![]() There were excellent research talks, but those were only a small part of the proceedings. But I’ve never encountered anything quite like what Dooley, Smith, and their colleagues pulled off for Valley of the Mastodons. I’ve attended my fair share of paleontology conferences and dinosaur-focused shindigs before. That’s what led to this unconventional assemblage of conference attendees, hand-picked by paleontologists Alton Dooley and Katy Smith. More than that, the Mammut americanum found here – like Max, Lil’ Stevie, and Blaze, to name just a few of the more charismatic specimens – are different from those found elsewhere in California, not to mention the rest of the continent. ![]() But in the collections of the Western Science Center – uncovered, as geologist Kathleen Springer explained, during a seven-year paleontological rescue mission spurred by the construction of Diamond Valley Lake – holds an impressive number of the Ice Age beasts. The official name is the Western Science Center, built on the edge of Diamond Valley Lake in Hemet, but, to a group of paleontologists, artists, writers, and poets who gathered there earlier this month, it’s also known as the Valley of the Mastodons.Īmerican mastodon fossils have been found from New Jersey to the Channel Islands, from the Yukon to Florida. ![]() It’s a place you could make tracks for right now if you wanted to, tucked away in southern California between LA and San Diego. Not to get all hipster about it, but you probably haven’t heard of one of the most impressive Ice Age treasure troves in the country.
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