A farmer near Chelsea made a startling discovery Monday night: bones of a woolly mammoth possibly butchered by early human hunters thousands of years ago.
University of Michigan Professor Dan Fisher was interviewed by The News around 4:30 p.m. Thursday while he was knee-deep in mud down in the bottom of a hole, digging out the skull and an enormous tusk.
Plastic bags filled with other remains of the animal that had been collected from the dig sat nearby.
Fisher said the woolly mammoth was probably 40 years old, lived between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago and was hunted by humans who probably killed it, butchered it and stashed it in a pond.
“They did that to store meat and come back to it later,” he said.
Fisher added that there have only been 10 similar sites with such a significant portion of a woolly mammoth skeleton found in Michigan in recorded history. There have been more mastodons found, around 300, over the years.
For the full article see John Counts, “Farmer uncovers woolly mammoth bones near Chelsea, Michigan”, MLive, October 1, 2015.
Also see Archit Tripathi, Farmer Uncovers A Woolly Mammoth Buried In His Field, WIMP, October 5, 2015.
Jessica Leigh Hester, “What Do You Do When You Find a Mammoth on Your Farm?“, Atlas Obscura, December 20, 2017.