Public can see bones from mammoth at University of Michigan

Associated Press

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) – A year after a farmer’s discovery, the University of Michigan will publicly display bones from a mammoth that lived more than 10,000 years ago.

The exhibit opens Saturday at the university’s Museum of Natural History. Scientists aren’t done yet: They plan to return to a Washtenaw County farm for another dig in November.

Jim Bristle, a farmer in Lima Township, discovered bones while installing a drain pipe in his soybean field. He called the University of Michigan, and experts recovered roughly 40 percent of the mammoth’s skeletal mass, including a skull with teeth and tusks.

The bones were just 10 feet below the surface. The mammoth may have been a hybrid, between a woolly mammoth and a Columbian mammoth.