The remains of the adult male, probably in its 40s when it died, was discovered by farmer James Bristle who was digging in a wheat field in Washtenaw County's Lima Township with a friend to install a drainage pipe.
"It was probably a rib bone that came up. We thought it was a bent fence post. It was covered in mud," Bristle told the Ann Arbor News.
Experts from the University of Michigan were able to retrieve about a fifth of the animal's bones during an excavation, including the skull and two tusks, numerous vertebrae and ribs, the pelvis and both shoulder blades.
"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 and I recognised that and said 'humm, I think we have a mammoth here,'" Fisher said.
Fisher said there are only 10 similar sites in Michigan where a significant portion of a woolly mammoth skeleton was found. He said this one was likely 40 years old when it probably was killed by humans.
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