John Bristle stumbled upon the skeletal remains of a mammoth while tilling his farm on Sept. 28. After calling the University of Michigan’s paleontology department, staff from the university excavated the bones and are now studying them to learn more about the ancient environment of mid-central Michigan.
Daniel Fisher, director of the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology, said he was excited to receive the call, because he soon learned that the bones were those of a hybrid Columbian-Woolly Mammoth, unique both for the rarity of mammoth bones and of the mixed-breed species.
Most of the calls Fisher receives regard domestic animal skeletons or the more common mastodon skeleton, so the discovery of a mammoth, which rarely traveled through the American Midwest due to the lack of tundra, excited Fisher.
“We negotiated one day of digging at the site, since the landowner was installing a drainage system and working on his harvest, both sensitive to the temperature of the ground,” Fisher said, who is also a professor of Earth and Environmental Studies at the University of Michigan.
According to Hillsdale College Professor of Biology Anthony Swinehart, even a week-long dig requires a speedy excavation, so one day meant the university team had to work quickly and efficiently to uncover the skeleton.
“I was surprised that they were using a backhoe in the video I saw of the excavation and thought it was quite reckless, especially since the tusks and skull were attached, which is rare, until I learned that they had only a day,” Swinehart said.
The team included a dozen university staff, faculty, and students and James Bollinger of Bollinger Sanitation and Excavating in Chelsea, who donated his equipment — including the backhoe — and man hours to help the team complete their job within their time constraint. From the early morning until sundown, the team pulled the animal’s skull, jaw, both tusks, several vertebrae from the neck to lower back, ribs from both sides, a kneecap, and a limb-bone fragment. In all, the site yielded 20 percent of the animal.
“What we generally find is not preserved and not all connected,” Fisher told the Collegian. “An animal doesn’t just get stuck and sink down into the ground for us to find completely intact; what usually has happened is that we’re dealing with parts of a carcass that were separated from other parts of the carcass and brought to a nearby pond.”
Fisher explained that, most likely, early humans killed or discovered the animal and, after consuming their fill, stored the rest in a local body of water. Since the water and sediment and the bottom of the pond preserved meat well, the group of humans could have forgotten about the meat, moved, or been killed.
The other bones either moved with the meat the humans consumed or were at the site of the animal’s death. In any case, the bones were left untouched until Bristle discovered them.
A day before Fisher was contacted, Bristle saw what Fisher believes was a rib sticking out of his field and first thought it was a fencepost. Bristle, who was unavailable for comment to the Collegian, told the Detroit Free Press that he was sure it wasn’t a cow or horse, leading him to believe it was something from an older time.
The bones, which Bristle generously donated, will rest, in accordance with his wishes, in a special display at the university’s Museum of Natural History.
Swinehart has conducted some mastodon digs with his team at Hillsdale in the surrounding area, including one in 2005 at the home of Aaron and Veronica Scriven. Veronica was collecting wildflowers when she discovered a bone in a pile of discarded dirt, which accumulated in 2003 when she and her husband dug out their pond.
“It was very exciting — we had students of different majors, staff, and faculty digging over the course of a week. Terri Martin cooked and brought us themed food and drinks, like ‘Glacier Freeze’ Gatorade and ‘mammoth’ cookies,” Swinehart said.
The Scrivens donated their find to Hillsdale, and the bones now rest in the museum at the college. Swinehart added that the department gifted the couple a plaster cast of the mastadon’s ulna as a thank-you for their donation.
