Snowmass find is a mammoth of a draw.

• Author: Best, Allen
• Position: TOURISM

The excavation of 600 bones of extinct Ice Age animals from a site near Snowmass Village last fall has been a candy store for paleontologists. It also got the local business community excited, and likely will help the Denver Museum of Nature and Science secure grants and perhaps get donors to write checks.

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In Snowmass, the excitement was immediate. "Trust me, the e-mails were going crazy when this thing first started," says Susan Hamley, the town's director of tourism. Skiing dominates Snowmass during winter, but summer has needed a stronger draw. "We have fishing and we have biking," she said. "But this (the Ice Age bones) makes us different. To wake up and find out we have these bones - yeah, that's a nice gift."

To draw attention to the finds, the town has strung banners from street poles that say: "I Dig Snowmass," with the profile of a mammoth below it.

A museum of some sort may eventually get built. Russell Forrest, the Snowmass town manager, said he believes the town has an obligation to use the discovery to educate about climate change. While the climate changed rapidly at the end of the last ice age, it is dwarfed by the pace of change now under way, he points out.

Aiming for a less lofty ambition, local resident Jack Rafferty had secured a domain name, www.snowmasstodon.com, within days of the first discovery, then rushed to produce the paelontological equivalent of rubber tomahawks: hats, T-shirts and hoodies.

Scientists at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, which accepted responsibility for excavation and...