While hunting in western Texas, deer hunter spotted a strange object in a forest bed. Suspecting that it may be a fossil, he took a photo and showed it to a ranch manager.
“I was skeptical,” O2 Ranch Manager Will Juett said at Sul Ross State University Statement. “I calculated that it was probably just an old stump, but I imagined how great it would be if he was right.”
The deer hunter was right, and the discovery was more than great, because it was not just some kind of fossil. Interdisciplinary team of researchers identified it as Mammoth Tusk, an incredibly rare finding for West Texas.
After seeing the hunter’s photo, Juett contacted a center for director Bryon Schroeder and archaeologist of Big Bend Studies (CBBS) Erika Blecha. They in turn reached Haley Bjorklund, CBBS collaborator and graduate of University of Kansas specializing in environmental archeology. After two other anthropologists joined their efforts, the researchers met at the ranch to investigate what the hunter found. The team quickly identified the sample as Mammoth Tusk.
“When they confirmed what they discovered, I couldn’t believe it,” Juett said. Unfortunately, the Mammoth Tusk was isolated, meaning that the researchers did not discover any other mammoth remains. For two days, the team wrapped the cough into a plastic covered burlap and built a supporting frame to safely transport it to SRSU. Now the researchers plan to study the Tusco, including the fulfillment of radiocarbon dating – a standard technique used to determine the age of organic material – to estimate when the mammoth lived.
“A local who later wrote his doctoral dissertation on it, found one [a mammoth tusk] In Fort Stockton in the 1960s, “Schroeder said, adding that the specimen is currently the only Mammoth Tusk in the Trans-Pecos region of Texas to be carbon. [in carbon dating] in then. Now we can drop it to a narrower range within 500 years. ”
While the claim does not call a specific mammoth species, the Tusk may have belonged to Colombian mammothA distant cousin of the more familiar wool mammoth. The Shaggy Elephantine animal could reach up to 13 feet in height (nearly 4 meters) and weigh about 10 tons.
Colombian mammoths lived regions of North America, including modern day Texas, before extinct about 11,700 years ago together with many other ice age mammals. Although the reason behind the disappearance of the iconic megafauna of the ice age remains a warmly discussed topic, scientists often cite climate change, and Human hunting Maybe also played a role.
“See that Mammoth Tusk just brings to life the ancient world,” Juett said. “Now I can’t help but imagine that a huge animal wandering around the hills on the O2 rank.
