Vince Patton / OPB
Mike Full stands next to huge bones from a mammoth skeleton.
More than 50,000 years ago in Oregon, huge ancestors of elephants roamed the landscape. And last month, near McMinnville, mammoth tracks were uncovered.
Archaeologists and paleontologists have taken a keen interest in the discovery.
The man who spotted the tracks is Mike Full. He's a retired police officer who is an active fossil-hunter with other ancient finds under his belt. He saw the mammoth footprints as some McMinnville high-schoolers were conducting a dig at the site.
The site of a mammoth dig.
You might remember Full from an episode of Oregon Field Guide, when he found a giant sloth claw while scuba diving in the Yamhill River a couple of years ago.
Click the audio link at the top of this story to hear the entire interview with Full.
Correction: In an earlier version of this story, a headline incorrectly referred to the species of mammoth found in Oregon. The creatures that roamed Oregon were known as Columbia or Imperial mammoths. Woolly mammoths lived much further north.
