Dig It: Mammoth Bones Found in Trendy East Village

Condos, nightclubs, offices - not to mention Petco Park - have made the East Village in downtown the epitome of urban revitalization. Tear it down, build it up - it's all part of the redevelopment process. But a recent "mammoth" discovery kind of puts everything in perspective.

The remains of the adult Columbian mammoth were found in the East Village, where the Thomas Jefferson School of Law is building its new $68 million campus. Paleontologists from the San Diego Natural History Museum estimate they are about 500,000 years old.

A bit of irony here: the school's namesake,Thomas Jefferson was fascinated by mammoths. While serving as president in the early 1800s, Jefferson had fossilized bones of a mastodon found in Ohio shipped to the White House so he could examine them, said Rudy Hasl, the law school's dean.

Paleontologists from the museum are excavating the bones for transport to the museum for detailed study. They say the bones hold clues about animal life in the downtown area a half-million years ago, as well as indicators of climate changes that varied from hot to cool in eons past.

Read more about this fascinating find in the Union-Tribune.