By Amy Dalrymple | Editor
Team members excavate mammoth bones under the supervision of the North Dakota Geological Survey beneath a garage in Burke County in June 2026. (Photo courtesy of North Dakota Geological Survey)
By Michael Achterling
A mammoth excavation under a northwest North Dakota garage is unearthing a more complete prehistoric beast than paleontologists had hoped for when the discovery was made in the 1980s.
The excavation in Burke County is being spearheaded by the North Dakota Geological Survey, which has used its team, summer interns and some geology students from the University of North Dakota since June to carefully dig out the iconic animal.
“When you dig something up, you never know if it’s going to be one bone and the whole thing is going to be over,” North Dakota State Geologist Clint Boyd said. “Very quickly it became clear, no, there is a reason we are digging here.”
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On this week’s podcast, reporter Michael Achterling talks to Craig Blumenshine about the mammoth discovery and why it’s a rare find for North Dakota.
Find A Closer Look with the Monitor wherever you listen to podcasts. The program is a partnership with Prairie Public's Main Street.
Diseases like measles have surged to the highest level in decades in the United States.(Photo by Getty Images Plus)
By Jennifer Shutt
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged during his confirmation hearing to do everything in his “power to put the health of America back on track.”
Less than two years into his tenure at the helm of the department responsible for the health of millions of Americans, a string of outbreaks has repeatedly made headlines. Public health experts interviewed by States Newsroom said the upswing is the result of several factors, but that Kennedy’s decision to cut back the country’s safety net while spreading misinformation about vaccines has aggravated the problem.
Tractor trailers sit parked in a row at a truck stop in Bloomsbury, N.J. (Photo by Dana DiFilippo/New Jersey Monitor)
By Ariana Figueroa
President Donald Trump announced an initiative Thursday for veterans to quickly obtain commercial driver’s licenses, as the administration attempts to fill vacancies in the industry after pausing license renewals for foreign-born truck drivers.
“The radical left wants more jobs for illegal aliens and more migrants (in) 18-wheelers, and (the) Trump administration wants safer roads and more jobs for the American veteran,” Trump said.
The policy builds on a program that allows veterans to automatically obtain a commercial driver’s license if their service included operating heavy vehicles by expanding the waiver from 12 months since military service to 24 months.
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