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When this Santa Fe Railway general office building was erected in 1928, the remains of a mammoth were excavated from the basement and were placed in the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas. The extinct American mammoths were closely related to the modern elephants of Africa and Asia. They migrated from Asia into America early in the Pleistocene Epoch, or Ice Ages, more than 1,000,000 years ago. They thrived on this continent until the end of that epoch, when they disappeared, along with many other ice age animals such as the giant bison ground sloth, horse, camel, and other lesser animals. The causes of this extinction are still being investigated. There were several species of mammoths, some of them much larger than modern elephants. Remains of mammoths are so abundant in Pleistocene deposits of the Texas Panhandle that they serve as "Index Fossils" for beds of that age. Early inhabitants of North America, such as men of the Clovis Culture (circa 12,000 to 15,000 years ago), pursued the mammoth as a means of subsistence. Preservation of history is a policy of the Santa Fe Railway System. See exhibit, foyer of this building. (1966) |
