In 1971 a rockhound named Lin Ottinger was leading a field trip in the Big Indian Copper Mine (more recently called the Keystone Azurite Mine) near Moab, Utah, when he discovered major portions of two human skeletons bearing an interesting greenish color. A bulldozer there had recently removed about 15 feet of overburden, revealing the bones and inadvertently damaging some of them.

Marwitt led the remainder of the excavation, describing the bones as resting in loose, poorly consolidated blowsand, in contrast to the consolidated, hard sandstone further from the bones, comprising the host formation at the site. He also indicated that all the bones were unfossilized, that is, not heavily altered or replaced with secondary minerals, and looked essentially modern, other than the greenish staining due to contact with the copper bearing sediments immediately surrounding the bones. Marwitt concluded that the bones were unquestionably intrusive burials, probably only hundreds of years old.