The Denver Museum of Nature & Science is scheduled to excavate Snowmass Village’s Ziegler Reservoir next summer for the second time. Researchers hope to discover more fossils following a massive dig over a decade ago.
In 2010, a construction crew uncovered a mammoth tusk while digging to expand the reservoir. The museum later uncovered more than 35,000 animal bones from mastodons, giant ground sloths and Ice Age bison, as well as plants and insects. These findings represent 85,000 years of history.
A Wednesday news release from Snowmass said that new research will provide context for the tens of thousands of fossils initially discovered. The new dig will also involve researchers who can identify how plants, animals and climate changed during that period of time in the Rocky Mountains.
“Who knows how many things we’re going to find down there,” Sara Stookey Sanchez, a public relations manager at Snowmass Tourism, said at a media briefing in early September. “It’s gonna be pretty major.”
Ziegler is still widely recognized as the world’s richest high-altitude Ice Age ecosystem. Debbie Collins, a manager for Snowmass Tourism, said crews on this project will consult researchers from the first dig, including Patrick O’Connor and Gussie McCracken.
“Gussie was an intern on the project 16 years ago, and she now has a major role at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science,” Collins said.
O’Connor is now the director of Earth and Space Sciences and curator of vertebrate paleobiology at the museum. In the news release, O’Connor said the first dig gave scientists a window into Colorado’s Ice Age, but new technology will help crews discover even more.
“We now have more tools at our disposal to better understand the paleoenvironment in which these animals and plants lived, and how ecosystems responded during a period of intense change right here in Colorado,” he said.
Several events over the next year will commemorate the research, and as new discoveries and research unfold, project partners will share the science with the public.
Beyond making new scientific discoveries, the town of Snowmass Village is also working on Ziegler Reservoir because of prolonged drought. Water managers are expanding the reservoir as a contingency plan to increase water storage and ensure snowmaking capacity.
Expansion operations will take place at the same time as the excavation, most likely from May to September 2027.
Next fall, the reservoir will have capacity for an additional 40 million gallons.
O’Connor and McCracken will speak at a panel on Friday at 6:30 p.m. at the Limelight Snowmass as part of the town’s Science in Snowmass event.
