Archaeologists Unearth Remains of Two Ancient Mammoths in California

The Tusk been recovered Image Santa Clara University

Faculty and students from Foothill College, Santa Clara University, and San Jose State University are excavating a site in Monterey County where two Columbian Mammoths, an adult and an infant, have been found.

The team has uncovered about 10 percent of the skeletal remains, which are heavily fragmented and will need conservation and restoration. Archaeologists have also found hair, which may allow scientists to extract DNA. If successful, this will be the first published recovery of DNA from Columbian Mammoths, and it will also help experts learn the how they’re related to Wooly Mammoths and modern elephants.

The mammoth site was found over 3 months ago by one of the farmers on this property during land-grading activities using heavy equipment.  During the course of scraping the clay down, a mammoth tusk and molar were exposed.  This brought his attention to the find, which was then reported to Mark Hylkema, the Santa Cruz District archaeologist with California State Parks.  Mark has significant field experience in the Monterey Bay Region and prepared an initial findings report that was forwarded to a number of professional paleontologists and other colleagues.  In so doing, a research team was gathered; given the limited window of time allocated for excavation, we have proceeded to expose and document the remains.

 Over a month ago, the team began excavation of this mammoth site.  To date, they have identified and partially uncovered the remains of two Columbian Mammoths (Mammuthus columbi): one is an infant, the other appears to be an adult.  Though they have yet to uncover evidence for it, they suspect that the adult may be the mother of the infant.

 To date, they have uncovered a mere 10% of the total skeletal remains; assuming that all of the skeletal elements of these two individuals are at the site.   The team are now using ground-penetrating radar to direct our excavations: it is (hopefully) informingthem s about the location of the yet-to-be excavated remains.

Given that the remains  found are not fossilized, they suspect that these specimens are likely to be relatively recent, and may date to within the period of the extinction of M. columbi - between 13,000-9,000 years ago.  Soon they will be undertaking radiocarbon sample testing, which will allow more accurate dating of these finds.

 They currently have no evidence regarding the cause of death of these two mammoths.  Given that their remains are in a thick clay in what is still a marsh, it is possible that they had been trapped in this thick mud many millennia past.  The clay matrix is typical of low, perennially wet landscapes and is Late Pleistocene in age (the last phase of the 2 million year Great Ice Age that ended around 12,000 years ago).  The team hope to find further evidence of their life and causes of death as we continue our work.

 Though these are certainly not the first examples of Columbian Mammoth found in California, they are the first ones found in Monterey County.  Other specimens have been found in San Jose (2005) and Fremont (1960’s) and significantly, in dated archaeological sites on the Santa Barbara Channel Islands (dating to circa 11,000 years ago).

 The team suspect that they have found hair from these mammoths: they have been encountering distinctive thick hairs in the clay context of these remains and have collected a number of hair samples.  The hair - when the pigment is intact, is reddish brown in color.  This is similar to the hair color of Wooly Mammoths; however, the hairs we have found are somewhat thinner than those recovered from Wooly Mammoth finds.            

Hair from Wooly Mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) has been recovered at other sites in Siberia and America, and this was possible because Wooly Mammoths are often found in contexts of permafrost (thus, preserving the hair and other soft tissues).

The Columbian Mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) was a larger southern relative of the more popular Wooly Mammoth and did not live in the far (colder) northern locations that tend to preserve hair or other soft tissues.  There are only a few other reported instances where Columbian Mammoth hair has been found.            

A member (Stephan Schuster) of the investigative team is a paleo-faunal (ancient animal) DNA specialist at Penn State and they hopes are that he will be able to extract ancient DNA from the hair follicles (or from the tusk ivory).  If he succeeds, this will be the first published recovery of DNA from this species.  This DNA information could be used to understand exactly how the Columbian Mammoth and Wooly Mammoth are related, how they are related to modern elephant species, and to understand the common ancestor of Wooly Mammoths, modern elephants, and Columbian Mammoths.  Also, we get to learn more about an animal that the first humans to enter the New World encountered as they expanded their range and became the first Native Americans

COLUMBIAN MAMMOTH INFO:

Columbian Mammoths (Mammuthus columbi) are effectively “North American Mammoths.”  M. columbi is thought to have evolved from an earlier Old World species: Mammuthus trogontherii (the Steppe Mammoth).  In Eurasia the same ancestor, M. trogontherii, evolved into M. primigenius (the Wooly Mammoth), which later also migrated into North America.          

The range of M. primigenius (the Wooly Mammoth) and the range of M. columbi (the Columbian Mammoth) overlapped in some areas of North America; but M. columbi extended as far south as Mexico and Nicaragua, while M. primigenius remained in the more northerly latitudes.  For the most part, both of these species appear to have gone extinct some time around 12,500 – 9,000 years ago. However, researchers have become aware of several small remnant populations on Wrangell Island in the Bering Straits and also on the Santa Barbara Channel Islands; these populations appear to have continued for several thousand more years before they too became extinct.

Large (male) specimens of Columbian Mammoth stood 14 feet tall and weighed as much as 10 (metric) tons.  This species is larger than the Wooly Mammoth.  The Columbian Mammoth was likely a grazer and (limited) browser – they ate grasses and (sometimes) low foliage.  Estimates of food consumption based on information from modern elephants may be equivalent to that of an adult Columbian Mammoth, and modern African elephants consume around 300lbs. of vegetation daily.     

The Columbian Mammoth differs from the Wooly Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) in location, size, skull shape, teeth shape, and tusk shape (Columbian Mammoth tusks spiral inward, the Wooly Mammoth curls upward).  Columbian Mammoths lack the large “knob” at the top of the head that we find on the Wooly Mammoth; and neither have the same teeth, tusks, and frame as the American Mastodon (Mammut americanum) – a completely different genus of ancient elephant.  The Columbian Mammoth likely lacked the full wooly “undercoat” of the Wooly Mammoth, but did have a long stringy “outer coat” similar to the Wooly Mammoth.