Tuesday, April 04, 2006

"They hire only strong backs and pay a pittance." Mammoth team digs for help, funds

A mammoth that likely died about 16,000 years ago northeast of what is now Yakima is slowly giving up its secrets, scientists reported Friday at a meeting in Seattle, and anybody interested in assisting with the next phases of excavation and study is more than welcome to join up.

Anybody willing to get dirty and put money down, that is.

You would think that the discovery of a skeleton of one of the grandest creatures of the Pleistocene period in the Pacific Northwest would shake money out of those research agencies that seem happy to pay scientists to do other things, such as study the genes of some weird bacterium or determine why teenagers watch television. But then, you would not understand what it's like to be a paleontologist or an archaeologist.


Apparently they're trying to make this into a field school so anyone out there looking for FS credits, go for it.