Ice Age kit brings paleontology to classrooms

"We're thinking of doing several more kits" and distributing them in other parts of Utah, so teachers wouldn't need to travel far to borrow them, Kirkland added. "This is the kind of thing that can benefit kids across the state."

Whitehead, who said she is "16 going on 17 on Tuesday," told the Deseret Morning News about her discovery of the horns, which happened in the fall of 2001. She was with a friend when she spotted what she thought was the end of a pipe. When she pulled it from the sand, she found it was a horn, but at the time she had no idea it was ancient.

"We actually thought that maybe somebody had murdered an animal and tried to cover it up," she said.

Her dad, Dale Whitehead, said he called around trying to identify the horn. The survey was interested, and they took it to the offices on North Temple. "They immediately identified it," he said. Later, the other horn was recovered.

"It's kind of exciting," Wendy said. She has been interested in paleontology, but this really boosted her interest.

Worner, a resident of Riverton, found the mammoth in March 2003. When he saw the strange knob of the vertebra sticking from the mud, "I started digging it out," he said.

He, too, has always been interested in paleontology. This bone was so massive he thought it might be a dinosaur vertebra. He showed it to Monson, who identified it as a mammal bone.

From its size, Monson said, he figured it had belonged to a species of animal "that was not up there currently." He, another teacher and Worner went to the Thanksgiving Point paleontological museum, where the bone was identified. Museum officials advised them to contact the survey.

Monson said this was the highlight of his teaching career so far.

Oddly enough, said JoEllen Wormer, the youth's mom, he has always been interested in paleontology. "It's almost like winning the lottery for him," she said.

Tobin may be something of an exception among boys his age, in his interest in science.

Friends joke about his find, he said. "They make fun of me because I like science and stuff like that.

"They call me a muscle-bound nerd."

Now the discoveries of the two teens may prompt students across Utah to take a more serious look at our fascinating past.

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E-mail: bau@desnews.com