'Mammoth central' found at Mexico airport construction site

[sl8]

From https://apnews.com/29d8dd7da7b8bce72eee1fa3656e630a

'Mammoth central’ found at Mexico airport construction site

By GERARDO CARRILLO
yesterday

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The number of mammoth skeletons recovered at an airport construction site north of Mexico City has risen to at least 200, with a large number still to be excavated, experts said Thursday.

Archaeologists hope the site that has become “mammoth central” — the shores of an ancient lakebed that both attracted and trapped mammoths in its marshy soil — may help solve the riddle of their extinction.

Experts said that finds are still being made at the site, including signs that humans may have made tools from the bones of the lumbering animals that died somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago.

There are so many mammoths at the site of the new Santa Lucia airport that observers have to accompany each bulldozer that digs into the soil to make sure work is halted when mammoth bones are uncovered.

[...]

[samnsara]

1. we have a local mammoth site where the college students dig..

..its really interesting!

[UpInArms]

2. Very cool

[csziggy]

3. As I was reading this I had Africam Tau on Youtube playing

Live view with elephants making mud holes to wallow in - I presume that they are covering themselves with mud and then dirt to protect their skin from insects.

Watching some of them get belly deep in the mud I can understand why elephant type creatures could get bogged down and be unable to get free.

At the same time I am reminded of The Elephant's Child story by Rudyard Kipling since there is a pretty big crocodile cruising by as a baby elephant enjoys his mud wallow!

http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/rg_elephantschild1.htm

[DFW]

4. No mammoths near us, but there was a really cool find near me in 1856

In the valley of a small stream called the Neander, they found some relics that changed archaeology. Neander Valley in German is "Neanderthal."

California Peggy and her husband visited the museum on the site there when they stayed with us in Düsseldorf!

[Baclava]

5. Driven south by a 2 mile thick ice sheet covering Canada, a mere 10,000 years ago