A Rare Mammoth Tusk Was Discovered By A Hunter Searching For Deer On A Texas Ranch
While looking for deer on a privately owned ranch in West Texas, a hunter stumbled upon a rare mammoth tusk.
The tusk was in the drainage area of a creek bed on the O2 Ranch, which is located near Big Bend National Park.
Columbian mammoths (Mammuthus columbi) were distant southern cousins of woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius).
They lived on the grasslands of what is now north and central Texas until around 11,700 years ago. However, it is rare to find mammoth remains in West Texas.
“Seeing that mammoth tusk just brings the ancient world to life,” said Will Juett, the O2 ranch manager. “Now, I can’t help but imagine that huge animal wandering around the hills on the O2 ranch. My next thought is always about the people that faced those huge tusks with only a stone tool in their hand!”
Columbian mammals and humans coexisted until the animals died off at the end of the last ice age. Researchers think that climate change, disease, and being hunted by humans all contributed to their extinction.
The hunter who found the tusk took pictures of it and showed them to Juett, who at first figured that it was most likely just a big stump.
But he reached out to Bryon Schroeder, the director of the Center for Big Bend Studies at Sul Ross State University, to make sure. Other researchers were contacted to investigate the discovery.
Schroeder confirmed that it was indeed a mammoth tusk. The researchers spent two days digging it up at the ranch. They used strips of burlap covered in plaster that will harden into a cast to protect the fossil.
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In addition, they built a frame to transport it to Sul Ross State University for further study. No other mammoth remains were detected during the excavations.
“We realized pretty quickly there was not more to the skeleton, just an isolated tusk that had been separated from the rest of the remains,” said Schroeder.
Now, the researchers are waiting for the results of carbon dating tests to see how old the mammoth tusk is. The discovery marks the second time a mammoth artifact from the area has been carbon dated.
The last time someone came across a mammoth tusk in West Texas was in the 1960s in Fort Stockton. At the time, carbon dating was only 10 years old, as the process began in the 1950s.
“There was a big range of error back then. Now, we can get it down to a narrower range within 500 years,” said Schroeder.
In recent years, Columbian mammoth finds have been made in other regions as well. Last summer, a seven-foot Columbian mammoth tusk was unearthed from a Mississippi creek bank. It was the first time that a fully intact tusk from this species was found in the state.
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