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Greetings All! My name is Don Esker. I'm a vertebrate paleontologist currently working in Waco Texas. I just left a 4 1/ 2 year stint working under Larry Agenbroad at the Mammoth Site of Hot Springs SD to take over as Program Coordinator for the Waco Mammoth Site. It's a fantastic 88 KA ybp site that really hasn't gotten the public attention it deserves; a fact I hope to rectify during my tenure here. My current priority is building the site's toolkit of educational programs. If you have any ideas, don't hesitate to reply!

Hello All! I need your help, but first I'd best introduce myself. I'm the new Program Coordinator -- and on-site paleontologist -- for the Waco Mammoth Site. For those of unfamiliar with the site, it's a late-Pleistocene recurrent mass-mortality site for Columbian mammoths and a scattering of other Rancholabrean megafauna. From 68 KA onwards at least two groups of mammoths and their camp-followers got caught in flash floods along a tributary of the Bosque River in what would become the western outskirts of Waco, TX. The site is currently a city-run in-situ display of six of those mammoths, in an enclosed climate-controlled shelter. The facility is loaded with educational potential, but at the moment all we've got is a (very nice) guided tour. I want to do better. One of the educational activities I'm looking to add in the near future is a screen-washing. I'll have the students screen and pick fossiliferous sediment and ID what they've found. They'll be able to keep most of what they find (with exceptions for scientifically important specimens) and all of their findings will get entered into a database that will be run through the PAST statistical package. I'll write up the results and try to get them published -- with the kids listed individually in the acknowledgements. The kids get real fossils, they get to participate in a real scientific study, and I get to do some research. I think it's an idea with potential, with one wrinkle; I'm having a hard time getting the sediment! I've tried buying phosphate gravel from the mines in Florida and North Carolina, but my efforts seem to be stalling. I know that some such gravel is available for resale, but it's a tad pricey. There's no way I could afford to buy the 100 or so kilos I want on the shoe-string budget I've got for the time being. If anyone has a line on a better source of bulk sediment, I'd love to hear from you! In fact, if you've got any ideas for spreading interest in paleontology, we need to talk. Paleontology is the gateway drug of science -- if we want to teach critical thinking in this country, fossils are the best place to start. Please help me work to make that happen. Regards, Don Esker