A farmer of Michigan, US named James Bristle made a huge find in a field of his. The farmer was digging in his soybean field when he and his friend pulled up what they first thought was a bent, muddy old fence post. What they had actually unearthed was the rib bone of a woolly mammoth that lived 12,000 to 13,000 years ago.
About a fifth of the animal’s bones have been retrieved during an excavation, including the skull and two tusks, numerous vertebrae and ribs, the pelvis and both shoulder blades. The adult male is thought to have been in its 40s when it died. Experts from the University of Michigan think humans may have killed the woolly mammoth and hid the meat so that they could come back for it later.
Professor Daniel Fisher, director and curator at its Museum of Paleontology, told CBS he knew exactly what it was when he saw the bones. “I saw a part of a shoulder blade and there is a certain curve on a certain part of it that goes one way if it’s a mastodon and another way if it’s a mammoth. I recognised that and said ‘humm, I think we have a mammoth here. We think that humans were here and may have butchered and stashed the meat so that they could come back later for it.”