Kadlec provides orthopedic expertise to preservation of mammoth bones

Kadlec Regional Medical Center is well known for its healthcare. Lesser known is the role it has played over the years in the excavation of 17,450-year-old mammoth bones.

 Columbia mammoth bones were found on property near the Tri-Cities in 1999. The Coyote Canyon Mammoth Site remains an active dig operated by the all-volunteer Mid-Columbia Basin Old Natural Education Sciences (MCBONES) Research Center. At the request of the landowner, the site is used for education. It provides students, teachers and the public the opportunity to actively participate in laboratory and field-based research.

 Recently, a team from Kadlec Clinic Northwest Orthopedics and Sports Medicine went to the site to provide their expertise to help create a support for a mammoth scapula (shoulder blade) that had been unearthed years earlier. The bone is 30 inches long, 20 inches wide, and in some places is only a half to a quarter inch thick.

 When it was excavated, the bone was covered with a plaster field dressing. To display it, the MCBONES team needed to clean the plaster from it and turn it over – very risky work with a fragile bone of that size.

“Before we could flip it, we needed a custom support to cradle the bone,” said MCBONES volunteer Neil Mara. “One of our volunteers thought we could use the same material the hospital uses to make casts for broken limbs.”

None of them had used casting material before, so they called Kadlec. Kadlec Clinic Northwest Orthopedics and Sports Medicine sent Michelle Stigum, Ara Wilson and Clarissa Carrizales to help. 

 “Never in my life did I think I would cast a mammoth bone,” said Wilson, a physician assistant. “It was so cool to be trusted with it.”

They discussed ideas to brace the bone and materials that might work, said Stigum, clinical operations manager. Some casting materials produce heat, and moisture also is a concern. The Kadlec team used plastic wrap to protect the bone from moisture, then applied over the top of the plastic wrap a lightweight fiberglass casting material to provide support to the bone.

“The bone at one level was very thin, and that was really challenging,” said Carrizales, a medical assistant. “It was stationary, so we couldn’t lift it. We did our best to try to mold the fiberglass around it but could not put much pressure on it.”

This wasn’t the first time that Kadlec has been called upon for help with the mammoth, said MCBONES volunteer Mara. A few years ago, someone walking the halls of Kadlec at just the right moment might have been startled to see a mammoth leg bone on a gurney bound for Imaging. A CT scan was done of the bone, which then was used to 3-D print a plastic replica for educational use at the dig site and in local schools.

 “Once we have the scapula ready, we will take it to have a CT scan of it as well so we can make a replica of it,” Mara said. “We want to make replicas so that people can touch and hold the replicas, instead of the actual bones which are too fragile for excessive handling."

 The Coyote Canyon Mammoth Site is open to visitors from April to October on specifically scheduled tour days posted on its website. When it opens this spring, people will be able to see the scapula cradled in the support that the Kadlec team helped create.

 The excavation is ongoing, and more volunteers are always needed. Researchers believe the mammoth may have died in a flood, and the bones may be widely scattered.

"There are a lot of bones left to find," Mara said. "This really is the coolest thing I have ever done. When people talk about what they did over the weekend, I tell them I dug up mammoth bones."