Elder citizen of Florissant remembered

About 50 people gathered in Florissant to remember Milo and to celebrate his short life.

They stood by the spot where he died of unknown causes.

A tooth and part of his jawbone were all that were found in 1994.

Still, it was enough to tell who Milo was:

Big.

Hairy.

Tusky.

A Columbian mammoth dead for more than 50,000 years.

Milo came back to life Sunday in the imaginations of those who attended a program at the snow-covered site near Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument where the extinct member of the elephant family once lived and played.

Milo wasn't alone in his escapades.

"He most likely had other friends," said geologist Steven Veatch, who has studied Milo extensively. "Groups of mammoths roamed the Florissant Valley, and so did other Ice Age animals."

Milo's pals have yet to be officially found locally.

"He is Teller County's first documented mammoth," Veatch said.

"There are only 78 documented mammoths in Colorado. That's why it is so cool. Most are found in low elevation." Veatch named him and assigned a gender, but Milo could be a she. The mammoth remains were discovered by a guy moving a chair in 1994. "A young intern was taking a chair down the road for a 25th anniversary at the monument," Veatch said. "He saw something unusual out of a rodent hole. It was a mammoth tooth."

The site was excavated, turning up the mandible bone.

"It was a landmark dig in Teller County," Veatch said.

He spent the past year researching the finds. He presented a paper about Milo at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting in Denver in November.

Veatch is El Paso County information technology supervisor as well as an adjunct earth science professor for Emporia State University in Kansas.

He advised Sunday's gathering of mostly adults to look for more Milos -- and tell a scientist.

"There is still a lot of stuff to be discovered," Veatch said.

"It is so important when you find fossils not to put them in a box and take them home and put them on a shelf. They have great stories to tell. If someone found Milo and dragged him home, we wouldn't be able to do any of this."

Veatch had some members of his audience line up in an exercise to show how big Milo was.

"Knock-down-your-house huge," said Jeff Wolin, a park ranger.

The size impressed 10-year-old Tessa Lowenstein. "It is actually good that they are extinct," the Colorado Springs girl said. "We wouldn't want them walking and stomping."

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