[6] Other animals including forms of bison, caribou, deer, elk, horse, mastodon, musk ox, peccary, ground sloths, wolves, black bears, stag moose, saber-toothed cats, and possibly tapir[7] also grazed the vegetation and salty earth around the springs that the animals relied on for their diet.

[15]: 31 [16][17] He took the fossils he recovered back to France with him the next year and donated them to the natural history museum in the Jardin des Plantes.

After two weeks there, she was taken to Big Bone Lick and put to work boiling brine to make salt, which the Shawnee sold or traded for other goods.

In late October, Ingles persuaded another woman to escape with her and they walked over 600 miles (970 km) to her home in what is now Blacksburg, Virginia.

Anatomist William Hunter examined the bones and suggested that they came from an extinct species of carnivorous elephant, which became known as "the American incognitum".

His diary entry reads, in part: In 1795 future president William Henry Harrison collected 13 hogsheads full of fossils, all of which were lost when the barge carrying them sank on the Ohio River.

[11]: 88  One mastodon bone was unearthed with a noticeable cut mark on it, implying that the Clovis people lived in the area thousands of years ago.

[32] The Clay House, a resort hotel, opened nearby in 1815, offering visitors an opportunity to bathe in the supposedly medicinal salt mineral springs.

Graham wrote in an article for the Louisville Courier, "The Mammoth’s Graveyard," that he spent thirty days at the site while ten men dug up the fossils.

He collected seven barrels of bones and teeth of mastodons and mammoths, as well as buffalo skulls and the remains of bear, wolf and cougar.

[14] From 1962 to 1967 the University of Nebraska conducted excavations, seeking any remaining fossils and attempting to determine the age and ecological context of the mammoths and mastodons that had died there.

[41] These fossils were dated to the Wisconsin Glacial Period (c. 115,000 – c. 11,700 years ago) and are now on display at the University of Nebraska State Museum.

[10]: 138 Excavations in 1981 uncovered the burials of an adult male and a child, as well as a number of earth ovens and the remains of a house dating to the Late Archaic period.

The Big Bone Lick Historical Association was formed in 1953, and in 1956 purchased 16.66 acres of land, which they deeded to the Kentucky State Commissioner for conservation.

[44] The visitors center (opened 2004) features indoor and outdoor exhibits of fossils, American art, and a 1,000 pound mastodon skull as well as a gift shop.