SEQUIM — The Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Dungeness River Audubon Center at Railroad Bridge Park, 2151 W. Hendrickson Road.
The guest speaker is Clare Manis Hatler, who will present “What do you do when you find two old elephant tusks in your front yard?”
The program is free and open to the public.
In 1977, Manny Manis unearthed mastadon tusks while digging with a backhoe in his Happy Valley pasture. For the next eight years Manny and Clare Manis opened their home to archaeologists and the public, showcasing remarkable evidence that humans hunted and lived in the Sequim area 13,800 years ago.
Through her involvement with the project, Hatler has become an expert on mastodons.
She will tell her story about how archaeologist Carl Gustafson provided evidence that humans hunted mastodons and other animals at the site, rewriting the history of humans in the Americas.
Hatler, who along with husband Don was named the 2018 Sequim-Dungeness Valley Citizen of the Year, also will describe a new research collection at the Washington State History Museum that preserves items from the Manis Mastodon site for future study by research scientists.
