Farmer finds woolly mammoth bones in Michigan field

A Michigan farmer has made a mammoth find while digging in a field.

The Ann Arbor News reports the bones of a woolly mammoth were found by James Bristle in a soy field Monday night in Washtenaw County’s Lima Township. At first he thought it was a mere fence post, but closer examination confirmed it was no ordinary find.

People have been stopping by the farm all week, watching the dig which has been underway since Thursday morning. “My grandson came over to look at it, he’s 5-years-old, he was speechless”.

Due to a strict farming and harvest schedule, Bristle was only able to offer one day for the team of researchers to get the job done.

In a video posted on the University of Michigan website, which can be viewed below, Fisher estimated the mammoth was in its 40s at the time of its death and likely lived between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago.

This massive mammoth skull was removed from a farm in Michigan.

“We don’t just want to pull the bones and tug everything out of the dirt”, Fisher explained.

“We’ve seen this sort of thing at other sites before”, Fisher said Friday.

He says it’s one of the most complete mammoth sets ever found in Michigan. And because it’s been carefully extracted by paleontologists, it has the potential to be studied much more thoroughly than bones haphazardly pulled out of the ground. In a typical circumstance, the university wouldn’t have dedicated time and resources into an extraction without a few reassurance that the remains would be donated. Bristle has yet to make a decision on the future of the remains.

Fisher said that the “animal had been disarticulated”, a final resting state that suggests the bones may have been left there as a result of human involvement. “And we can’t do that without long-term access to the material”.