The bone looks to be the dorsal part of a rib bone. It has chunks missing from its exterior exposing the cellular internals of the bone. It is a dirty brown colour. It has significant crack in the middle of the curve. Multiple articulating faces remain visible, though some parts have broken off.
The bone looks to be the dorsal part of a rib bone. It has chunks missing from its exterior exposing the cellular internals of the bone. It is a dirty brown colour. It has significant crack in the middle of the curve. Multiple articulating faces remain visible, though some parts have broken off.
Narrative
In 1971, a Noranda Bell Copper Mineuncovered mammoth remains at its Babine Lake/Granisle worksite. Former employees claim that in order to prevent the worksite being shut down by an archaelogical excavation, the remains were ordered to be bulldozed into "a nearby overburden dump". One employ, Donald McKilligan smuggled these fossils out of the worksite "in his lunch box" and these were then donated in 2002 to the Museum by his ex-wife, Colleen Carroll. There are claims that several other employees smuggled remains out of the area. There are claims that up to two dozen mammoths may have been buried at the site. At some point, Noranda notified UBC and Dr. Howard Tipper supervised a dig. General Standard - a sub contractor for Noranda - gave Tipper three days in which he ecavated the remains of one mammoth. The remains are estimated to be 34,000 years old and are now housed in the Canadia's Museum of Natural Sciences (see http://salmontrails.com/culture/granisle-museum-visitor-centre).In 2002 when the story first broke in the Interior News and when the bone was first donated to the Museum, Jane Young and other Museum staff implored other ex-employees of the work site to donate items to the Museum.For more information see: "Mammoth donation unearths archeological cover-up in Granisle", by Nicole Fitzgerald, Wednesday, July 17, 2002 and "Digging deeper into Granisle mammoth excavation", by Nicole Fitzgerald, July 31, 2002.
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