CHELSEA, Michigan – Has something ancient been unearthed near Chelsea, Michigan?
Paleontologists from the University of Michigan spent the day digging up the bones of an adult woolly mammoth.
Tweets from the Ann Arbor News — appeared to show the find Thursday afternoon: a muddy, fossilized woolly mammoth.
Daniel Fisher, a professor at U-M and director of the Museum of Paleontology, tells WWJ that he knew exactly what he had 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," said Fisher, "and I recognized that and said ‘humm, I think we have a mammoth here.'"
Fisher says they were able to retrieve several bones from the site:
"We extracted this very nice skull and tusks and we found the jaw of the animal – various ribs and vertebra."
Fisher says this particular spot may have been an important one.
"It turns out we are dealing with carcass parts of animals , in some cases hunted, in other cases maybe not, but in any event, butchered by ancient humans, what we call Paleo-Indians; people who lived in North America about 12 – 13,000 years ago," he says.
Chelsea Update also posted some pictures on their Facebook page, taken by a Burrill Strong.
Extinct for a minimum of 10,000 years, the woolly mammoth lived during the Pleistocene epoch, and was one of the last in a line of mammoth species. Boasting enormous tusks and looking a bit like a furry version of the modern-day elephant, the woolly mammoth did co-exist alongside humans for a time, scientists say.
