I'm sure that you have, during some time your life, heard about some group of people finding some prehistoric fossil. Depending on the location or the size of the object, it could take months or even years to extract this piece of history. They will want to be able to take it out of this area in one piece.

They found whole animals frozen in ice from the Ice Age. This extraction took them years to complete because of the size and weight. They had to bring in special machines to remove the chunk of ice that would have had to been done without breaking the massive chunk of ice. Then they had to find a way to move it to a place where it could be looked at where the scientists wouldn't be out in the cold.

These people doing the extractions had to withstand temperatures so cold that they couldn't be out in the weather too long because they would be overcome by the cold. They would have to put themselves in danger not only with the weather but also because of the dangerous animals that might be in the area.

In other situations they might find whole ancient cities that have lain underground for centuries. Then you have the tombs in Egypt, and you might have heard of the tombs in Mexico. We have even had extractions here as well. Most of these have been sites of historic fights or old Indian villages. The biggest area has to do with the American Indians of the Great Basin of North America. We have learned much from these sites.

These sites could tell the people that are doing the work how these people lived and even how they died. They could tell by what they found how long this village had been at this location and could pinpoint the time of its demise.

We have scientists that go all over the world for the sole purpose of looking for old fossils and extracting these things out of the ground. The more they find the more the government will give them in grant money to keep this dig going. Some of these digs have been very well known and some of them you will never hear about. If you have ever been in a museum almost everything that you might see is from some extraction of one kind or the other.