Finally, See Prehistoric Mammoth Bones Found in SE Michigan

The public is about to get a long-awaited look at an epic fossil unearthed by a southeast Michigan farmer last fall. The bones from the prehistoric mammoth, which roamed Michigan as many as 15,000 years ago, will be on display at the University of Michigan’s Museum of Natural History, beginning Saturday.

And dig this: Archaeologists are returning to James Bristle’s Washtenaw County farm this month to explore and perhaps unlock more secrets that may have been left behind by the prehistoric behemoth.

Bristle and his neighbor, Trent Satterthwaite, were digging to improve drainage on a soybean field near Chelsea a little more than a year ago when they encountered what they first thought was a post. The obstacle, buried about 10 feet below the surface, turned out to be the rib bone of a mammoth, which scientists said was a hybrid between a woolly and a Columbian mammoth.

Bristle notified U-M, which sent a team headed by U-M Museum of Paleontology Professor Daniel Fisher to confirm the find. The team was able to recover about 40 percent of the mammoth’s skeletal mass, including a skull with teeth and tusks still intact.

Most finds like this are mastodons, Fisher said at the time. It’s much more unusual to find a mammoth, a species closely related to modern elephants. Only about 10 woolly mammoth skeletons have ever been dug up in Michigan, National Geographic reported at the time of the find. In comparison, around 300 skeletons of American mastodons, mammoths’ more primitive and distant cousins, have been found in the state.

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Bristle and his wife, Melody, donated the bones — now known as “The Bristle Mammoth” to U-M’s Natural History Museum in Ann Arbor.

Visitors to the exhibit will be able to touch one of the Bristle Mammoth’s bones; see some of the evidence for human activity at the dig site, including the removal of edible tissues from parts of the carcass; and explore how the Bristle Mammoth’s bones, teeth and tusks reveal clues that help scientists understand how these animals lived and why they went extinct.

That’s a topic of debate among paleontologists. Some experts say humans are responsible for the demise of the woolly mammoth and about 36 other North American mammal species — including the wooly rhino, the saber-toothed tiger and the giant armadillo — that went extinct near the end of the Ice Age. Others blame climate change.

“Michigan was under ice when mammoths were the only elephants on the landscape,” Illinois State Museum paleontologist Chris Widga told National Geographic. “By the time the ice melted, mastodons were out-competing mammoths.”

Among those who contend that humans are to blame are scholars from the universities of Exeter and Cambridge who said in a study published in the journal Ecography that while climate spikes almost certainly affected the demise of megafauna like mammoths, they weren’t completely obliterated until humans invaded their turf.

“As far as we are concerned, this research is the nail in the coffin of this 50-year debate — humans were the dominant cause of the extinction of megafauna,” lead author Lewis J. Bartlett said in a University of Exeter press release. “What we don’t know is what it was about these early settlers that caused this demise. Were they killing them for food, was it early use of fire or were they driven out of their habitats? Our analysis doesn’t differentiate, but we can say that it was caused by human activity more than by climate change. It debunks the myth of early humans living in harmony with nature.”

Other theories to explain the megafauna die-off are that a super bug or a massive asteroid strike wiped them out, according to History.com.

About the Exhibit

The exhibit opens on Saturday, Nov. 5, but a free public lecture on the Bristle Mammoth will be held at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 4, in Room 1800 of the U-M Chemistry Building at 830 N. University Ave., Ann Arbor.

Fisher, the museum professor of paleontology, will discuss the evacuation of the Bristle Mammoth and what early research has revealed to scientists. The program is suited for individuals high school age and older.

Exhibit openings will be held both Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 5-6, at the museum, housed in the Alexander G. Ruthven Museums Building at 1109 Geddes Ave. in Ann Arbor. The opening weekend will include special programs, donor events and hands-on activities to celebrate the new exhibit.

Hours Saturday are 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday hours are 11 a.m.-6 p.m.

Sunday is also “Scientist Spotlight” day. U-M scientists will be on hand throughout the day to talk about and give visitors a chance to participate in activities related to their research. U-M scientists will be stationed on the second floor of the museum with unique interactive activities focusing on their own current work.

The exhibit will continue through January 2018, when it will be moved to the museum’s new location in the U-M Biological Science Building due to open in 2019.

Admission to the museum and all public mammoth-related events are free. You can learn more here.

Photo via University of Michigan Museum of Natural History