Wooly Mammoth Fossil Unearthed in Chandler

A routine site inspection turned into a gigantic discovery in 1997 when the 10,000-year-old remains of a wooly mammoth were unearthed in east Chandler!

Chandler City officials received an interesting phone call on July 3, 1997. Upon seeing what appeared to be bone fragments emerging from the walls of a freshly dug sewer ditch, a City inspector notified authorities that something big could be brewing.

City officials stopped work and called in the experts: scientists from nearby Arizona State University. Brad Archer, the curator of the University's Museum of Geology confirmed the find: a woolly mammoth -- and quite well preserved.

In fact, the find was the second for Chandler. The first was a similar find, about a mile from this site, that was discovered in 1985. More animal fossils eventually were unearthed -- all believed to have lived near the end of the Ice Age, which finished its thaw about 10,000 years ago.

The find was part of a new residential development in Chandler, which was postponed while paleontologists finished their dig. Some bone fragments were taken from the site one evening by thieves, but the area was then secured with an around-the-clock guard, provided by the homebuilder.

The find created quite the stir among residents who swarmed the site to get a look at a real piece of history. "This is truly an exciting event," then Mayor Jay Tibshraeny said at the time of the discovery. "It reminds us we were, by no means, the first to inhabit this area, and we want to remain sensitive to that."