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reviewjoumal.com - News: After 50 years, Tule Springs still fascinates Page 1 of 3 Monday, M ay 16, 2005 Copyright © la s Vegas Review-Journal After 50 years, Tule Springs still fascinates Archaeologist saw site in 1955, came back for 'big dig' Bv KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL Fifty years ago, 27-year-old archaeologist Charles Rozaire had high hopes he would find clues around charcoal deposits at Tule Springs that could be linked to the earliest humans in North America. First thought to be evidence of fire pits or hearths, the charcoal smudges that dotted cross sections along the upper Las Vegas W ash in the valley's north end were near the area where giant animals — camels, horses, lions, bison, bears, sloths and mammoths - roamed what is now Southern Nevada 11,000 to 40,000 years ago. "We were literally scratching the surface," Rozaire, 77, told students and scientists Friday at the Geoscience Summit at Shadow Ridge High School, a 10-minute w alk from Tule Springs. The site, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, is in Floyd Lamb State Park, 10 miles northwest o f Las Vegas. The school's earth sciences program is funded by a $150,000 grant from the National Science Foundation and $40,000 in matching funds from Nevada Power Co. It allows students to continue research at Tule Springs through hands-on activities and a special curriculum that serves as a model for the Clark County School District, according to Paul Buck o f the Desert Research Institute and Steve Rowland of UNLV, summit co-sponsors. 'Tule Springs is our La Brea tar pits," Rowland said, referring to the Los Angeles site o f one of the richest finds of extinct animal fossils. After his first visit to Tule Springs in May 1955, Rozaire, from Los Angeles, returned in the fall o f 1962 as a member of the much-publicized "big dig" expedition that set out with bulldozers and a new age-dating technique to answer questions about the region's early inhabitants and the animals that lived here. 'It was quite a tremendous undertaking," Rozaire said, recalling how the team worked through rain and windstorms that once blew down all but one o f the scientists' tents. When a significant find was made, animal fossil experts would converge on the site, flying in from Chicago, http://reviewjournal.printthis.clickability.cora/pt/cpt?action=cpt&titl…... 5/17/2005