Woolly mammoth bones found by farmer in Michigan

A farmer and a property owner in Michigan were installing drainage pipe in a wheat field when they discovered a 3-foot-long bone that were later identified as a part of a mammoth pelvis, the University of Michigan said in a press release. “We thought it was a twisted wall post”.

Professor Daniel Fisher, director and curator at its Museum of Paleontology, told CBS he knew exactly what it was when he saw the bones.

University of Michigan researchers say there is evidence the mammoth lived 11,700-15,000 years ago. Excavators have recovered almost a quarter of the animal’s skeleton, including the pelvis, skull, numerous vertebrae, ribs, shoulder blades, and two tusks.

The challenge now is to find the rest of it.

The Ann Arbor News (http://bit.ly/1VrCj2T ) reports the bones of a woolly mammoth were found by James Bristle in Washtenaw County’s Lima Township.

Together, they uncovered a surprising 20% or so of the woolly mammoth’s skeleton.

After establishing that Bristle could only spare one day for the mammoth extraction, Fisher and his team went into overdrive. On Monday night, he has found the bones of mammoth, which might have been butchered by early human hunters thousands of years ago. “Studying this mammoth could also potentially tell us more about the climate system, how it works and what kinds of changes happen over time, which is something very relevant to us right now”.

“My grandson came over to look at it, he’s 5 years old, he was speechless”, he said.

“We didn’t stop to eat or drink”, said Fisher. “Our working hypothesis for what we’re dealing with here is a partial skeleton, the pieces having been brought to this place by ancient humans for storage of carcass parts in a pond, it was their intent to come back later and retrieve this when they needed fresh meat”.

Has something ancient been unearthed near Chelsea, Michigan?

Fisher said that the “animal had been disarticulated”, a final resting state that suggests the bones may have been left there as a result of human involvement.

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The bones are currently in a shop on the farm, and the pit has now been filled in, Fisher said.