baylor University, and the National Park Service, sits in a 100-plus acre stretch of wooded parkland along the Bosque River. National Monument United States Representative Chet