Backhoe operators working on a water project for Kennecott in late January unearthed bones of a camel that lived at least 10,000 years ago.
The bones were in sediment east of Kennecott's primary waste dump in the foothills of the Oquirrh Mountains. They were found in what looked like an ancient stream channel.State paleonotologist Dave Gillette, who helped excavate the beast, said the chalky fossils probably date to the late Pleistocene era, the last ice age, 10,000 to 30,000 years ago. However, it's possible they may be from a strata that is much older, possibly many millions of years old.
"We don't understand the geology thoroughly," he told the Deseret News. "The jury's still out concerning the age."
What is certain is that the bones belonged to a camel, only the fourth to be identified from Utah.
Members of the Utah Friends of Paleontology, Kennecott workers and officials, and Gillette and assistant Martha Hayden helped excavate the find on Jan. 22.
Backhoe workers for W.W. Clyde Construction came upon the bones while working on a water reclamation project for Kennecott. Construction crews shifted to another area while Kennecott officials contacted Gillette.
Fragments of toe bones salvaged by the workers showed it was an extinct camel. Kennecott's environmental coordinator, Ivan Weber, and construction superintendent Richard Burris took the paleontologists to the site. Then Gillette and Hayden called the amateur group, the Friends of Paleontology, to ask for help on a weekend dig.
Backhoe operator Dave Martindale carefully lifted dirt while workers sifted the soil for bones. Few bones were found, but they included both sides of the camel's lower jaw.
The foot bones were broken and the jawbones were crushed and upside down. "We haven't seen for sure whether they still have teeth. They're still encased in rock," Gillette said.
Gillette is still trying to determine what camel species it is.
"Camels lived in North America for the last 40 million years, and indentifying which camel it is depends a lot on stratigraphy," he said. He wants to examine the strata further and make at least one radiocarbon test to date the bones.
Whichever the species or age, the discovery was a thrill for those involved in the excavation.
"It was a treat to think about the environment that might have existed at this location in the postglacial period and imagine the swamp that might have been there," Weber said.
"It's well above the old Lake Bonneville shore, so it must have been a sort of little pond or bog, in perhaps a fairly rugged, rocky valley. And it was obviously a place where a carcass could be washed in and lodged without too much violence being done to it."
Weber said he hopes other bone fragments will be recovered from the site but points out, "There's not much soil left between the location where this was found and bedrock off to the side."
Kennecott workers are keeping their eyes open for future discoveries in similar sediments, he said. "I think everybody's frankly, very excited to have the privilege to find something like this."
Weber said it was a thrill to think about that long-gone Utah and the exotic animals that must have roamed then. Among them may have been sloths, musk oxen, horses, mammoths and bisons.
Gillette said identification of the fossils may take months because the bones are fragile and must be carefully dried.
"If this is the more common Ice Age camel, Camelops hesternus, it will be only the second recorded from the Bonneville Basin and one of only a few known from Utah," he said.
Two other camels of this type were recovered from caves in southern Utah, and a single camel neck vertebra turned up when a basement was excavated in Sandy.
But the newest discovery might be even rarer than the ordinary Ice Age camel.
"The size of the bones, however, indicate they may belong to a species of giant camel, which have not been found before in Utah," he said.
Gillette lauded the cooperation of Kennecott and said someday a cast of the specimen may go on display at the Kennecott Copper Mine Visitor Center.