WACO (April 23, 2009)--Waco City Manager Larry Groth is scheduled to testify Thursday in Washington during a hearing by the U.S. House Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands on a bill that would make the Waco Mammoth Site a national monument under the National Park Service.

Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, filed the legislation in the U.S. House and Texas Senators John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison filed a companion bill in the U.S. Senate.

The bills endorse a plan that would permit the Park Service to join an existing partnership between Waco and Baylor University to protect and preserve the site and to promote visitor tourism.

The site, which was discovered more than 30 years ago, contains the largest known concentration of wooly mammoths that died in a single event.

A painstaking excavation of the site has uncovered the remains of 25 Columbian mammoths that died nearly 68,000 years ago, probably after they were caught in a flash flood.

Work started last year on construction of a permanent protective cover and viewing pavilion at the site.