The ancient remains of a massive woolly mammoth were discovered this summer in Texas, prompting a large-scale excavation.
In June, two people were fishing in Central Texas when they found part of a fossil. Sabrina Solomon told KWTX in Waco that she was climbing a wet clay hill when she slipped and stumbled upon the bones, which she assumed belonged to a dinosaur.
Solomon and her friend alerted park rangers, who thought the remains were likely from a woolly mammoth. They reached out to Kris Juntunen, an instructor of geosciences at Tarleton State University, who traveled to the site.
“What I saw when I got here was about four to five inches of tusk… it was pretty clear this was a mammoth,” Juntunen told the news station.
Woolly mammoths roamed what is now Texas tens of thousands of years ago. The now-extinct species of elephant are recognizable by their long, curved tusks, small ears, and thick, shaggy fur.
Tarleton State recruited a group of students and Dr. Lindsey Yann, a paleontologist with Waco Mammoth National Monument, to work on the excavation. They have since discovered what may be part of a skull, an arm bone and part of the spine, according to the news report.
Scientists have determined the bones are from a 40-year-old male Columbian Mammoth from roughly 20,000 years ago. The animals reached 13 feet in height and weighed about 10 tons.
“It’s so hard to imagine them walking through your backyard, so every time we find one in your backyard, it kind of triggers the imagination,” Yann told KWTX. “And even a small find like this and the other finds in this area, they really tell us about the paleontological history of this area.”
The exact site of the excavation is being kept secret to prevent tampering, per a request by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Prior to the excavation, two of the mammoth’s teeth were taken from the site but were later returned to the Bosque County Sheriff’s office, the news station reported.
Once the fossils are fully uncovered, they will be preserved and studied at Tarleton State in Stephenville.
Woolly mammoths are a point of fascination for many. A Dallas company, Colossal Biosciences, is working on a plan to resurrect the extinct species. In July, a group of scientists led by the Baylor College of Medicine achieved a major milestone toward that end: They reconstructed mammoth chromosomes from a 52,000-year-old female well-preserved by the Siberian permafrost.