Backhoe operator makes a mammoth discovery

ELLENSBURG – Fossil remains of a mammoth have been found near Yakima – unearthed by a backhoe operator building a private road – and scientists are hoping the find will be a largely intact fossil skeleton.

Researchers at Central Washington University plan to examine the site this week, they said Friday. The bones were found in the Wenas area on land owned by rancher Doug Mayo, who alerted the scientists.

So far, all scientists have seen is the animal’s left humerus – upper foreleg – and it arrived in pieces.

“It’s a pretty good match for a mammoth,” said Dr. Patrick Lubinski, an archaeologist and anthropologist at Central.

“I’m particularly interested in what might be associated with the find,” said Dr. Bax Barton, an expert on the Pleistocene era and prehistoric Pacific Northwest ecology at the University of Washington. He was among those called in to help identify the fossil.

Mammoth bones are relatively common in Washington, Barton said, estimating that something like 200 fossils have been found over the years.

But most have been single bones, he said. And none of the sites was excavated using modern methods that include analyses of the soil, plant life and other site characteristics.

If the Yakima find is an entire, largely intact, fossilized mammoth skeleton, it could have international significance, Lupinski said. He said the bones are likely those of an elephant species known as the Columbian mammoth, rather than the woolly mammoth.

Fossilized bones of mastodons also have been found in Washington. But that similar-looking creature is only distantly related to mammoths and modern elephants.

“We’re most interested in finding out how, and why, these creatures died out,” Barton said.

For years, the consensus was that the mammoths, mastodons and other large animals of the Ice Age were hunted to extinction by prehistoric Americans.

Scientists now are exploring the possibility that climate change did them in.

But since a road grader and backhoe unearthed the find, there may be significant disruption. The humerus bone was pieced together from fragments spread over some 100 feet of road, Barton said.

The researchers had hoped not to make the find public until they had completed their work, but the CWU student newspaper reported the discovery Friday.