Woman Looking For Asparagus Finds Fossil

A woman and her dog scouting the banks of the Yakima River for asparagus found instead what appears to be a 13,000-year-old upper-leg bone from a mammoth.

Julie Anthony was looking for a hand-hold as she traversed the moist riverbank looking for green stalks with her pit bull, Baby. She reached down and grabbed the yellowish, 4-foot-long humerus poking out of the sandy soil.

“I went to put my hand on it to use it as a step-up, then I pulled my hand off it when I realized what it was,” she said Thursday.

The bone is drying out under the care of Richland archaeologist Jim Chatters, who helped Anthony retrieve the bone and its fragments.

Later this month, it will go to the Three Rivers Children’s Museum.

He said the humerus probably hadn’t been exposed long because bones that old don’t withstand the elements too well, and the bone is in good shape.