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- WATKINS GLEN, New
York (CNN) -- A pair of unusually well-preserved woolly <w.mammoth.large.jpgmammoth
skeletons found in a lake in upstate New York will be auctioned to the
highest bidder over the Ebay Web site, the fossils' finder says.
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- Excavators and paleontologists in upstate New York are
in the process of digging up what they believe to be at least two woolly
mammoth skeletons preserved in a glacier pond for the last 11,000 years.
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- Scientists believe the bones are those of an entire woolly
mammoth and the partial remains of a youngster, both of whom got stuck
in the mud and drowned.
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- Excavator Larry Hakes first spotted some of the bones
while cleaning out the pond in upstate New York.
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- "When I actually found them this big, I couldn't
believe it," Hakes says.
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- Cornell University scientists think there are more than
200 bones buried in the mud. They say the find is unusual because of the
way the bones were preserved.
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- The mud pit is a drained pond formed during the ice ages
that became highly acidic over the centuries, pickling the bones.
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- The acidity of the glacier pond helped preseve the remains.
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- The mammoths disappeared from the region about 10,000
years ago, at the same time as the <mastedon.large.jpgmastodon. The
two giants have similar bones, but finding the teeth would confirm the
find. A woolly's teeth look like those of today's elephants, while a mastodon
has more human-shaped teeth.
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- Hakes dismisses any suggestion that it is wrong for fossils
to be used for private interests instead of going to research.
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- "The landowners, it's their property and it's their
choice to do anything they want as Americans," he says.
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- The asking price for the specimens: $4.5 million.
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