DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just the voice passing it along. Now settle in, because this one starts with a construction crew in 1928 and ends somewhere around a million years before that. When the Santa Fe Railway put up their general office building right here in Potter County, the workers started digging out the basement — and what came up out of that ground wasn't dirt and rock.
It was the remains of a mammoth. A mammoth, friends. Just waiting down there in the dark like it had an appointment.
Those remains were placed in the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum over in Canyon, Texas, and that's where the story gets bigger, because one mammoth is really just the beginning. See, the extinct American mammoths were closely related to the modern elephants of Africa and Asia. They made their way from Asia into America early in the Pleistocene Epoch — the Ice Ages — more than one million years ago.
One million. Let that sit for a second next time you're stuck in Amarillo traffic. They thrived on this continent all the way through those ice ages, and then, at the end of that epoch, they simply vanished.
Gone. Along with them went the giant bison, the ground sloth, the horse, the camel, and plenty of other lesser animals. The causes of that extinction, the marker is careful to tell you, are still being investigated.
Nobody's got a clean answer yet. There were several species of mammoths, some of them running considerably larger than the modern elephants alive today. And here's the thing about the Texas Panhandle — mammoth remains are so abundant in the Pleistocene deposits out here that scientists use them as what they call Index Fossils, meaning they serve as a kind of calendar for rock beds of that age.
The Panhandle is practically paved in prehistory. And those mammoths weren't wandering around unnoticed. Early inhabitants of North America, the people of the Clovis Culture, were out here somewhere between twelve thousand and fifteen thousand years ago, and they pursued the mammoth as a means of subsistence.
That was their livelihood, their survival, their whole enterprise — chasing something that could flatten a house. So the next time you pass a railway office building and think it's just brick and glass and bureaucracy, remember: somewhere beneath the foundation, the Ice Ages left their calling card. The Santa Fe Railway found it in 1928, sent it to Canyon for safekeeping, and saw fit to make sure you knew the whole story.
What the marker says
When this Santa Fe Railway general office building was erected in 1928, the remains of a mammoth were excavated from the basement and were placed in the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas. The extinct American mammoths were closely related to the modern elephants of Africa and Asia. They migrated from Asia into America early in the Pleistocene Epoch, or Ice Ages, more than 1,000,000 years ago. They thrived on this continent until the end of that epoch, when they disappeared, along with many other ice age animals such as the giant bison ground sloth, horse, camel, and other lesser animals. The causes of this extinction are still being investigated. There were several species of mammoths, some of them much larger than modern elephants. Remains of mammoths are so abundant in Pleistocene deposits of the Texas Panhandle that they serve as "Index Fossils" for beds of that age. Early inhabitants of North America, such as men of the Clovis Culture (circa 12,000 to 15,000 years ago), pursued the mammoth as a means of subsistence. Preservation of history is a policy of the Santa Fe Railway System. See exhibit, foyer of this building. (1966)