HAMILTON — The discovery of a buried leg bone and tooth of an animal that wandered in the Mill Creek Valley during the ice age prompted Mary Jo Lahrmann to do some digging of her own — into the prehistoric past.

        She'll start this month presenting an educational program based on her research to schools, community organizations and other groups in Butler County.

        But she'll be using replicas of the woolly mammoth's bones — not the real things — in her presentations.

        “I'd be too concerned about something happening to the real bones,” said Mrs. Lahrmann, education specialist with the Butler County Department of Environmental Services.

        She'll be using photos of the real bones and replicas of the bones made by a Columbus company.

        “This way, the kids can touch the replicas and have more fun with them,” Mrs. Lahrmann said. The real bones go on display within a month at the Government Services Center in Hamilton.

        The educational program grew out of the discovery of the bones in a 25-foot-deep trench at the back of Schumacher Park in West Chester Township in April 2000.

        A crew building the Upper Mill Creek Wastewater Treatment facility uncovered the 2 1/2-foot-long leg bone and a tooth the size of a large man's hand.

        After drying the bones for preservation, the Cincinnati Museum Center returned them to Butler County late last year. The county commissioners directed the Department of Environmental Services to develop an educational program around the bones.

        Ms. Lahrmann, who teaches recycling programs in schools, pored over dozens of books and talked to archaeologists and paleontologists. She bought fossils of ancient animals and plants and replicas of fossils and prepared colorful charts depicting the different prehistoric eras.

        After six months of work and $1,000 in expenses, she had recreated a one-hour program that she can adapt to children of any age as well as adults.

        “My program's about the history of the earth and its plants and animals,” Mrs. Lahrmann said.

        The woolly mammoth, an ancient form of elephant, stood 9 to 15 feet tall and had long, curved tusks. Hunters and climate changes wiped out the animal.

        The bones found in Butler County are about 19,000 years old, said Dr. Glenn Storrs, the Cincinnati Museum Center's director of science research and curator for vertebrate paleontology.

        “If you measured the history of the Earth in an hour,” Mrs. Lahrmann said, “human beings didn't appear until the final minute.”

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