Project With A Past Determined Students Want Pleistocene Epoch Beast Named Official State Fossil

Getting a bill through the Legislature can be a mammoth task.

Just ask the students at Cheney’s Windsor Elementary School.

They have worked for three years to get the Columbian woolly mammoth - an extinct, 10,000-year-old herbivore - listed as Washington’s official state fossil.

After a year of research, they convinced Rep. Larry Sheahan, R-Rosalia, to introduce a bill in 1997. But it stalled on a technicality between the House and Senate. It’s expected to resurface this spring.

“I hope it passes this year so nobody has to go through what we’ve been through,” said exasperated fifth-grader Anthony Hand. “I thought it would take, like, a day or something.”

In fact, it’s been with him since second grade, when classmate Chris Pineo came up with the idea. They were studying “animals of long ago” in teacher Sara Aebly’s class.

One of their textbooks mentioned that Colorado fourth-graders helped get the Stegosaurus named that state’s official fossil, Aebly said.

At Pineo’s prompting, students wrote to then-Gov. Mike Lowry, asking if Washington had an official fossil. It doesn’t, nor do 20 other states.

Pineo spent the summer scouring books. He learned that no dinosaur fossils had ever been discovered in the region.

With the help of a Washington State University geology professor, the class instead settled on the 11-foot-high, ivory-tusked beast from the Pleistocene Epoch because it once roamed the Pacific Northwest.

The mammoth - remains of which have been found from Port Angeles to the Palouse - since has become something of a school mascot.

The music teacher is setting up a mammoth site on the school’s Internet web page. Fifth-graders are writing letters to lawmakers. Fourth-graders are stuffing envelopes. First-and third-graders are reading about the creatures.

“This book shows you that hairy mammoths are nephews of elephants,” third-grader Stefanie Grubb said Friday, during a roundtable discussion.

” … are relatives of elephants,” Aebly said, correcting her.

“Yeah, relatives,” Grubb said, undaunted.

“They’re peaceful and they graze,” said fifth-grader Lindsay Malcolm. “They eat 300 pounds of food a day.”

While the children are frustrated that the process is taking so long, Aebly is amazed at their enthusiasm. And this year, they’re taking no chances.

The kids are writing letters to all the state’s school districts, asking for their support. They’re even calling relatives and begging them to phone a legislative hot line.

Aebly said indications are that their chances for success in the 1998 legislative session are good.

“We’re hopeful that this is the year,” Pineo said.

Efforts to reach Sheahan were unsuccessful Friday.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo