Bristle Mammoth exhibit to present prehistoric woolly mammoth’s bones

Members of the public will soon be able to get an eagerly-awaited look at fossilized bones of a prehistoric woolly mammoth, thanks to the soon-to-be-opened Bristle Mammoth exhibit.

The remains of the prehistoric mammoth, which roamed Michigan more than 15,000 years ago, were discovered by James Bristle when he digging in his soybean field in October 2015. Later, a team of researchers from the University of Michigan confirmed that the remains belonged to a mammoth.

A team of experts headed by U-M Museum of Paleontology Prof. Daniel Fisher later recovered nearly 40 per cent of the animal’s skeletal mass, including a skull with tusks still intact.

Those bones will be displayed for the public to see at the University of Michigan’s Museum of Natural History, starting Saturday.

Illinois State Museum paleontologist Chris Widga said, “Michigan was under ice when mammoths were the only elephants on the landscape. By the time the ice melted, mastodons were out-competing mammoths.”

However, some researchers contend that humans are to blame for the mammal’s extinction in the region. Researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Exeter said in a study published in the journal Ecography climate change affected megafauna like mammoths but they were not totally obliterated until humans invaded the region.