Two years ago, James Bristle, a Michigan soybean farmer, found the bones of a woolly-Columbian mammoth hybrid while installing a drainage system on one of his fields. Now, according to a press release from the University of Michigan, they’ve found more. Researchers have unearthed around 40 additional bones, including the skull, tusks and teeth of an ice age creature.
“We got the kind of information that we need to do the science right, and we were also able to recover an impressive amount of additional material from this animal,” says University of Michigan paleontologist Daniel Fisher, who led both Bristle digs and who is overseeing the analysis of the bones and the environmental samples, says in the press release. “I’m confident that as a result of this second excavation, we’ll have more insight into what happened here.”
The researchers decided to revisit the site after learning that one of the mammoth bones had a radiocarbon date of more than 15,000 years old and hints from the first find suggest the creature was butchered by ancient humans. The mammoth’s remains were discovered within pond sediments and researchers believe that early humans cut up the carcass and stored part of the animal at the bottom of a pond.
Researchers plan to extract and analyze the fungal spores and pollen grains within the sediments to get a better sense of when the mammoths were present, when they became extinct and how their vegetation changed over time.
full article -
Mammoth Remains Unearthed at Michigan Farm, Hint at Ancient Human Butchering | Smart News | Smithsonian
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“We got the kind of information that we need to do the science right, and we were also able to recover an impressive amount of additional material from this animal,” says University of Michigan paleontologist Daniel Fisher, who led both Bristle digs and who is overseeing the analysis of the bones and the environmental samples, says in the press release. “I’m confident that as a result of this second excavation, we’ll have more insight into what happened here.”
The researchers decided to revisit the site after learning that one of the mammoth bones had a radiocarbon date of more than 15,000 years old and hints from the first find suggest the creature was butchered by ancient humans. The mammoth’s remains were discovered within pond sediments and researchers believe that early humans cut up the carcass and stored part of the animal at the bottom of a pond.
Researchers plan to extract and analyze the fungal spores and pollen grains within the sediments to get a better sense of when the mammoths were present, when they became extinct and how their vegetation changed over time.
full article -
Mammoth Remains Unearthed at Michigan Farm, Hint at Ancient Human Butchering | Smart News | Smithsonian
