LUPE EDIT

Guadalupe or ‘Lupe’, was discovered by Roger Castillo while he and his dog Jenna were on a nature walk along the Guadalupe River in San Jose California. Roger often walks along portions of the river as he has for the past 30 years. Even as a child he used to play in the river. Now as a river guardian he observes and records the changes in the Guadalupe and other local river systems that flow to the San Francisco Bay estuaries. This time was different, He began to notice old shells and odd formations in the river bed as he walked along it’s bank. As he looked a little further he noticed what seemed to be a bone. As he looked closer he saw that there were two bones next to each other and figured it was most probably just a cow’s thigh bones. But as he stepped back and looked at all the bones together, a pattern became apparent and he realized it was a larger animal. Very excited about what he had found, he still had no idea of what it was so he called a paleontologist and explained what he had found. After examination it was concluded that the Cow’s thigh bones were actually mammoth tusks from a young Colombian Mammoth. Soon a team of Paleontologists from the University of California at Berkeley excavated the remains and determined that is was a young mammoth and lived about 60,000 years ago. This discovery puzzled the local geologists who previously agreed that the area would not be able to support such animals. Now they have to re think about how and when the alluvial plain was formed.
Now Lupe is on display at the Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose, California. The Exhibit encourages exploring your local environment. So go outside and take a look yourself, you never know what you may discover!

This is where Roger found the remains of ‘Lupe’ the Columbian Mammoth on the Guadalupe River by Trimble Road and Highway 101 in San Jose, California.

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Lupe the Mammoth Comes To Life!

A KQED Quest, Science on the Spot Video.