“It could be that they were eaten right after the animal was acquired”, Fisher said in a video interview with the university, which you can watch below.
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University of Michigan paleontologists later confirmed that the unusual thing found in Washtenaw County’s Lima Township was part of a woolly mammoth’s remains.
Fisher described the age of both the site and the animal. He determined the beast was a 19-year-old male that stood about 9 feet at the shoulder and lived 10-11,000 years ago.
In a surprising find, a farmer has stumbled upon the partial skeleton of a woolly mammoth, which may have lived about 12-13,000 years ago, in a field in Michigan.
“We think we’re dealing with an animal that was at least butchered by humans”, even if the humans didn’t kill it, Fisher said. “It’s too early to tell how it died but the skeleton showed signs of butchering”, Fisher said.
Evidence supporting that idea includes three basketball-sized boulders recovered next to the mammoth remains. Diggers found a pelvis, half a lower jaw with a tusk, two vertebrae, a portion of a foreleg and a portion of a rear leg. Boasting enormous tusks and looking a bit like a furry version of the modern-day elephant, the woolly mammoth did co-exist alongside humans for a time, scientists say.
To confirm that early humans in this corner of the world did in fact feed on this mammoth, the researcher team must wash the bones and inspect them for cut marks. Upon closer inspection, the two men realized they were looking at bones-and they belonged to something very big and very old.
Material recovered during a woolly mammoth excavation sits in baggies on a farm in Lima Township, Mich., October 1, 2015.
A farmer near Chelsea has made a mammoth find while digging in a field. A backhoe digging a trench uncovered a roughly 3-foot-long bone that was later identified as part of a mammoth pelvis. “It was covered in mud”, Bristle told MLive.
Bristle thought it might have been a rib.
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The team had just one day to unearth the mammoth’s remains. Officials on Saturday said Bristle has not yet notified him of his intentions.
