Geologists of Jackson Hole's video: The First People and Last Mammoths of Wyoming

Presented by Todd A. Surovell, University of Wyoming. Not long ago, Wyoming was home to mammoths, extinct relatives of elephants weighing up to 20,000 pounds. These lumbering giants went extinct only some five hundred human generations ago, but they lived here for almost two million years before disappearing from what is now Wyoming. Though we can no longer see matriarchal herds of mammoth grazing on Wyoming’s grasslands, the first humans to enter the state did have that opportunity. For more than fifty years, archaeologists have been studying interactions between the first humans and last mammoths in Wyoming, and though we still have much to learn, the archaeological record tells us something about the interaction between these two species. In this lecture, Dr. Surovell talks about various aspects of his work examining humans and mammoths in Wyoming, from the process of finding sites, to what he has learned about the behavior of the first people in Wyoming, and what he believes caused the extinction of the mammoths. For more than fifty years, archaeologists have been studying interactions between the first humans and last mammoths in Wyoming, and though we still have much to learn, the archaeological record tells us something about the interaction between these two species.