The National Park Service said the mammoth skull, a scapula, and a tooth appeared in an eroding stream bank on the island.
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Scientists stated that the skull is not big enough to qualify as a Columbian mammoth and not small enough to be a pygmy.
The size of the find has left the scientists puzzled because they can’t determine if it’s a Columbian or pygmy mammoth, according to the park.
This places the mammoth at about the same time as Arlington man, the oldest human remains in North America, found on the very same Santa Rosa Island.
Share with Us – We’d love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article, and smart, constructive criticism. That date is important, because it happens to coincide with the age of the Arlington Springs Man – the oldest human skeletal remains found in North America.
Geologist Dan Muhs of the U.S. Geological Survey worked on the survey believes that the skull suggests multiple mammoth migrations from the California coast to the Channel Islands’ shores about 30,000 years ago.
The scientists say one of the questions is whether the humans and mammoths ever coexisted on the island.
Burrowed in a stream bank, the “exceptionally well-preserved fossil” with tusks is a rare find, especially because it would indicate the mammoth roamed the islands at almost the same time as humans.
The mammoth skull was found by National park Service biologist Peter Larramendy in a 13,000-year-old rock layer.
Justin Wilkins, Mammoth Site paleontologist, said in a statement, “This mammoth find is extremely rare and of high scientific importance”.
The team is also intrigued by the creature’s tusks.
Archaeologists have placed his life at the end of the Pleistocene, when the four northern Channel Islands formed one mega-island called Santarosae.
Columbian mammoths appeared in North America about 1.5 million years ago and some of them migrated to the Channel Islands during the past two ice ages, during which sea levels were lower and the islands were close to the mainland. One is nearly five-feet long and is coiled like that of an older mammal, while the other is shorter and sloped to the left, which is a characteristic of a younger one.
Known as Mammuthus exilis, their offspring was much shorter, downsizing from 14 feet to 6 feet.
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An exceptionally well preserved fossil of a complete mammoth skull has been unearthed on a tiny island off the coast of California, and it’s got palaeontologists rethinking how these massive animals might have lived alongside humans.
