CAS CONNECT 2014

PHOTO / TOM COX 13 W hat began as a mere invitation to the site of a potential mammoth has evolved into an unexpected whirlwind of infor- mation pointing to the past, present and future for Oklahoma State University. The geography department in the College of Arts and Sciences is busier than ever as it anticipates funding for the artifact’s campus debut. In July 2013, natural gas company Access Midstream stumbled across the bones while drill- ing just outside Enid, Okla., and contacted the Oklahoma Archaeological Survey, which confirmed the remains belonged to a mammoth. Survey member Lee Bement contacted the university for help. Tom Cox, a first-year Ph.D. student at OSU who had previously worked with Bement, took over the dig site and included the data and overall experience in his master’s thesis. Cox had been working with OSU geographer Carlos Cordova on reconstructing the environments of paleo-mammoth remains in the Great Plains region. Bement gave Cox the chance to work with an untouched site, a rare opportunity for a graduate student, especially at OSU. “What we thought was going to be this little thesis project has turned into something huge,” Cox says. “I think the biggest thing I’ve wanted to see come out of this is to show people that geography isn’t just learning about dates, places and things. There is so much cool stuff that you can do in geography that people don’t even know about.” After two months of weekend excavations, Cox had a nearly complete and surprisingly well- preserved mammoth, referred to as the Helena or Enid mammoth. Volunteers, which included OSU students and faculty, were recruited for the TREASURE Mammoth find a boon for OSU’s geography department CONTINUES