Although it’s been buried for thousands of years, the partial skeleton of a woolly mammoth discovered this week in Lima Township shows that the animal probably ended up on a Native American’s dinner plate.
“It’s too early to tell how it died but the skeleton showed signs of butchering,” said Professor Dan Fisher of the Museum of Paleontology at the University of Michigan.
“It was an adult male, 40 to 50 years of age, and stood probably 10 feet tall at the shoulder.”
The remains were found on a soy bean farm owned by James Bristle, in an area near Chelsea, about 10 miles southwest of Ann Arbor. At first, Bristle thought it might be an old fence post.
Instead it turned out to be about 20 percent of a woolly mammoth, including the skull, jaw, vertebrae and ribs, that died between 11,000 and 15,000 years ago.
Experts believe the discovery, including a small stone flake that may have been used as a cutting tool, might provide clues about the lives of early humans in the region.
The site holds “excellent evidence of human activity,” Fisher said. "We think that humans were here and may have butchered and stashed the meat so that they could come back later for it.”
Mammoths and mastodons — another elephant-like prehistoric creature — once roamed North America before disappearing around 11,700 years ago. Over the years, the remains of about 300 mastodons and 30 mammoths have been recovered in Michigan, Fisher said.
"We get one or two calls like this a year, but most of them are mastodons," said Fisher, who also said that most of the mammoth finds in Michigan aren’t as complete as the skeleton uncovered by the UM team.
According to experts, storing mammoth meat in ponds for later usage was common for this region.
Evidence supporting that idea includes three basketball-sized boulders recovered next to the mammoth remains. The boulders may have been used to anchor the carcass in a pond...
I saw a clip where it was still legal to sell their ivory and natives of the north using primitive steam machines to melt the ice to extract them.
ReplyDeleteAverage price is $70 per pound. This find will be higher since both tusks are very large and are attached to a skull.
ReplyDeleteWhen are we going to hear cries of fowl against those people who hunted, murdered and butchered this stately creature and contributed to its extinction?
ReplyDeleteThe attackers were "native americans" doing what they do.
DeleteIf the attackers were white males all hell would break loose.
The folks from the Univ. of Michigan returned a few years later and brought up more of the skeleton. About 80% of the total. The Univ. of Mich. museum have conserved the bones and made copies of them and now it is on display at the museum. More recently researchers did some mineral analysis of the bones and have made some estimation of the territorial range of the animal.
ReplyDeleteSummary is that 15,000 years ago the mammoth escaped the zoo and went to an indian soy bean plantation and white people killed it with assault rifles felt guilty and buried it?
ReplyDeleteGoogle Randall Carlson or do the same on YouTube and see his take on the extinction of the mega fauna.
ReplyDeleteDan Kurt
I am a rabid Randall Carlson fan. I can't wait to see the 'scientific community' eat lots of crow.
DeleteYou would think they would have someone who can rig…. That’s just silly right there.
ReplyDeleteKlaus